Strengthening Search and Rescue, revisited #nlpoli

A couple of years ago, in the aftermath of Cougar 491, SRBP made some suggestions about how to improve search and rescue services on the east coast of Canada.

The recent tragedy in Makkovik had nothing to do with the Canadian Forces search and rescue service.  There’s been a huge public outcry aimed at Ottawa, egged on by politicians from all political parties who have misled people.  The Premier and the municipal affairs minister are just two of those politicians, even though they know or ought to know the rights of who was responsible for what.

The fact is that the ground search and rescue in Makkovik was all provincial.

Some of the ideas from that older post still apply, even if they likely wouldn;t have made a difference in Makkovik. If a major disaster occurred – like say an airliner crash – all the SAR and emergency response would have to come from the south, by air.  It’s a long way from Greenwood, Nova Scotia to Goose Bay and longer yet again to get up around Nain.

Some of those suggestions for improvements in the federal side still stand.  But what about the province?  Well, that’s where the people responsible could do a lot more than they have been.  The ground search and rescue system actually works quite well, despite the neglect or under-funding.  It largely works because of the huge number of volunteers, not because of the great attention paid to it by the political types.  Sure they are the first ones to claim credit but they are usually the last ones to do anything beneficial. 

So for starters let’s change that.  If Kathy Dunderdale really wants to do something in response to the tragedy in Makkovik, then here are some simple ideas. She should clean up her own act before she points fingers at anyone else.

Here’s the SRBP list for starters:

• The provincial government should create a system of volunteer SAR teams in all parts of the province. Right now it’s all volunteers who, like Rovers – have to ask for public donations to buy equipment and keep the lights on.  The provincial government should kick in some dedicated cash for ground search and rescue.
• The provincial government should beef up training support to these groups. 
• The provincial government should build and maintain GSAR operations centres, staffed by a cadre of Fire and Emergency Services personnel who keep the flashlights and radios charged up and ready to go.

 

- srbp -

Does he believe anything he says? #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Now that he’s safely latched on the public tit in Ottawa, Noob Bloc-NDP MP Ryan Cleary says that everything he ever wrote was just to stir debate.

Well, that’s what he says now when a journalist confronts him with some of past comments, like bashing the crap out of Quebec, the seal hunt,  the European Union, the New Democrats, the Lower Churchill or any of the other tubs Cleary’s thumped over the years.

The accident waiting to happen now tells the Globe and Mail that you gotta look at “the context”.

Before he went to Ottawa at public expense, Cleary used to bash “Quebec” as the bane of Newfoundland’s existence.  More recently, he was  lovin’ Thomas Mulcair to be the Bloc-NDP leader. 

These days he may believe something else. It’s hard to know. Maybe the context has changed. The context for Newfoundland, one wonders, or the context for Cleary?

Even that isn’t clear. 

The context of the context depends on the context, at least in the slippery world of the classic Newfoundland blow-hard politician’s most recent incarnation:  Ryan Cleary.

Ready for a better tomorrow, or maybe ready for a better tomorrow now?  They are truly all the same creature.

So in the end, does Cleary believe anything he says? Should Cleary’s constituents believe him?  And should they believe what he said then or what he says now?

That’s the thing, you see, you can never be sure if the guy really believes what he is saying at any one moment, anymore. After all, by his own admission, he wrote it or said just to stir up debate and it all depends on the context.

No wonder people are starting to call him Climb-down Cleary.

- srbp -

Makkovik SAR Questions #nlpoli

Ground search and rescue is a police responsibility. 

Police forces in Newfoundland and Labrador report to the provincial justice minister.

According to the Fire and Emergency Services website:

Emergency Air Services Program

Fire and Emergency Services – NL is called upon to assist the police forces (Royal Newfoundland Constabulary & Royal Canadian Mounted Police) in search and rescue activities. This assistance is usually in the form of air services support for lost and missing persons. The program is also utilized by FES-NL during emergency response activities.

So:

• How come no media outlet has asked provincial officials for an account of how they conducted the search for Burton Winters?
• How come CBC has interviewed both the Premier and the minister responsible for FES and asked neither of them to explain how provincial officials conducted the search?
• How come neither of them has volunteered to correct the fairly obvious public misunderstanding about roles and responsibilities in this case?
• Did Kathy Dunderdale and or Kevin O’Brien receive regular update reports from the police and FES on the search?
• If they did, how many did they get and when did they get them?
• How will the provincial government change its protocols for ground search and rescue?  Will the provincial government provide additional resources to for GSAR, such as pay and training for search and rescue teams across the province and the creation of a provincial GSAR agency to co-ordinate their emergency response?

- srbp -

Response and Irresponsibility #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The premier whose government was responsible for directing the search effort for a young boy in Makkovik is now calling for an investigation into the actions of the people who weren’t responsible for the search.

From CBC:

Newfoundland and Labrador's premier is calling for a review of the military's role in the search for a 14-year-old boy who was found dead off the coast of Labrador last week.

“There are a number of questions that I don’t believe we have had satisfactory answers to. The family needs them, the community needs them and the people of this province need them," Kathy Dunderdale told the CBC News show On Point about the search for Burton Winters.

But as DND’s internal report makes plain in the third paragraph:

…the local RCMP in Makkovik has the mandate to lead all GSAR [ground search and rescue] efforts within its jurisdiction, including the decision to request CF assistance.

The RCMP are under contract to the provincial government and report to the province’s justice minister.

Despite that report – posted to the CBC’s website - Dunderdale claims there are outstanding questions about the military role in the search. 

Evidently neither she nor her officials watched the video of the DND news conference from February 8 either.  CBC posted it the same day.  It covers the whole thing and addresses all the questions Dunderdale claims haven’t been answered.

- srbp -

Good news #nlpoli

In all the hullaballoo the past week or son you may have missed a couple of fine examples of local reporting.

For starters, check out Curtis Rumboldt’s profile of a man who was disfigured in an industrial accident but who has made a truly inspiring recovery.  This is award-winning stuff.  Curtis tells the story simply without being overly melodramatic even though that’s what the story could easily lead a less experienced reporter to do.

On another subject altogether you can find a six part series by Ashley Fitzpatrick over at the Telegram on the offshore regulatory board.  This is an excellent example of the sort of reporting newspapers can do exceptionally well and other media just can’t.  The series is chock full of basic information that should help to shape any future discussions of an organization that is often dragged into controversy  by political shagging around and shag ups.

- srbp -

Best interests #nlpoli

Fisheries minister Darin King rejected Ocean Choice International’s proposal for exporting and processing fishery. He held a news conference on Thursday.

King claimed the decision is in the best interest of the people of the province. 

King also said the decision did not mean he was opposed to reform in the fishery.  By his decision in this instance, King was insisting that he  - as fisheries minister - must have the right to dictate what private sector companies will take as losses in order to maximise work in a fish plant in his own district.

That’s not reform.  That’s just more of the same fundamental premise that has created the financial, social and political mess that is the fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador today.

At no point did King indicate how his decision was in the best interest of the province, although he went back to the same idea a couple of times to justify his decision.  There’s no surprise in that.  Politicians like to use that sort of self-righteous bullshit to justify all sorts of things.

There’s also no surprise that King and his cabinet colleagues took this decision at the start of the current polling period.  The provincial government’s pollster is in the field this month.  King’s announcement is a populist move to appeal to certain interest groups. King should know he’s in a very bad spot, though, simply by virtue of the fact the provincial Liberal fisheries critic is slapping King on the back and giving him a hearty “atta boy!”

The Liberals have perhaps the most backward, outdated policy in the fishery anyone could imagine.  Its elements look to the fishery long since past, not to the one that is emerging. 

In the fishery of the very near future,  fishing subsidies like federal employment insurance wage subsidies,  state-sponsored marketing schemes and the stalinist political control of the economy typified by King’s decision will all go by the wayside. International trade talks are already laying the groundwork for massive change. 

That looming change is one of the reasons decisions like King’s aren’t in the public interest at all.  They do not solve problems. They do not get people ready for what is coming.  They merely build up pressure such that when changes come, they are more likely than ever to be radical, uncontrolled and potentially financially and socially brutal. 

We are just in the early days of a period of revolutionary change in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You can see it coming.

All you have to do is look at how hard politicians of all three political parties and the FFAW are struggling against it.

- srbp -

Conservatives and knowing stuff #nlpoli #cdnpoli

What is it about some political Conservatives and ignorance?

There really isn’t another word for it except ignorance.

In the most recent example, Rick Santorum proves it isn’t just a local phenomenon.

- srbp -

No kittens were harmed… yet #nlpoli #cdnpoli

It is wonderful to be proven right.

Sometimes being wrong is nicer.

In this case, wrong would be the prediction from this corner that the Great VO Muskrat Falls debate would be like tossing kittens off the overpass into oncoming traffic. 

The reaction to the hour-long radio program seems to be that the thing was alright.  No one scored any huge knock-out blows.  No one let slip some gigantic new piece of information.  And no one died.

That last bit understates the case.  Recently minted Liberal leader Dwight Ball impressed some people by holding his own with his more experienced colleagues.  Surviving would have been good.  Keeping pace with the others was better.

Now make no mistake about it.  Neither the Liberals nor the NDP have decided to oppose the Muskrat Falls project.  Their comments, as related by VOCM or the Telegram, raise some questions about how government is handling the thing, not with the proposal itself.

In the scrum afterward – here’s a short clip via the Telegram – note that natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy goes after the NDP.  As SRBP noted before, that’s a sign the Tories think the NDP are the main competition.  It’s also an incredible NDP weakness.  Lorraine Michael scrummed on environmental contamination. Odd then that she didn’t think of that before she campaigned for a loan guarantee to make the project happen.  Maybe Kennedy will make a sharper slice in the future but he let Michael off easy in the “debate”.

Other than that, Kennedy fell back on a few items that are so utterly ludicrous that it is amazing none of his colleagues laughed him off the stage. Among the gems (taken from the VO account:

• “He says gas right now at $3/million BTU's is not economically feasible to be developed, Kennedy says it would have to be more in the range of $10-12/million.”  In other words, offshore gas is too cheap for us to use.  makes no sense.
• “Kennedy says until Labrador industry needs the power it can be sold to the United States, and then taken back as need be.”  Well it could be if they had markets.  Truth is Nalcor can’t find anyone to buy Muskrat Falls electricity.

Kennedy’s whole discussion of Labrador power was largely fictional, at least as far as having Muskrat falls meet any needs was concerned.  It’s telling that neither of the other parties seem to have belted that one out of the park.. 

As for Ball and the Liberals, he asked a good question of Kennedy.  Ball wanted the price per kilowatt of the electricity at Soldier’s Pond.  Kennedy wouldn’t provide it.  Either he can’t because they don’t know what the numbers will be or he won’t because the number will frighten the shit out of people.  There’s no upside to that for the Muskrat proponents.

This is an old issue, though.  And it’s long beyond the point where this was the most significant one.  We know the thing will be a costly one for the public.  We know there are cheaper alternatives.  we know Nalcor hasn’t done its homework.  We know they are basically making this up as they go along.  T

The PUB documents show Nalcor and the provincial government started looking at this configuration in mid-2010 only a few months before they announced it was a done deal.  They cobbled together their basic documents from a bunch of different studies that may or may not cover needed work on this particular configuration of Lower Churchill development.  Manitoba Hydro pointed to some glaring management issues, any of which would cause people to slow down the project if not abandon it altogether.

Anyone who firmly opposes this project can safely make broad statements about repeated failures by government and Nalcor. The whole discussion is at the point now where the case against Muskrat Falls is made.  We can cut to the only sensible conclusion:  scrap the “Infeed” plan and send ‘em back to the drawing board.

The fact that the NDP and Liberals keep shying away from the blatantly obvious conclusion on Muskrat Falls gives the provincial government the room they need to slide the whole thing through.

While no kittens were harmed in the Great Debate, the 514,000 who will pay for this mess of a proposal might get crushed later on, if Jerome gets his way and Lorraine and Dwight can’t get their thumbs out.

- srbp -

Jumpin’ Jack Flash #nlpoli

It’s-uh gas, gas, gas


An 824 megawatt combined cycle gas turbine electricity generator plant would cost roughly CDN$950 million.

The gas to power the plant is readily available from the local offshore.  It can be landed using a conventional gas pipeline that would cost around CDN$500 million to build.  That’s based on a 2001 2005 engineering estimate.

The cost of the gas itself would be functionally zero if the provincial government took the supply of gas as  part of royalty payments for offshore production.  Alternately, Nalcor could take its equity share of White Rose and other fields in kind, i.e. in gas, rather than in cash. 

The only question to be settled would be the valuation the provincial government would apply to the gas for the purpose of calculating royalty.

That works out to about $1.5 billion, all up.  Since you can build it on the island near existing power lines, the cost to hook it to the grid would be negligible.

The Oil and Water Option


By comparison, the hydro-electric generating plant proposed for Muskrat Falls would be rated at 824 MW but would only produce the equivalent of about 570 MW on average. You can find the numbers in Manitoba Hydro International’s recent assessment.

Nalcor estimates that the Muskrat Falls dam and plant  would cost about $2.9 billion, or about three times the cost of the 824MW CCGT plant.

In addition, you have to build a transmission line from Labrador to the island at a cost currently estimated at about $2.1 billion.

That works out to about $5.0 billion, all up.

Then  you have to add about $1.4 billion to cover the cost of 520 MW worth of oil-fired generation Nalcor plans to build, along with the cost of the fuel to go with it.

Manitoba Hydro puts the all-up cost, including fuel at about $6.6 billion.

Neither Nalcor nor MHI looked at natural gas as an option.

When you look at the numbers, you have to wonder why they didn’t.

- srbp -

Response and Responsibility #nlpoli #cdnpoli

“How satisfied are you with what they [DND officials] had to say?”

And with those words, CBC Here and Now’s Jonathan Crowe asked the man whose officials were responsible for directing the search for a missing 14 year old boy in Makkovik last week what he thought of explanations offered by people who weren’t directly responsible for the search efforts.

Municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien took the opportunity in his reply to obfuscate, to hide provincial responsibility for directing the search either through Fire and Emergency Services or through the police.  His officials were just responding to requests from the police, in this case the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The uninformed – and there are plenty of those out there – might assume that because the RCMP are a federal police force, therefore this was a federal option.  The provincial officials were just helping out as good citizens.  That’s not the case at all:  the police work for the province, but O’Brien was apparently quite content to slough this off on the feds, even if implicitly.

A federal failure is an implicit theme local media reports have taken up and O’Brien went right along with it.  He talked about the need for clarity, by implication from the Canadian Forces, on timelines and why they made key decisions.

Over the past couple of days, other politicians have taken up the same sorts of commentary.  For his part, Crowe, was just running with the same tunnel vision that has gripped some local media in covering the story of a search that ended in tragedy with the discovery of the young boy’s body.

There’s nothing new in any of that.  The politicians and the media have tried to pin responsibility for other tragedies – like Cougar 491 – on the air force search and rescue teams as well.  Then, as now, though, the effort to find a scapegoat for a tragedy is powerful and wrong.

National defence officials didn’t help themselves on Wednesday.  In a joint news conference with the acting commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s B Division, Rear Admiral David Gardam talked about the military role in the mission.  Gardam and his senior air staff officer talked about when things happened and why the military did certain things.  You’ll find the raw video in this CBC story.

But while Gardam may have understood where he fit into the scheme of things, you could tell by their questions, reporters didn’t.  As a result, they never really figured out who was really supposed to answering questions about how the search went and why things happened.

Gardam also appeared tense and uncomfortable. At the end of the newser, as if it wasn’t already bad enough, Gardam interrupted the air staff officer who was answering a simple question simply.  Gardam then took responsibility for deciding to use CH-146 Griffons, instead of CH-149 Cormorants, as if that made a fundamental difference.

Gardam may have thought he sounded leader-like with his abrupt “I’ll answer that” interjection. He was wrong. His reference to moving air assets around to meet the mission may work in the mess, but the talk of what he does during lobster season – in Nova Scotia – came off as a load useless macho posturing.  The mainland reference and his complete inability to pronounce the name of the community grated on ears and confirmed for local audiences that the feds are out of touch with anything in this province.

The real answer was not that Gardam’s balls were big enough to make the tough decisions.  It was that the 444 Squadron aircraft were closer to the scene and had the capability (apparently including forward-looking infrared) to get the job done. By cutting off the questions and walking out, Gardam just made a bad situation that much worse. 

As a result of the DND newser, the Department of National Defence wound up taking it on the chin for something that they didn’t do. Gardam didn’t cut off the story.  He guaranteed the anti-DND turn the story has taken will have legs and the controversy will grow. 

His political masters will be still be dogged out by the likes of Jack Harris and Ryan Cleary. Since Gardam took responsibility for aircraft movements, someone will soon wonder why he thought it a good use of Cormorants to heli-lift the defence minister out of a fishing camp but that a search for a 14 year old boy would compromise his primary mission.

No one should be surprised if Gardam’s Career Indicator Light blew out in the gust of wind as he left the room.

Most of that is Gardam’s fault, not because he’s the boss but because he just screwed up so badly.  What isn’t Gardam’s fault belongs to the idiot who thought it was a good idea to use people to talk to the media  who didn’t actually direct the operation.  The old axiom for military public affairs stills works:  the closer to the pointy end, the better.  The people who do the job know best at every level.   Everyone else is a know-nothing REMF, and it usually shows in embarrassing ways. 

For all the political posturing by the ghouls and for all the media tunnel vision on this, nothing will change the simple tragedy that is at the centre of this:  A young boy died cold and alone.  He died not because of anything anyone did or failed to do but because sometimes really bad things happen no matter what you do.

The family will grieve.  Time will help them move on but they will never get over their loss.

For the police, volunteer searchers, provincial officials, sailors, air crew and all the others who tried desperately to find young Burton Winters, they know they tried and that sometimes this is what happens despite all the good efforts. That may be true but it won’t help them sleep at night.

As for the ghouls and the REMFS and the other shitbirds?

All the rest of us can do is just carry on.  There is nothing you can do about them anyway. They hold no real responsibility and they deserve no better response.

- srbp -

Perspective, and the lack thereof #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Take an elementary level classroom in small town school on the northern coast of Newfoundland.

Add a bunch of 10 year olds.

Toss in some smoked capelin one of them had for lunch.

A few taunts and a squirt or two of Febreze later and you had a fine batch of bullshit stew for the talk radio fanatics in Newfoundland to chew on all day Tuesday.

All this agitation because a teacher sprayed a little air freshener on a boy in her classroom who was suffering the taunts and jeers of his classmates over the fact he smelled of cooked fish.  She did it outside the classroom, discretely as it seems, but that was not to be the end of the tale.

The young fellow told his mother about the incident when he got home. And mom, not to be denied a scalp, called the teacher to berate her, then called the school the next day and wasted no time at all in getting herself on the local media. 

Her only goal?  To get the teacher fired from her job.

Mom was evidently not thinking much about her son.  After all, the louder that Mom screamed the more people knew about the story. By the time Mom got into full fury, little Christian’s few capelin became an incident known around the globe.

If he had been embarrassed by the jeers and the freshener, he must well be on the way for extensive psychiatric treatment after Mom got on the job.

Scarred for life.

Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Every time he looks at a plate of the little fish? 

Instantly paralysed with fear.

From now on trout may send him into a catatonic state from which he may never recover.

Let’s not even talk about what herring might do to him.

The majority of callers thought that firing the teacher was not good enough. Skinning alive might have satisfied some, such was their bloodlust.  The young teacher had insulted their nationalist honour, defiled the birthright of the nation, spat on her own heritage.

Fired, disgraced and never allowed into a classroom again would have been letting her off lightly.

Hysterical is one word for the comments. 

Absofriggin’lutely-nutso-out-of-all-proportion-to-the-incident would be much closer to reality.

Take the comments on this news story as typical. Note the number.  On Tuesday night, it was rapidly creeping up on 400.

Meanwhile, the government agency responsible for looking after injured workers revealed this week that one of its employees had been accessing confidential client records he wasn’t supposed to be looking at. They talked about a dozen files over the course of three years.

According to CBC, the chief executive at the agency said this was the first incident of its type at the agency. Take the numbers of comments on this story as typical of the public interest in a pretty significant privacy breach.

As for it being the first of its type, that seems to be true.  But it certainly isn’t the first privacy breach at the agency.  Four years ago, the same agency suffered a significant breach.  How the agency and its government masters handled the story was as amazing as the incident itself.

The Febreze teacher story is going viral on the Internet, the teacher is suspended and the school board is apologising left and right as they start a full-on investigation into the incident.  If the teacher keeps her job it will be a miracle at this point.

In the privacy story, the whole thing is just sliding quietly on by with very little notice.  Odds are very little of consequence will happen to anyone involved.

Take a look at these two stories and you get a very interesting perspective on Newfoundland and Labrador and what matters to people.

- srbp -

It just smacks you between the eyes #nlpoli

Digging back through some old posts on Monday evening, your humble e-scribbler came across one titled “Abuse and power”.

This sort of thing happens every now and then when you start skimming back through old posts:  a pattern starts to emerge out of what prompted the post in the first place.  It could be something you saw before and were conscious of at the time.  Or it could be some old issue that looked like a one-off at the time but instead turns out to be linked to other events or issues.

The thing is almost exactly one year old and it is amazing how easily things slip out of your mind.

The issue at the heart of the post is very much the same as the one this year involving the Auditor General and secrecy:

On the face of it, what the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are seeing here is yet another example of how the current administration has steadily reduced, muzzled or eliminated any means by which someone may question its decisions.

Sometimes stuff like that just leaps up and smacks you between the eyes.

Just take a second and go back and read the post from last year.  See if it strikes you.  The writing’s not bad either.

- srbp -

Thriller it ain’t #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Transcon’s Michael Johansen on the latest twist in the Lower Churchill saga:

Creak, creak, creak … rattle, rattle, rattle … snap! Screeeeeeech … kerplunk!

Hear that? That’s the sound of the wheels once again falling off the Newfoundland government’s 30-year-old Lower Churchill campaign bus.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle-Herald editorial crew think that the Nova Scotia government should send the Muskrat Falls deal off to their utilities review board for an assessment.

They’re worried about getting stuck:

But from a Nova Scotia viewpoint, there are other options, like imported power from Quebec or access to swelling U.S. supplies of natural gas, that were not examined by the PUB. So it makes sense for Mr. Dexter to frame some reference questions of his own for our URB, to address whether Muskrat Falls is the best bet from a Nova Scotia perspective.

And for those who think there could be exports to help pay for Muskrat falls, guess again.  Ontario is facing such a glut in generation that they may have to shut down some of their nuclear power plants temporarily.  That’s significant because nukes give 57% of Ontario’s generating capacity and you can;t spool them back up quickly.

Last June 8, for example, … Ontario was exporting “everything we could to keep supply in line only to declare an energy emergency alert just 12 hours later. Demand climbed to the point where we were using every available megawatt in Ontario to meet that demand.”

- srbp -

Literacy plan still MIA #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Newfoundland and Labrador has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the country.

There’s a huge demand for skilled labour in the province and that illiteracy level doesn’t help.

The 1992 Strategic Economic Plan recognised the connection between literacy and economic development:  it’s not like government officials weren’t generally aware of the concept.

And yet:

“There are no province-wide initiatives to deal with family literacy, aboriginal literacy, English as a Second Language, GED (General Educational Development) preparation or workplace literacy and essential skills,” [Literacy NL executive director Caroline Vaughan] said.

That’s a killer quote taken from a story the Telegram ran Monday about a news release from Literacy Newfoundland and Labrador.  They are wondering where the heck the strategic literacy plan went. 

The Telegram again:

Literacy NL said is was told by the province last September the plan would be released in the 2011 calendar year.

In case you are left scratching your head, be assured that the provincial government started work on a literacy plan in 2008.  They even had consultations.

As you can see from the picture, they started work on it so long ago that the link is dead from the news release announcing the consultation to the consultation document. In fact if you try and find anything on “literacy” in the education department, you’ll find yourself out of luck.  Most the links in this search your humble e-scribbler tried on Monday night turned up 404s – page not found. Ditto another search run from the front page of the government website.

You really couldn’t make this shit up.

If you want a strategic literacy plan from the government, you can find one.

It’s a link to one developed 11 years ago when Judy Foote was education minister.

You really, really couldn’t make this up.

And if you want to find the adult learning and literacy section, you will have to guess that it is now part of Joan Burke’s new department of advanced learning and skills development.  The government’s website won’t tell you where it is, though.

A search of the advance education department website for “literacy plan” redirects to a search of the old human resources, labour and employment department. That’s foolish since adult literacy belonged to education before the recent re-organization. Luckily for the government types, people who have a problem with literacy likely don’t have enough computer knowledge to get totally frigged up by the government’s website. They wouldn’t be able to get to the advanced education site to get misdirected by the search engine.

You really, really, really could not make this stuff up.

That’s not to say that successive ministers of education haven’t done something about adult literacy.

In 2010, education minister Darin King issued a news release that endorsed an awareness program on literacy being launched by the four Atlantic provinces.

In 2009, the education department issued a news release on behalf of the Council of the Federation to announce the Council had recognised someone here for achievement in adult literacy.

Aside from those news releases, though, the education department hasn’t been able to deliver the latest update to the provincial literacy plan. 

Regular readers of these e-scribbles will be noticing a familiar pattern here.  For whatever reason, the current administration cannot seem to deliver anything. They’ve got a chronic problem.:

• Serial Government:  the “Northern Strategic Plan” that was out of date before they released it.
• Serial Government:  the original business department.
• What plan was that again? The NSP also wasn’t much of a plan;  it was pretty much just a list of spending.  Sounds suspiciously like the $5.0 billion infrastructure “strategy” in the most recent Auditor General’s report.
• A list as long as your arm:  Check the section on building maintenance in the AG report and you’ll find another example of government’s fundamental management problems.  Hundreds of buildings need repairs.  Some need so much overdue maintenance work it would be cheaper to tear the buildings down and build a new one.
• The missing oil royalty regime:  according to the energy plan from 2007, the Tories were supposed to deliver a natural gas royalty regime (under development since 1997) as well as a completely new oil royalty regime.  They posted something called a gas royalty in April 2010 but the thing isn’t back by regulations.  Is it real or just a fake?
• There’s also the churn in senior management.
• And the fact that massive cost over-runs and delays are now the norm in provincial government public works.

The literacy plan joins a long list of commitments that are missing in action or went missing for years.

You can read Literacy NL’s  submission to the consultation on the literacy plan here.

- srbp -

Duty of care defined

18.   [Defendant] also owed plaintiff ... a duty of care not to drink under age, or to file bottle rockets out of his anus.

This seems like one of those things that just didn’t really need to be stated.

You kinda think people would understand either bit of it separately.  Certainly you’d think that people would appreciate that underage drinking and shooting rockets out of your arse are not good ideas if put together.

Maybe the obvious things are just not so obvious after all.

The Toronto Sun ended its coverage of this story with a reminder that “[s]tatements of claim contain unproven allegations.”

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Ridiculous is all the rage #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Fresh from her triumphant speech about co-operation and consultation as the way to develop the north, the potential for developing uranium in Labrador and  - of course – the glories to come from Muskrat Falls, Premier Kathy Dunderdale is off to Atlanta as part of an Atlantic provinces’ trade mission.

Regular readers will recall then-business minister Paul Oram’s insightful interview on Newfoundland and Labrador history during one of his trips to Georgia.

Yes, friends, this is not the first time people from this province have gone off to the southern United States to see if we could increase trade with the Americans.  It has been a popular destination.  Danny Williams took one of his last over-seas trips to Mississippi as part of one of the trade junkets.

As you can see from that post on Williams’ trip, the Americans are looking for people to come to their states, invest money and start creating jobs for their people. There could be no better time to talk to them about investing in our province and creating jobs here.

Obviously.

And if you wanted to find some place to sell stuff we make then surely there can be no better time to do that than when our largest trading partner  - the United States – is struggling to come out of a recession. 

Again, a bit obvious, but apparently not quite so obvious to some people.

In a province where even the finance minister said the economy was fragile,  the provincial government can’t quite seem to get the concept that looking for new markets might be a good idea.

Other people certainly get the point.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been talking about expanding trade with Asia and Europe.  In British Columbia, they’ve got a new natural gas strategy  - h/t to David Campbell in New Brunswick – that talks about developing natural gas as an export to places like Asia.

Meanwhile, in Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s no serious interest in finding new markets for stuff. A couple of years ago, the current provincial government refused to take part in trade talks with the Europeans.  The locals were more interested in the seal hunt than in creating jobs. Just last year, one local politician said it would be like doing a “back-room deal with a group of serial rapists”.

You can see the level they are working at.

As for natural gas, developing it for any practical use at all is about as popular an idea in government circles as a one cheek sneak sliding across the pews on Sunday morning.

Any talk of it as a means of generating electricity gets them raising the completely absurd idea of buying liquefied gas from somewhere else and importing. 

Too expensive, the government’s favourite economist clucked, to be a viable alternative to the favourite economist’s preferred project. He didn’t really even need to hold a match to his straw-man to watch it burst into flames.

And the local natural gas? 

Well, it’s just not possible.

Because, well, it just isn’t.

Never mind that you wouldn’t have to liquefy the stuff to bring it ashore.

Never mind that there is enough of it out there to power a 500 megawatt plant all day long, every day, all year long for a century.

Never mind that they could get it from one field today where it is getting costly to re-inject the gas they get during oil production. 

Never mind that the provincial government need take only as much gas as they needed to run a gas-to-electricity plant. 

Never mind they could put a price on it and take the gas as a partial credit for offshore royalties.

Never mind there’s likely tons of it onshore Newfoundland.  The same people pushing the very expensive electricity scheme actually found gas in 2011 in not one but two wells drilled at Parsons Pond. Nalcor shut down drilling on a proposed third well because they found gas, not the oil the company hoped for.  And, as CBC reported:

Vice-president Jim Keating said there is no need for a third well as it would likely produce the same result.

Same result being gas.

Gas?

What could they possibly do with gas?

Sheesh!  <insert eye rolling>

The government crowd want to go with their Labrador project and that is really the end of it as far as they are concern.

It is a green project, you see.

Just don’t bother to notice that their “green” scheme includes building – wait for it – more oil-fired generation than the current plant they want to replace with the hydro one.

Not gas.

Oil.

Yes, their argument is ridiculous, but then again, it’s no more ridiculous than giving up a market worth billions for new products in order to posture about a product almost no one wants any more.

Or heading off to the sort-of recessionary United States for the umpteenth year in a row to talk trade with people we already trade enough with.

Ridiculous, you see, is all the rage.

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Here kitty, kitty #nlpoli

Apparently natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy, Liberal leader Dwight Ball and NDP leader Loraine Michael will debate Muskrat Falls on VOCM this week.

Okay, leave aside for a second the fact it is Jerome versus party leaders and not the three party leaders or Jerome and the natural resources critics for the other parties.

How do you have a debate among representatives of three political parties who,  at worst actually all support Muskrat Falls.

In order to debate you need to have some sort of genuine disagreement.

At best, VO has a party that supports the project openly (The Tories),  one that pretends it doesn’t back the project unequivocally now that people are starting to oppose it (the Dippers) and a third party that can’t figure out WTF its position is (the Liberals).

Telegram columnist Bob Wakeham dared the Ceeb to organize a genuine public debate or discussion to promote awareness of the project and the issues around it. 

Voice of the Cabinet Minister took the challenge instead. What VOCM is offering looks to have both the information and entertainment value of throwing kittens off the overpass into traffic.

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That’s the best he’s got #nlpoli

As a rule when you start attacking the other guy’s character or attributing motives to him, you’ve admitted you don’t have much of an argument of your own

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy went back to the line on Wednesday that critics of the Muskrat Falls project are “politically motivated” and therefore can never be satisfied.

Uh huh.

Some of the leading public critics of the provincial Conservative government’s plan are – wait for it – provincial Conservatives. 

Cabot Martin was a senior policy advisor for Brian Peckford in the 1980s and before that worked for Peckford when he was energy minister in Frank Moores’ Tory administration.

Ron Penney?  Tory.

John Collins?  Tory finance minister once upon a time.

What they share with others of other political backgrounds and some with no partisan affiliation of any kind ever, aside from a concern for the best interests of the province and its people, is an extraordinarily rich body of personal knowledge about Hydro and the Lower Churchill from the very first talk of it down to the current day.

The signatures at the bottom of a letter in the Thursday Telegram come from people of different political backgrounds.  Their common interest, aside from what’s best for the province, is assuring that this project go through due process:

A refusal to give the Public Utilities Board the time it requires is unacceptable because the validity of a proceeding that does not follow due process of law will be unreliable.

As criticism of the project mounts, as the arguments in favour of the project crumble, Jerome Kennedy wants to try and impugn the integrity not of the arguments against his project but the people presenting them.

Argumentum ad hominem.

That’s the best Kennedy’s got.

Take that for the admission of failure it is.

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Inadvertent humour, the MHI report edition #nlpoli

The Telegram editorial on the Manitoba Hydro review of Muskrat Falls is a tidy bit of work with some sound advice:

The bottom line? Anyone who wants to say anything — either for or against — about this project should read the whole report carefully, and with an open mind.

Read the whole editorial, though.  It also notes a key point missed by so many reporters in the past 48 hours.  They are the ones who say that the report concluded Muskrat Falls is, indeed, the “least-cost” option to meet the power needs.  Even accomplished writers buggered up the simple logic behind the grammar.

Least-cost suggests the Muskrat Falls bested more than one alternative.  It hasn’t. it is the lower of the two choices, based, as the Telegram notes, on the parameters and assumptions MH got from Nalcor.

Then there was a “but”.  It’s the stuff after the “but” you need to pay particular attention to.

What’s funny about that?  Well, nothing, actually.

What’s funny are comments under the editorial in the online version.  A few government agents using pen names or pseudonyms proclaim their support for the project.  One even says he read it;  after all the MHI report was short.  Evidently he confused the e-mail from his boss with the talking points for the actual report.

If the report had condemned the project those fellows would not have read it or cared.  They’d simply be cranking out the same drivel they are handed.

Another commenter, a critic of the project, goes on at length challenging the demand forecasts.  That’s pretty much a mugs game.  We will need power just as we need air.  We need to replace Holyrood with something.

The question is what we do (how much generation and what mix of types) and when we do it.

The MHI report makes it plain that the current proposal – a big hydro plant built first coupled with more thermal generation than we currently have – ain’t really all it’s cracked up to be. it has plenty of big risks, some really faulty assumptions and way too many serious  management shortcomings in the project thus far.

Of course, to even get that bit about what the project really entails (about more thermal than we currently have) you’d have to read the report, something that too many people evidently haven’t done.

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Get politics out of fishery: report #nlpoli

A strange as it may seem after years of evidence that political interference in fisheries management has caused nothing but grief, there are still people – all politicians – who think the answer is yet more political interference.

Expect all of them to be out in force responding to this fisheries report because it appears to criticise only federal politicians.  The usual band will be pointing fingers and proclaiming ‘Aha!”.  But make no mistake:  they stand steadfastly for more political interference in the fishery.

You know who they are.  you know because you have heard them on open line shows and the Fisheries broadcast.

The Royal Society of Canada report is on the mark.  If Gus and Phil will take a chance to let this sink in, they’ll know why cod stocks remain in dismal shape:

“But the re-openings took place at the discretion of the minister. They were not based on science, they were not based on an overall recovery plan consistent with our national and international obligations,” Hutchings said.

And all those discretionary re-openings came from the plaintiff bleating of the voices in this province who insisted that the scientists knew nothing, fishermen knew better, there were a few fish in the bays and people should be left to get them while they could.

If Climb-down Cleary wanted to do something constructive about the fishery and the people who depend on it for a living, he’d ditch the sealskin bowtie, stop making a complete arse of himself and push for fisheries management based on scientific principles.

No one should hold their breath for that. Buffoonery from the backmost bench is still too fashionable.

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