Remembrance Day 2011

- srbp -

Five Films for Friday

For Remembrance Day, here are five war movies you might consider checking out.:

• The Thin Red Line:
•  L’ennemi intime 

• Letters from Iwo Jima
• 9 Rota  (9th Company)

• Black Hawk Down

- srbp -

The Age of Social Media

Twitter.

Facebook.

Social media.

All stuff for young people, right?

Wrong.

A new poll by Harris-Decima shows an increase in social media use among Canadians over the past two years, from 57% in a poll conducted two years ago to 68% in the latest survey.

The most significant growth came in the over-50 age bracket..  Only 39% of those over 50 had used social media in 2009.  But that number had climbed to 57% in the recent survey.

CTV carried a report on the poll by Canadian Press:

They're [the over-50s] getting more comfortable online," Mike Leahy, senior Harris-Decima vice-president, said in reference to older Canadians.

"My impressions are that they are communicating with different generations, who are very active in social media."

Facebook is the most commonly used type social media.  All but three percent of respondents had used Facebook.  Only two percent of respondents used Twitter in 2009 but 25% of respondents used Twitter in the most recent survey.

That parallels a survey of Americans conducted by the Pew Institute in August:

The frequency of social networking site usage among young adult internet users under age 30 was stable over the last year – 61% of online Americans in that age cohort now use social networking sites on a typical day, compared with 60% one year ago. However, among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%).

“The graying of social networking sites continues, but the oldest users are still far less likely to be making regular use of these tools,” said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and co-author of the report. “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.”

- srbp -

A step in the right democratic direction #nlpoli

One New Democrat is fighting the re-count in Burin-Placentia West on grounds that the special ballot provisions of the provincial Elections Act are unconstitutional.

Let this be the first measure to turn back the anti-democratic current of the past eight years.

Now fighting against the anti-democratic tide is familiar stuff to SRBP readers. 

September 11, 2007.

Note the date.

That’s when your humble e-scribbler first raised questions about the changes the House of Assembly made to the Elections Act the previous spring.  The amendments sailed through the legislature in of its typical speedy sessions with no debate beyond the bare minimum needed to make the amendment bill into law.

Others  - notably Mark Watton – saw the same thing around the same time, bit into the issue with their considerable knowledge and gusto.As Mark wrote in 2008:

In the lead-up to a by-election, when there are no candidates in the running, these provisions are just plain silly. But in the weeks preceding a general election, they afford a tremendous advantage to incumbents. It is hard to imagine a greater democratic injustice than rules permitting incumbent candidates to campaign (and do so free from electoral-spending scrutiny) and collect votes while their potential opponents cannot even register. It's no wonder the amendments passed through the House of Assembly with no opposition.

…

Over a decade ago, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada stated: "Elections are fair and equitable only if all citizens are reasonably informed of all the possible choices and if parties and candidates are given a reasonable opportunity to present their positions. ... "

More recently, this court ruled the provisions of Canada's Elections Act, which effectively ensured "that voters are better informed of the political platform of some candidates than they are of others," violated Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and struck them down.

In the words of the Supreme Court of Canada, our rights under the charter go beyond the "bare right to place a ballot in a box"; they "grant every citizen a meaningful role in the selection of elected candidates."

In the three years since Mark published those words, nothing has changed.  The special ballot provisions still smell to the high heavens and generally the people who ought to be raising concerns about this have been silent.  One call-in radio host today left the impression he’d never heard of this issue before. Let’s hope he misspoke in the rush of the moment.

Well, nothing until one candidate and her lawyer decided to take a simple judicial re-count and strike a blow to restore fair elections to the province. The New Democrats did include changes to the House of Assembly as one section of their election platform last month but special balloting and the other changes the NDP supported in 2007 got not so much as a whispered mention.

Fair elections are a basic democratic right.

It is such a basic right in our society that we often take for granted what it means.  But we need look no farther back than 2007 to see just exactly how fragile our most basic democratic principles are. 

They are so fragile that the very group  - the members of the House of Assembly  - we expect to protect our democratic rights are the ones who happily and blindly violated them.

Of course, no one is surprised by this given the sustained assault on our fundamental democratic principles the past eight years have brought.

Just to give you a sense of what we are talking about here, let’s look at those democratic principles as laid out in the Bill of Rights (1689) and the examples of the attack on those principles.

And make note of that date:  1689.

• “That election of members of Parliament ought to be free;”   - the special ballot provisions as well as the other changes made to the Elections Act since 2003.
• “That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;: – Danny Williams’ public statements in 2007 that he favoured ending free speech in the provincial legislature and his efforts to chill free speech through personal, verbal attacks and threats of law suits.
• “… that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.”  The House of Assembly last sat in the spring and will not sit again until next spring.  Under the Conservatives since 2003, the House of Assembly sits the least number of days of any legislature in the country.

To be sure, the fundamental contempt displayed by the government for the legislature continues unabated with the the change in Premier.

What is encouraging, what is different is that for the first time in eight years, more people are starting to argue against the Conservatives’ contempt for democracy.

This court case over a simple re-count could prove to be one of the most important legal decisions in the province’s history.

- srbp -

We all can’t be wrong #nlpoli

There’s no small amount of humour in Kathy Dunderdale trying to claim that people who oppose the Muskrat Falls scheme are poorly informed.

At last count, anyone with significant experience in energy policy in the province over the past 40 years is four-square against the insane idea of doubling the public debt, driving up electricity prices in this province and selling discount energy to other places.

And there are a whole raft of other people with a lot less experience – but with the ability to think – who also have rejected the Conservatives’ scheme for the hare-brained mess it is.

Add to that list one of the original Bright Young Men who rose to prominence in the 1970s:  David Vardy.  For those who don’t know about the Princeton-educated economist, here’s a short version of his biography:

David Vardy is a …graduate of Memorial University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. Early in his career as an economist, he taught at Memorial and at Queen's University and served in the Public Service of the Government of Canada, in the Departments of Fisheries and Finance. …he has held a variety of senior positions at the Deputy Minister level in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, including President of the Marine Institute …, Deputy Minister of Fisheries, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Newfoundland Public Utilities Commission, and Clerk of the Executive Council, the most senior Deputy Minister position in the Province.

The Harris Centre released his latest paper on Monday.  It’s a review of Muskrat Falls titled Making the best use of the Lower Churchill. Not Surprisingly, some of Vardy’s comments have already garnered some media attention.  As the Telegram reported, for example, Vardy offered these observations.  On whether Muskrat is the cheapest option for meeting the province’s energy needs:

“The Muskrat Falls project is probably a second- or third-best option,” Vardy writes.
…
“Even though hydro might offer us stable options in the future, we could end up being stuck with prices so high that we’re out of step with the rest of North America.”

Vardy notes that the abundance of natural gas is changing the American electricity market.  And he repeats an idea readers of these e-scribbles will find familiar:

“A lot of these grandiose schemes, in terms of our history, have gotten us into trouble.”

Read the paper itself, though,  and you’ll find a bunch of other observations that only reinforce what many people have already said about Nalcor’s claims:

• On Nalcor’s energy demand projections:  “As a forecasting tool the 40 year growth rate of 2.3%,  used by Nalcor to estimate future trends, is suspect, given the lack of growth in the period 1990-2010, notwithstanding that electric heating is being used in 85% of new homes.  It can credibly be argued that  the historical period from 1990 to 2010, during which growth was flat, might be a more relevant reference period for future planning. (page 9)
• On what is driving the need for extra power:  “This suggests that it is not the forecast  of robust growth in demand that is driving the Muskrat Falls project. Rather it is more closely linked with the goal of removing the Holyrood Thermal Plant from the system”  (pp. 9-10). 
• On alternatives to Muskrat:  “Fisher et al have undertaken a desk study for the Harris Centre of Memorial University which examined the potential for very small hydroelectric developments, along with additional wind power.  They claim that such developments are sufficiently economic to avoid further dependence on thermal power in the absence of a Lower Churchill megaproject. The conclusions of the report require additional study but the authors have made a case for investing in further exploration of the options before the Province commits itself to a large and expensive project such as Muskrat Falls.” (p. 11)
• On the PUB review and Gull Island:  “The provincial reference to the Public Utilities Board does not include consideration of this option, which is unfortunate. The reference limits the enquiry to consideration of Muskrat Falls,  in comparison with Nalcor’s Option B, the Isolated Island alternative. However, development of Gull Island is an attractive option if  wheeling  arrangements can  be negotiated with Quebec, possibly with Federal help, and if markets can be found for firm energy commitments.” (p. 12)
• On another option, thus far unexplored:  “Option D is to negotiate with Quebec to access power, possibly supplied from the Churchill Falls power plant. It is unlikely that Hydro Quebec  would sell the power at the same price stipulated in the power contract between CF(L)Co and Hydro Quebec. However, the price might be more advantageous than the cost incurred to develop Muskrat Falls, with 40% of the energy remaining unsold. Transmission lines would still need to be built to connect Labrador with the Island but the cost of building the new
  generation site at Muskrat Falls would be avoided, as would the cost of the link with the Maritimes.” (p. 12) 
• Vardy’s Option E is aggressive pursuit of demand management (given that the demand forecasts are dubious.  he figures this could work until 2041 when more power is available from Churchill Falls for use within the province. (p. 12)
• “Option F is a variant of the Isolated Island alternative. It includes a thermal plant at Holyrood but one which is converted to use natural gas, a cleaner and cheaper alternative, rather than Bunker C, with its high emissions. Abundant natural gas is available on the Grand Banks in association with producing oilfields.”  (p. 12)

In his conclusion, Vardy writes:

Due diligence requires further consideration of all of the issues raised by the Joint Panel,  particularly the following:

• The lack of firm purchase agreements for surplus power and a clearer understanding of marketing possibilities;
• The use of other thermal alternatives, such as natural gas;
• The inefficient use of electric space heating; and
• Opportunities for conservation and demand management.

None of Vardy’s commentary will surprise anyone who has followed the public discussion, including the posts at SRBP going back to late 2010 when Danny Williams first announced his retirement scheme.

Vardy has added another voice to the chorus of critics and dissidents who feel the project is being rushed and that, ultimately, it is a bad idea.

So many people have looked at the Muskrat Falls project and found substantive problems in every aspect of the arguments offered by the provincial government and Nalcor.

All those people are not ill-informed.

All of those people cannot be wrong as Kathy Dunderdale and her colleagues claim.

So why are the provincial Conservatives and New Democrats and so many Liberals – including opposition leader Yvonne Jones and erstwhile Liberal leader Dean MacDonald – supporting the Muskrat Falls development?

- srbp -

Weird or what?

CBC’s otherwise outstanding website turned up a few weird glitches the past week or so.

In the video preview pane, the picture and the text didn’t match. 

This is probably the weirdest of the lot but it wasn’t the only one to have a bad picture/text mismatch. The image  - from Monday morning - is for the On Point segment about St. John’s city representation in cabinet. 

The guest was St. John’s city councillor Dapper Danny Breen.  A few of his Tory buddies might want to throw him off a cliff these days but that’s not what seems to be going on in this website glitch.

Meanwhile, to the left of that video snafu, the picture for the On Point link on the city of St. John’s was a shot of last week’s guest on the same show, cabinet minister Joan Burke.

The Burke mix-up was still there Monday night even though the video one was long fixed by then.

- srbp -

Dunderdale in tweet debate with opposition leader… or was she? #nlpoli

CBC has a story online about a Twitter exchange that supposedly took place between Premier Kathy Dunderdale and opposition leader Yvonne Jones.

One small problem:  is it really Kathy Dunderdale and Yvonne Jones?  Sure the Dunderdale tweets have all the arrogance of the Premier, but can anyone be really sure it’s Kathy herself?

And what about Jones:  Is it really her tweets?

You see it’s not like Dunderdale’s twitter account hasn’t sputtered out some odd tweets along the campaign trail, the kind of curious spellings that would make you very suspicious about whether or not Dunderdale is really clicking her thumbs for the account.

Someone toss up a picture of Dunderdale typing her own tweets and we can put this one to bed. Assurances from her publicity department – the people most likely to be ghost-tweeting for her, along with her personal aide – just won’t cut it.  Some enterprising young reporter should have a go at Dunderdale in a scrum.

Otherwise, let’s keep a healthy dose of scepticism about Dunderdale’s use of technology. After all, it’s not like there haven’t been a string of ghostwritten tweets that have popped up in the news and that’s from people a lot more tech savvy than Dunderdale:

• Guy Kawasaki
• Mark Davidson

As for the subject matter for the exchange – Muskrat Falls – Kathy Dunderdale (or her fake Tweeter) is the last person who should be talking about other people’s ignorance.

-srbp -

Bloc NDP wants more seats for Quebec

So apparently three’s not enough for the Bloc NDP, at least when it comes to adding seats in the House of Commons.

The humorously titled democratic reform critic David Christopherson is quoted in the Globe and Mail:

The NDP is demanding Stephen Harper respect his own 2006 motion that recognized Quebeckers as a nation within a united Canada by changing its new bill to give the province more than three seats in an expanded Commons.

“That motion meant something. It was meant to mean something to the people of Quebec,” Opposition democratic-reform critic David Christopherson told The Globe recently. “But it will only mean something if they see that the House is respecting the spirit of what that was.

Seats in the House of Commons should be apportioned according to population across the country.  That would be democratic. 

Rather than do that, the Bloc NDP wants to give one province an entirely artificial share of the seats in the lower chamber of parliament.  That’s decidedly undemocratic.

It’s also unsurprising, given that the party is now dominated by Quebec sovereignists.

Wonder how the Newfoundland sovereignists are going to explain their party’s stance on giving more power to Quebec.

Anyone heard from Ryan Cleary on this lately?

- srbp -

Remember those they left behind

From the Globe and Mail, Sergeant Ed Wadleigh reminds Canadians  to think of those the fallen left behind:

But if I could ask one thing of all Canadians for Remembrance Day, it would be this: Spare not a thought for the fallen. Think instead of those left behind, the families. All soldiers join knowing the risks, and all soldiers deploy to wars even more aware of those risks, and are willing to take them, for themselves, for the challenge, or simply because it is expected. But no family freely offers their loved one up. No family truly thinks it could happen to their loved one. But in the end, it is they who pay the sacrifice long after their loved one is gone. Think of them, remember them, this November 11.

- srbp -

Banging around the echo chamber #nlpoli

Last week’s top post was about media coverage of Jim Bennett’s decision to carry on his law practice  - albeit not full-time – while he sits as a member of the legislature:

What’s so striking about this is that it is a complete non-story.  As you’ll see part way down the page, the conflict of interest section of the House of Assembly Act quite rightly exempts ordinary members from the restrictions on carrying on with another job or outside business interests while serving in the legislature.

So why single Bennett out?

The post prompted a few tweets an e-mails, some of which pointed out other Liberal backbenchers who were likely also going to carry on businesses while in the legislature.

But here’s the thing:  the question wasn’t about why media reports singled out a Liberal member of the legislature. That includes the West Coast Morning Show that led into a discussion of the rules of the legislature using Bennett as the lead-in to a story they ran on October 28.  The Western Star ran a story a couple of days later, as did the Star’s sister paper, the Telegram.

The question your humble e-scribbler posed was about why the story picked out any one member of the legislature given that carrying on a business or practicing a profession is commonplace and has been for decades.

The answer is not some great conspiracy.It’s really another aspect of an issue we’ve batted around before at SRBP:  the echo chamber.  Today we have fewer media outlets than we had in the province a couple of decades and those fewer outlets are providing content to more platforms with fewer people. 

The answer to the problem is repackaging.  A few decades ago, you’d only see some of the smaller newsrooms lifting someone else’s news, rewriting it and pushing it out as their own. Now it’s par for the course. The people putting news together are no less intelligent than their predecessors, no less ethical, professional, dedicated, committed or anything else.  They are just coping with the pressures of their business.

You can see the pattern in this case.  One outlet runs a story.  Someone else repackages it, dropping an aspect or changing the emphasis, and runs the thing. That story with a local angle winds up going across the province, but no one else who repeats the story adds anything to the original piece.  They don’t have the time or the inclination. 

Such is the pressure to get stuff out there that tone newsroom just takes what’s there and runs with it.  Eventually it winds up as fodder for the province-wide radio talk shows. And by the time it gets there, the story has taken on a couple of new angles.  The morning show deals with it – and the politician – based on the simple question of what the guy is doing.  The afternoon show maybe puts a bit of spice on it but – and here’s the crucial bit – without the wider context of how many people are doing the same thing.

The original story isn’t wrong.  It’s factually accurate.  The subsequent versions are actually pretty accurate as well.  But because the stories  are missing the depth of information they need, the audience winds up misinformed or with a misleading understanding. All you get is the original ping and the echoes as they bounce around inside the confined space.

The people who have read SRBP have a different perspective.  They know about some of the other MHAs  - from all three parties in the House – who will be working another job besides their one in the legislature.  

But the people who rely on the conventional media have only heard about Jim Bennett.  They haven’t heard – and in all likelihood will never hear – about the others.

This sort of thing happens quite a bit.  Stories tend to stay inside the  lines set by the first version of it.  The House of Assembly spending scandal theme that credits Danny Williams for fixing it all came right out of the first news release.  None of the conventional media ever took a second look at it despite the fairly substantive evidence that piled up that the Conservatives didn’t do anything to correct the problem until the Auditor General’s people stumbled across it.

Fast forward a few years and you can see the same effect in Danny Williams’ claims about “Quebec” and hydro-electric transmission. What the Quebec energy regulator was deciding on – let alone what it actually decided – came from an initial ping from the political spin machine. 

Whether the ping comes from the politicians or the media itself, the echo chamber still functions the same way.

- srbp -

Funny how things come together #nlpoli

First, there’s a new post at the Monkey Cage that notes a discussion in economist circles about public discussions of economic subjects:

… economics lost communication with policymakers and practitioners leaving room for all sorts of “charlatans and cranks” to fill the void. In doing so, academics ceded important ground to think tanks aligned with one party or the other, to self-appointed economic experts, to business economists maximizing profit rather than public knowledge, and to a media that doesn’t always comprehend the economics that underlie a particular issue.

Second, there’s a short piece in the Telegram that torques the latest Statistics Canada labour force stats:

Newfoundland and Labrador is bucking the national trend, adding jobs in October, even after the rest of the country faces higher unemployment.

The bucking of the trend thing is zero point nine percent year-over-year.  Not necessarily something to write home about, especially considering the national decline the story runs with is actually an increase in employment of 1.2% year of year as well.

One month decline nationally but a year over year gain.  Growth provincially month-to-month and year-over-year.

Unfortunately that doesn’t fit with the accepted narrative of the economic miracle that is Newfoundland and Labrador these days, supposedly.

Third, as if to confirm the generally poor understanding of things economical, there’s the text of a speech Premier Kathy Dunderdale gave to an energy forum in the United States.  It includes copious references to the economic miracle thingy, along with a raft of other completely  - and demonstrably - false claims about Muskrat Falls.

Fourth, there’s a piece in the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies blog that  - purely by coincidence - takes up the economics ignorance theme and relates it to a politician who thinks a remittance economy is a good thing.

Fifth and for those who don’t know, that economic miracle thingy in Newfoundland and Labrador has been built in large measure on shipping workers outside the province and having them ship their paycheques back home. You can get a sense of that, and some of the previous discussions of this from a post at SRBP back in December 2008.

There are parts of the province that are almost entirely dependent on migrant labour and remittance workers.

In others - like Stephenville - the economic disaster of losing a pulp and paper mill on the Premier's watch didn't materialize solely because the workers there could find jobs in Alberta.

But yes, you say, there has been more people coming back to the province since 2007, you say.

At the time, they were coming back in advance of the huge recession.  Just as surely they started heading out again as the economy picked up again in other parts of the country.

Sixth, flip back to that first post on economists and public commentary.  Follow the link back to the original article.  There’s a fascinating discussion about the use and misuse of economic arguments and models. 

Just for the fun of it, then, consider:

• the amount of media coverage the most recent pronouncement by a certain economist on the Hebron project even though it was nothing more than an update of previous assumptions using new assumptions and that they are all – wait for it – assumptions.
• Note, in particular, the references to the relatively better prospects for Hebron  - heavy sour crude in a highly fractured structure - compared to Hibernia, lots of light sweet crude and a fair bit of natural gas. Despite the fact that Hibernia will generate more than double the economic benefit to the province in terms of royalties over its lifespan than Hebron – even using the most recent assumptions – the lesser of the two is apparently worth more.
• Of course that sort of conclusion has nothing to do with the fact that the same economist criticised Hibernia when it occurred and that his old predictions of horror never showed up, in practice.  In no way could his previous, dubious predictions or any other non-economic consideration have in any way influenced his most recent assessment of relative gloriosity for Hebron.
• It’s not like the guy has made some boner projections based on knowledge he acquired from his consulting work for the provincial government and its agencies. Sure he’s talked about debt problems that the provincial government folks might not like but he avoided a discussion of Muskrat because he’s been doing some consulting on the project.
• And it’s not like his public comments for different audiences haven’t sometimes crossed each other much to his embarrassment.
• The one guy has a colleague who has also been known to produce some ideologically tainted bits of commentary.

The media’s relationship to economists is almost as bad as their attachment to the equally dismal science of the pollsters.

But what is truly remarkable here is the way a whole bunch of economist related stuff wound up appearing in different places for different reasons in the same week.

And it all ties together.

- srbp -

Always Remember the Fifth of November…

“How did this happen?

Who's to blame?

Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? … There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, … .

He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”

- srbp -

Traffic from Hallowe’en to Guy Fawkes Night

1. Working stiffs and lazy ones
2. And these guys came in second…
3. Kent demoted by Dunderdale
4. Muskrat Review Muddle and Nalcor Competence
5. The value of nothing or Pater knows best, redux
6. Truth in small things
7. The Apprentice
8. I knew Marilyn Monroe
9. Accessible Post-Secondary Education
10. Five for Friday Round-Up

- srbp -

Five for Friday Round-UP

To round out the week, here are five curious posts on different subjects to send you off into the weekend.

And don’t forget this Saturday* is Guy Fawkes Day.

1. Via Crooked Timber, a post at the New Statesman about the particularly abusive comments hurled at women bloggers.
2. Maybe provincial justice minister Felix Collins and his provincial Conservative colleagues should just suck it up and stop whining about the costs of the federal Conservatives’ omnibus crime bill.  After all, Felix and the gang campaigned for the harper crowd. And it’s not like the provincial Conservatives didn’t know about the crime bill before they voted.
3. This is is a practical way to promote bras.
4. One the one hand Scotiabank’s chief economist thinks everything in Newfoundland and Labrador will be ducky over the next five years.
5. And on the other hand, money is moving from commodities – like oil – into credit.  Do those two things go together?

- srbp -

*  Not Sunday

And these guys came in second…

Yes, yes. 

Everyone knows that Hallowe’en happens in October and that Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday – is in the spring time, before lent which is before Easter.

That doesn’t matter.

For some reason the locals have a Mardi Gras celebration in October for Hallowe’en.

Go figure.

Take a look at this picture of the costumes four enterprising young men entered in the contest that is part of the celebration.

Talk about skill and creativity with a bit of foam and some paper and stuff.

And these guys came in second.

- srbp -

Muskrat review muddle and Nalcor competence #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy is a smart guy.

It’s not that he is the smartest guy in a cabinet of dunderheads.

Kennedy would be one of the smartest people in any cabinet the province has ever had.

And that’s why it is safe to assume that Kennedy knows the most recent problems with the Muskrat Falls review – it’s on an indefinite hold – will take more than doing “ a better job in terms of making our [case?], getting our message out there," as he reportedly told CBC News.

For some completely inexplicable reason Nalcor, the provincial government’s energy corporation,  cannot pull together information on the Muskrat Falls project for a review by the public utilities board that it knew was coming.  Nalcor has gone through one gigantic review of the project already.  it’s not like this is their first time.

What’s even more astonishing about this latest failure is that Nalcor and its provincial cabinet backers set up the PUB review, determined exactly what the question would be and, therefore, what the outcome would be.

In other words, the review they are currently buggering up is one they control.  There are no surprises in it at all.  It is supposed to be a cakewalk.

And yet the information Nalcor cannot deliver – as it seems – is stuff they should already have by the box-load since it is all stuff they supposedly already reviewed on their own.

Just to give you a good sense of how badly buggered Nalcor is, consider the letter sent October 25 from the public utilities board to Nalcor about the delays.  There are seven specific disputes:

1. At a meeting on June 17th Nalcor stated its Submission would be filed by the end of July. This was confirmed in our letter of July 12th and at a meeting attended by a Nalcor representative on July 20th . We are therefore surprised to read in your letter that Nalcor "had not committed to that date".

2. The Board was not involved in any "collective decision" that the Submission would be delayed until the completion by Nalcor of requests for information from Manitoba Hydro International Ltd. ("MHl").

3. As confirmed at the meetings on July 20th and September 12th it was always contemplated that the MHI report would be finalized and filed after Nalcor's Submission.

4. Nalcor had not provided a list of confidential exhibits to the Consumer Advocate as stated on October 20th, the date of your letter. We understand that this list was provided late on October 21st, after it had been brought to your attention that such list had not been provided as stated.

5. The Review was initiated in mid-June, which is more than four months ago, not three as stated.

6. While the numbers are continually changing as new information is filed, Nalcor had, as of October 20th , (the date of your letter) filed answers to 166 requests for information and not 187 as stated.

7. There were responses to six requests for information (not five) outstanding for MHI as of October 20th.

The PUB corporate secretary drives home the point about delays by Nalcor in filing its own submission to its own review.  To make them a bit easier to read, here they are with the original words but with the specific dates separated out by bullets:

• “At a meeting attended by a Nalcor representative on July 20th , a written preliminary schedule was discussed which stated, based on Nalcor's previous advice, that the Submission would be filed by July 27th followed by the MHI report in September and then public consultations.
• “On August 2nd Nalcor sent a status update to the Board on outstanding information requests which stated that the Submission was then ‘target mid to late August’.
• “By e-mail dated August 3rd , to Nalcor, Board staff stated that ‘We are very concerned that certain information will not be available until late August, including possibly
  your submission ‘.
• “On September 8th, a meeting was requested with Nalcor which occurred on September 12th to discuss the outstanding information, including the Submission, and its
  impact on the Review and the schedule, including finalization of the MHI report. If there were "a collective decision" by Nalcor and Board staff to delay the Submission until after responses to MHI requests for information or issuance of MHI's report, there would have
  been no need for the August 3rd e-mail or the discussion at the September meeting on the Submission date or the letter of September 14th.”

Clearly, Nalcor cannot gets its presentations together, cannot meet deadlines it sets, cannot recall the details of the agreed deadlines accurately and in many instances simply cannot count.

If this is what the company does with a set-piece hearing on its own terms, one can only imagine what problems it might have with a genuinely independent review.

Hang on.

No need for imagination.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency reviewed the entire Lower Churchill project.  It found the company failed to demonstrate the need for the project not once but twice.

And then there is the hearings before the Quebec energy regulator over a series of appeals Nalcor used as part of its series of negotiations with Hydro-Quebec over transmission access through Quebec. Nalcor failed on each appeal, in one instance largely because the company did not call any evidence to refute the contention of an expert presented by Hydro-Quebec.

Given all this, no one should be surprised that as more people learn about Muskrat Falls, and as Nalcor ramps up its efforts to sell the project to people, those same people are walking away from the project.  Polls by Telelink for NTV found that between February and September, support for the project fell from 71% to 42%.

Given all this, no one should be surprised if more and more people started to question not just the project but the Nalcor senior management team itself. Nalcor’s repeated failures of this magnitude speak to a deep-seated problem not just in the Muskrat Falls project but in the group of people running the project and the company.  Nalcor’s failures  - and they are nothing other than failures - will turn not just the voters of the province from it but potential investors and customers as well.

The Muskrat falls project is in trouble.

Kennedy’s smart enough to know it.

Jerome Kennedy has a tough job ahead of him.

Kennedy’s smart enough to know that too.

He’s tough enough to sort it out as well.

The only question is whether Kathy Dunderdale will let him.

- srbp -

The value of nothing or Pater knows best, redux #nlpoli

Talk show host Randy Simms has a fine column in the most recent Saturday edition of the Telegram.

Our House of Assembly needs fixing, writes Simms.

It hardly sits.

It has no functioning committees.

Laws receive cursory discussion at best.

Simms quotes from an article by Memorial University professor Alex Marland that you can find in the latest issue of the Canadian Parliamentary Review.

Simms quotes:

The House is closed for 88 per cent of the year and talk radio has effectively replaced it as the people’s voice. Legislation is not sufficiently scrutinized. The committee of the whole is greatly overused, there are too few opposition MHAs to assess bills sufficiently and standing committees are embarrassingly underused to the point of being dysfunctional.

Simms notes in another spot that the last time a piece of legislation went off to a House committee for specific review was 2001. Note the date.

All true.

Russell Wangersky adds a couple of other details in a column of his own but  regular SRBP readers are familiar with these issues:

• 2006:  the half-time legislature
• 2007:  Danny Williams muses about taking freedom of speech from the House of Assembly
• 2010:  The Biased Speaker
• 2010:  Paternalism
• 2011:  The Persistence of Patronage Politics

The problem with the current state of the legislature is not just that the members aren’t working as hard as those in other places or that they are among the highest paid in the country.

The problems now are the same one your humble e-scribbler has been raising all these years:

• No one is holding the government to account in public as it should, and,
• The government is making decisions that will affect the province for decades to come without disclosing what they are doing and why.

The most glaring example of the sort of mess the dysfunctional House can produce is the Abitibi expropriation.  But you can equally add the unsustainable growth in public spending since 2003, the Conservatives’ love affair with secrecy, dismantling of the access to information laws,  and the ongoing management problems that have beset the Williams and Dunderdale administrations.

The answer to the problem in Newfoundland and Labrador’s political culture is not to shut down the legislature and have a committee run around to see what others are doing.

The first step would be to acknowledge what the problem is, exactly.  if you missed it, read back a couple of paragraphs.

The second step would be for people to acknowledge it isn’t a problem with the legislature alone.  It’s much bigger and goes into the issues Wangersky points out.

The third step would be perhaps the hardest.  For that one, people would have to recognise that the legislature got the way it is because they placed a higher value on conformity or cheerleading than on democracy.

Danny didn’t do. 

Kathy didn’t do it.

Other people, including the two columnists now calling for reform,  allowed them to do it with comments like this:

“That being said, for the last seven years, Danny Williams has been the right choice to run this province, and, regardless of any number of complaints, he’s done it well.”

Rooting for Danny and/or and otherwise staying silent – even when what he was saying or doing was truly appalling in a civilised society – basically gave Williams and his associates free reign to dismantle the legislature and the rules by which we are all governed.

Kathy Dunderdale is just carrying on with the same approach.

Pater didn’t know best, after all.

- srbp -

Working stiffs and lazy ones #nlpoli

For some reason, TransCon papers carried a story on newly elected Liberal member of the House of Assembly Jim Bennett and his plan to carry on a law practice while he sits as an opposition member in the legislature.

The Telegram even put the thing in its Saturday paper.  Here’s a link the version carried by the Western Star.

What’s so striking about this is that it is a complete non-story.  As you’ll see part way down the page, the conflict of interest section of the House of Assembly Act quite rightly exempts ordinary members from the restrictions on carrying on with another job or outside business interests while serving in the legislature.

So why single Bennett out?

Good question.

The story turned out to be a bit of fodder for at least one of the local radio talk-shows.  But there again you have to wonder why they singled Bennett out for comment and, in some instances, for criticism. It’s not like others haven’t done the same sort of thing in the past or aren’t doing it now.

For example, Paul Oram carried on several businesses while he served as a backbencher in the Tory caucus.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Harris carried on an active law practice the whole time he sat in the legislature. Other backbench lawyers have done the same thing.

St. John’s South MHA Tom Osborne runs a music promotion business called 5th String Entertainment. On the right, you’ll find the online registration for the company with Service Newfoundland and Labrador.

Nothing odd about politicians and entertainment:  once upon a time, not so very long ago,  another Tory ran a popular downtown nightspot while he sat in the legislature.

Enterprising young fellow that he is, Steve Kent used to have a small consulting company. 

Since he’s been in the legislature, though, Steve’s been running a driver training business with his wife as partner.

Steve also serves as chair of the board president and chief commissioner of Scouts Canada.

There is nothing unusual about backbench members of the legislature carrying on with private businesses or a career while they are also in the legislature.

So why did some local media single out Jim Bennett?

Hopefully it was nothing more than laziness and sloppiness.

If they weren’t lazy and/or sloppy, they could have done a quick check and turned up all sorts of people.  And the list here contains only the ones your humble e-scribbler noted over the years. 

Undoubtedly ,someone going through the individual member’s disclosure statements could find other businesses or professional practices backbenchers are still carrying on.  The cabinet ministers will all have their stuff in blind trusts  But backbenchers can continue to work a second job.  There’s no legal or ethical reason for them to stop unless the second job interferes with their ability to do their elected job.

More to the point, though, there’s no reason why any of us should expect backbench members of the legislature to give up their other interests. That’s especially true for licensed professionals who would have to stay current in their profession in order to stay licensed.

It’s interesting to note that while Chief Justice Green spent a considerable part of his report discussing the idea that holding a seat in the legislature to become a full-time job in itself. Green discusses the issue at some length and makes the following observations:

If one can tease an underlying legislative policy from this subsection [27 of the House of Assembly Act] , and extrapolate into the broader arena, it is that the life of an MHA does contemplate other non-political activities; and where there is a conflict between those other activities and the Member’s duties, the test for determining whether the Member is properly fulfilling those duties is not a quantitative one (i.e., not defined by reference  to numbers of days or weeks, vacation entitlement, etc.) but a qualitative one (i.e., to use the words of ss. 27(4), “… so long as the member, notwithstanding the activity, is able to fulfil the member’s obligations …”).

The issue under discussion is not theoretical.  In the 1970s, a Member attended university full-time outside of Canada for the better part of a year.  In the 1980s a Member continued to act as a deputy mayor of a municipality.  More recently, since my appointment,
two issues have entered the public domain relating, respectively, to certain Members who were  allegedly “moonlighting” by carrying on the practice of law
and a Member who allegedly was unavailable to deal with a public issue in her district because she had been working outside the province as a nurse. [p. 9-28]

In the end of that section, Green recommended, among other things that:

To eliminate confusion on the point [full-time versus part-time] , the legislation should also state that a Member, qua Member, is not prohibited from carrying on a business or engaging in other employment or a profession, provided that the nature of the business, work or profession is such that it does not prevent him or her from attendance in the House when it is in session and from devoting time primarily to the discharge of his or
her duties as a Member when the House is not in session.

- srbp -

The Apprentice #nlpoli

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganization; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.''

It’s a great quote even if it has been misattributed to a raft of people, including someone named Petronius Arbiter who lived so long ago that some people can’t even agree on whether or not he was a Roman or a Greek.

But the quote is still appropriate, especially if you look at the provincial government.

Remember how in an earlier post, your humble e-scribbler noted that last weeks second Dunderdale cabinet was a lot less than it was cracked up to be?

Well, in the Tuesday Telegram Joan Burke gave an amazing insight into just exactly how the Tories came to create this new department Burke is running. Be warned before you go read the whole thing that it is a puff piece of the first order, but do read the whole piece just because of what it tells you about how the current administration functions.

At its core, Burke said the shift is about apprentices, skilled trades and filling the jobs of the future.

…

“The whole apprenticeship issue has become more and more complicated,” Burke said.

“We have 6,000 apprentices registered in the province, so where are they? You know, we should be well underway of filling all the labour gaps.”

On the very first full day of the election campaign this fall, Premier Kathy Dunderdale promised to do more about apprentices.

At the time she called it a “bottleneck” in the skilled trades process.

It was the apprenticeship issue, primarily, that drove the marriage between Education and HRLE, Burke said.

A single issue led the government to create a whole new department that consumes not only the university but also the entire government apparatus designed to deliver income support to thousands of residents of the province.

Now it is by no means a trivial matter, but sorting out a problem with apprentices is no reason to create a whole new department.  That’s the sort of issue that comes up all the time in government.  What happens?  Well, usually someone gets told to sort it out.  Could be a deputy minister or it could be a cabinet minister or a group of cabinet ministers.

As for the labour shortage, that’s an old issue.  The report mentioned in the article actually just gives the latest description of a problem that’s been identified for a decade or more. 

Again, it’s not a problem that needs a whole new department to figure out.  If the schools that train skilled trades workers haven’t been doing their job in meeting known market demands, a new department won’t fix that.  This is the sort of stuff they are already supposed to be doing. 

And if they aren’t doing it, then that seems to be a high-end management problem:

• People who are supposed to decide things apparently aren’t deciding., or,
• There’s a problem getting word out about decisions, or,
• People who are supposed to decide things farther down the food chain are too frightened to take decisions, or,
• They are so pre-occupied with chasing their tails that they can’t get on with the job of governing.

Creating this new department is starting to look more like a sign of the underlying problem than an answer to it.  This is, after all, a government that can’t seem to get its capital works done, that has legislation laying about unfinished and that seems to have a chronic problem managing more than one issue at a time.

Re-organizing makes it look like something is going on when it actually isn’t.

- srbp -

Related:

• Massive cost over-runs now par for the course
• One Judge Short
• The Court Security Acts
• The missing Sustainable Development Act
• “And there shall be plans…”
• One thing at a time in Labrador
• The Le Petomane School of Government
• There’s no greater fraud…

SRBP’s Shocktober Traffic

1. Kent demoted by Dunderdale
2. CBC torques poll coverage
3. Here’s what an opposition party looks like
4. Telelink releases campaign’s only independent poll
5. Whither the Liberals
6. Astroturf
7. Muskrat Falls support plummets:  poll
8. When is “nutbar” an unacceptable term?
9. Williams set to offer comms director plum patronage job
10. The Morning After the Night Before

- srbp -