Bennett’s telephone call “gendered violence” according to PACSW prez #nlpoli

Most of you likely missed it, but a sharp exchange in Twitter on Monday showed the way politics in this province rolls these days.

Dara Squires writes a blog called ReadilyAParent, She’s also syndicated in the Western Star and some of the TransCon weeklies.  Dara’s post on Sunday took up some recent local political events.  “False Feminists in Politics” is about feminism and women in politics. 

Here’s a taste of the broader argument:

And yet, in general, we swallow it hook, line and sinker when a woman rises to a position of power and declares herself a feminist. It's taken as both proof of the validity of the feminist promise and a victory of sorts when they do. But herein lies one of the largest dangers of false feminism, especially with regards to politics. For if some white, upper middle class women make their way into politics, or the heads of boardrooms, or CEOs of major companies, than we find ourselves facing the argument that the fight for equality is over. Wente is one of the white, upper-middle class elites who would have us believe this

Squires drew the whole thing down closer to home with a pretty sharp critique of Kathy Dunderdale. She made some particularly strong comments about the way government House leader Jerome Kennedy tied Jim Bennett’s telephone call and threat with violence against women:

Yeah, you read that right. Not only does he minimise the true extent of such violence by using it in comparison to a single, slightly threatening phonecall [call], he also shows an utter lack of awareness behind the real reasons for delayed reporting or not reporting sexual and domestic violence.
…
I can't believe that Dunderdale, who has been a member of women's status groups and worked as a social worker, would've not seen the significance of Kennedy's statements. The moment I read the transcript it was like a punch in the gut. But Dunderdale, leader of the party, Premier of the province, and supposed women's rights supporter, did nothing to halt Kennedy's ongoing attack against victims of violence.

Squires got some attention on Monday from some of the most powerful people in the province.  It’s hard to tell exactly how the Twitter discussion started and who got whom involved but before too long it involved not only Lana Payne – head of the federation of labour – but Glenda Power, the Premier’s communications director. 

You should go read the exchange;  just scroll back a couple of days or so and you can find the three contributions to the discussion.  It’s civilised, although tightly constrained by the 140 character limit. And you can expect that the Power didn’t accept for a moment that her boss might be anything but right.

What’s most interesting is that after Squires invited more substantive comment on her blog, she got it but not from Payne or Power but from Linda Ross.  The head of the Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women left not one but two comments with a title “Criticism without Merit.”  They are right at the bottom of the post linked above.

Now some of you will recognize that this is not the first time that Ross – a cabinet appointee – has entered a provincial political fray on behalf of her patron Kathy Dunderdale.  Last April she launched a pretty savage attack on then-opposition leader Yvonne Jones over what was entirely a fabrication on Ross’ part.

This time Ross has some much more interesting things to say.

For starters, there is nothing half-hearted in Ross’ support for the Premier:

“The record of Premier Dunderdale and her government in Newfoundland and Labrador on advancing the status of women and preventing violence against women and other vulnerable populations has been outstanding.”

Ross then lists a series of what Ross suggests are Dunderdale’s personal accomplishments.  In the classic fashion, they involve how much money government spends. Ross attributes things to Dunderdale that she didn’t do.  Well, certainly not as Premier, anyways, if she did them personally at all:

In addition to the above noted investments, under Premier's Dunderdale's leadership, we now have a 10% participation of women in trades in this Province, up from 3%. Such achievements are critical in advancing women's economic and social equality. Likewise, since 2003 approximately 50 percent of all new recruits to the RNC are now women and more women are appointed to Provincial boards, agencies and commissions.

The construction Ross employs isn’t accidental.  What Ross is employing is the traditional patron-centred politics that has come to epitomize the Williams and now Dunderdale Conservatives in power.  The patron gets personal credit from his or her clients for government policies and programs, as if they would not have occurred without the patron.

The overall discussion about Squires - even on Twitter - and the emphasis in the exchange on common successes runs directly contrary to Squires’ argument without actually refuting it.  But it does express the norm of provincial politics these days:  partisan differences are, in truth, superficial ones.  For the elites themselves, the connections among them are more important than ideological or partisan differences or ones based on different values. 

What the elites have in common is also more important – to them – than anything else.  You can see this is the similarity among the elections platforms last October.  But you can also see this in the way Ross unequivocally endorses the partisan attack on Jim Bennett:

“in reality this event was indeed a very real act of gendered violence.”
…
All acts of violence and abuse can be equally as damaging regardless of the type of violence and abuse and can have very serious long-term impacts on a woman’s life. Violence is violence, regardless of what form it takes. Minimizing a woman’s experience of violence because it does not fit into the old-school traditional definition of violence could, by many, be identified as a form of violence in and of itself. We as women and as feminists must never minimize or judge another woman’s lived reality. 

Violence and abuse are best understood as a pattern of behaviour intended to establish power and maintain control over colleagues, intimate partners, or groups. The roots of all forms of violence and abuse are founded in the many types of inequality which continue to exist and grow in our society.

Yes, friends, in Ross' world, Jim Bennett’s lone asinine phone call exists as part of a continuum of violence that is directed by men against women solely on the basis of the chromosomal structure of the two people involved. Bennett is scarcely better than a serial killer or rapists. serial killers and rapists. 

Of course, Ross’ argument is as patently absurd as it seems, on the face of it.  Ross has made equally absurd arguments before when both parties were female.  What is important to notice here is that Ross seldom makes public statements on anything.  When she does make them – as in Jones or Bennett - she is as prepared as any Tory backbencher to make a ridiculous argument in support of her patron.

Kennedy’s remarks are – according to Ross -  “totally within the Provincial Policy on this matter.”
But just so that you appreciate the extent to which Ross’ arguments  are not motivated by a general concern about violence in our society consistent with “Provincial Policy”  take note of her comments that criticise any of her patron’s associates that were as bad or worse than Bennett’s or Jones’ at any time since 2003.

Don’t waste your time.  You won’t find any.

Take a minute and let all that soak in.  There’s some pretty heavy ideas in there.

As for what this incident says about issues like equality and political power in the province, we’ll have to save that discussion for another day.

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Another one rides the bus #nlpoli

Albertans will be going to the polls shortly.  All the parties are gearing up.  Here’s the Wildrose Alliance’s campaign bus, featuring a picture of their leader, Danielle Smith.

Yeah, they didn’t really think about the layout until it was too late.

via daveberta.

Nose Job  Update:  Okay, so the Wildrose gang are going to repaint the bus now that everyone has had a good chuckle at the first version. The Edmonton Journal has the story of the unveiling and how the picture of the bus went viral.

The wheel problem will give the party the chance to fix a much more significant problem, though.  Look at Danielle Smith’s face.  A nose job would be in order to fix the distorted way her face winds up looking as a result of where the picture sits across the bus window lines.

While the wheel thing is funny, the face thing is a common problem for these bus wraps.  Closer to home, take a look the next time you are behind a Metrobus with Jake Doyle on the back.  His face gets mashed – the eyes disappear – because of where the face falls in relation to the windows.

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All they want is fairity #nlpoli

The people who run the province’s town and cites are looking to get a new financial arrangement from the provincial government.

Last week, the municipalities federation held an emergency meeting to discuss recent developments:

“What we’re asking government for today is very clear,” said Rogers. “Short-term help in this 2012 budget and a commitment to participation in the development of a long-term, strategic plan for the municipal sector.”

Sounds reasonable enough. 

Odds are they won’t get anything in the near term. Give a listen to what municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien said at the outset of an interview with On Point with David Cochrane this past weekend. O’Brien quickly started into a recitation of how much money the provincial government has spent since 2008 on municipal infrastructure and things like fire trucks. he finishes off with the warning that any new financial arrangement has to be sustainable for taxpayers.

Coming from a guy who has helped boost provincial government spending to irresponsible, unsustainable heights without a toss about such ideas, those words sound a bit like a lead bell.  

O’Brien is using coded language.

What he really was telling municipalities president Churence Rogers is a simple “f*ck off”.  No one should be surprised if Rogers has heard something along those lines over the past few weeks, perhaps even from O’Brien himself.  Maybe no one used the “f” word exactly, but language likely would have had the finger buried in it.

You see it all comes down to money, power and control.

Right now the provincial government has all of it.

And they will not give up any of it.

The provincial government isn’t interested in changing municipal funding at all.  Any change to funding would have to transfer some of the provincial cash or the ability to raise cash over to the towns and cities. 

If the province doesn’t have that cash, then it no longer has the power to control what goes on in the province.  Fairity O’Brien may not have deliberately mentioned infrastructure and fire trucks, but there’s no coincidence that he did.  That money and those items are part of the old pattern of politics in this province: patronage. 

And that’s the money, power and control we are talking about.

None of that has anything to do with the very serious problem in many towns and cities in the province but frankly provincial politicians like O’Brien don’t give a rat’s backside about that. 

Many parts of the province aren’t really doing all that well, despite the reports you may have heard.  They don’t have the municipal tax base to come up with the sort of cash of their own they need to put into road work, water and sewer projects and other infrastructure.

Problems in the fishery, the loss of paper mills have all taken their toll.  People may be working in Alberta and still living in Stephenville and Grand Falls-Windsor but it’s local companies that pay the taxes that help to keep the street lights on, quite literally.

What’s more, way too many of the towns on the island are full of retirees and not much else.  People on fixed incomes don’t have the ability to tax up the tax slack.  Those towns also have problems finding people to volunteer for municipal services like firefighting.

There’s a bit of a false impression of a boom in some places.  People in Grand Falls-Windsor thinks everything is smurfy.  Ditto Gander.  But in both these towns the major economic engine is the provincial government and a level of spending that we know is unsustainable. 

What’s more, the provincial government doesn’t pay taxes to municipalities.  They do – however – collect taxes on every municipal purchase through the harmonised sales tax (HST).  The effect is to claw back a portion of the money the province grants in the first place.  Until the fictitious oil royalty claw back, though, this one actually reduces the amount of money the towns and cities in the province have available to actually spend on services to residents.

And then when towns and cities go looking for cash, politicians like Kevin O’Brien start coming up with all sorts of excuses for why things must remain as they are.  The miserable, dark joke in all that shouldn’t be lost.  Towns and cities in the province are looking for a fair shake on provincial funding.  Kevin O’Brien is the guy who told us all that the province just wanted “fairity in the nation.”

David Cochrane exposed the fundamental bullshit of government’s position.  Cochrane asked why it was that O’Brien was talking about the impossibility of making commitments of funds for a few millions in the short term to towns and cities while government was prepared to forecast the price of oil for 55 years in order to justify Muskrat Falls.  All O’Brien had was talking points.

O’Brien also couldn’t explain or justify the four years that it has taken for O’Brien to start getting around to talking about a new financial arrangement for towns and cities.  Municipal leaders have asked for predictable funding.  All O’Brien has said is that he and his colleagues in government are willing to talk.

The real bottom line is that people like O’Brien who have politicized the purchase of bed pans and fire trucks simply want complete control over spending in the province for their own, pork-barrel, patronage reasons.

All municipal leaders want is fairity.

They aren’t going to get it from Kevin O’Brien.

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Gas prices and political popularity #nlpoli

In some other places, gasoline prices have a political impact you can identify and measure.

That isn’t the case in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The reasons?  We don’t have anyone doing the research, for one thing.

For another thing, the marketing job that one pollster does like clockwork every quarter is so inaccurate a device that it can’t measure anything but the equivalent of a political tsunami.  Even then, it isn’t clear that CRA’s quarterly omnibus could detect it.

And for a third explanation, none of the province’s political parties identify consumer costs as a political issue they want to talk about.

That’s one of the more curious things.  Political parties in other places actually talk about things that piss off the average voter.  In newfoundland and Labrador,  even if we knew that voters were fried about gasoline prices, there’s no party that would likely raise the issue and try to do something about it.  This is just a variation of the Echo Chamber theme your humble e-scribbler raised in the last election:  the political parties didn’t talk about the issues opinion polls identified as stuff that bothered voters.

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What makes news? #nlpoli

Sometimes you have to wonder why does one story make the news while another doesn’t.  Good example:  Jim Bennett’s asinine telephone call to Joan Burke’s constituency office.

Telegram blogger Geoff Meeker smacks the local media for covering the story in the way they did:

It wasn't even a valid news story. It was manufactured. The PCs sat on Bennett’s voice message for five weeks, until it was advantageous to toss out the bait. They played the media like a fish. 

And this is a criticism directed at all media, because they all played it at the top of their news, whether it was TV, radio or print. Meanwhile, as a direct consequence, more important stories – such as NDP Leader Lorraine Michael’s vital question about mercury poisoning in Lake Melville – were pushed back, diminishing their importance.

All fair comment.

In this case, the discussion is about what newsrooms chose to cover.  The usual comment from the people in newsrooms – editors and reporters alike – is that there is way more stuff going on than they could ever print or broadcast.

Sure.

But that doesn’t get at the question of why they might chose one story over another.

And what about cases where newsroom didn’t cover a story at all? 

There have been a couple of those stories related to energy policy that we know about:  one from April 2008 and another from September 2009.

But then there was another type of story, the one where the locals didn’t report it as news until the mainlanders did it first.

This is a story like the one about an education minister mixing and meddling in the appointment of a new president for the university. Until the story appeared in a national newspaper, no one locally reported it.  Sure there were columns in the Telegram about it but no one reported the story as news.

It’s not like the mainlanders got the story first and scooped all the locals.

Or how about the deliberate breach of the province’s privacy laws in the case of the Craig Westcott e-mail. Telegram editor Russell Wangersky brought up the e-mail in his Saturday column. The context was a discussion of the way the current provincial government selectively interprets the access to information and privacy law in Newfoundland and Labrador.

All the news media in the province had the story at the same time.  As Wangersky recounts the episode:

But first, a little history: Craig Westcott was hired in late 2010 as the communications spokesman for the provincial Liberals, a move that generated considerable ire inside provincial Tory ranks. 

In fact, such ire that a provincial cabinet minister, Municipal Affairs Minister Kevin O'Brien, went on VOCM to denounce Westcott, and to reveal that Westcott had written an intemperate email to then-premier Danny Williams' communications chief, Elizabeth Matthews, in February 2009. O'Brien said the email had been discussed at the cabinet table. 

The email questioned whether Williams had mental [health] issues, and, after O'Brien's VOCM comments, was released in its entirety.

Every newsroom went first with the e-mail story, exactly as the government intended when the Premier’s Office decided to release it.

One of the reasons why the current provincial government can get away with its selective application of the law has an awful lot to do with the consequences.  Basically there aren’t any. 

Sure they might be on the receiving end of a few sharp words in an editorial or a column.  The thing is, though,  that fewer people pay attention to news media these days than they used to.  And the ones who do likely don’t scan all the columns to finds tidbits of information like ones about the latest illegal actions by their own government.  They just don’t see the news that might wind up on the opinion pages instead of the news pages where they belong.

What the public gets instead are stories like the Bennett or Westcott ones where the government’s interpretation of things often appear  unfiltered.

What makes it into print or on the air isn’t always the story, let alone the whole one or the real one.

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The Looking Glass News #nlpoli

“The Lower Churchill hydro project has passed the environmental review process,”  CBC news tells us, and as a result the project has cleared “… another hurdle to the Labrador power generation plant becoming a reality.

VOCM used the same word in its headline.

Hurdle.

It means an obstacle, a hindrance or a barrier that something or someone must be overcome on the way to a goal.

Now there’s a curious word for the CBC news writer to use.

Since the final decision on the environmental assessment process for the Lower Churchill rested with the very people who are behind the project in the first place, only the most naive person in Canada would have believed the review was anything but an exercise in filling out the paperwork.

So “hurdle” is such a wrong word that it is comical.

And indeed the fuss about this little event today was entirely comical.  It came complete with news releases, scrums and all manner of breathless comments about how wonderful a thing this was that the project passed the review.

Like there was some doubt ever that the provincial government wouldn’t approve the project.

Still, as odd a choice of a word as “hurdle” might be in this context, it makes perfect sense down here in the rabbit hole into which we all slipped in 2003.

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Demanding what is just #nlpoli

For if it is to establish an order that citizens will agree to support, the state must go further than merely investigating their needs;  it must also encourage them to demand what they consider just.  In this way democracy becomes a system in which all citizens participate in government…

Pierre Trudeau,  Approaches to politics, p. 78

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Nova Scotia would get Churchill Falls power for free #nlpoli

If you’ve been following the ongoing Muskrat Falls saga, you will recall that energy analyst Tom Adams raised some questions a couple of months ago about whether or not Muskrat Falls could actually produce the power Nalcor and the provincial government claimed.

The problem basically came down to this: 

• January through to March is when Muskrat Falls needs to produce the most power.
• That’s when Holyrood would be cranking at full tilt to meet demand on the island for lights and heat in the winter months.
• At the same time, the Nova Scotians will need to get their guaranteed block.
• Upstream, Churchill Falls will be cranking at full tilt to feed Quebec under the 1969 contract and the 1998 Guaranteed Winter Availability Contract
• But the water flows in those three months are the lowest for the year.
• And at that point, Muskrat Falls would have a problem generating much more electricity than Holyrood did, despite the fact that Muskrat is – on paper – considerably larger.

Nalcor’s official line is that the water management agreement imposed by the public utilities board gives Nalcor access to the Churchill Falls reservoir. 

With production at Muskrat Falls completely integrated with Churchill Falls, this means that during May and June Muskrat Falls will be producing at full output, and the resulting production not required on the island will be displacing production at Churchill Falls. This energy will be drawn down when rivers flows are lower, and during peak winter periods when electricity demand is higher on the island.

Problem solved.

Yeah, well not really, as you will see in a little bit.

The Ides of March, 2012 #nlpoli

Twitter is a wonderful thing except that sometimes you can’t use the whole of a great quote.

The following is a larger bit of one quote that turned up in a minor flurry on the Ides of March.  It was hardly a Shakespeare smack down but it was fun for a moment.

The quote below is part of a speech from Julius Caesar in which Cassius – he of the lean and hungry look – talks to Brutus about fate and destiny and the power that individuals have to change the course of events.

Here’s a bit more of it:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

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To Encourage the Others #nlpoli

Lots of people look to leaders in a crisis to see what lessons they can learn.

Well, Kathy Dunderdale is special.

She is an excellent  example for any leader – political or not – who wants to know how not to handle a major financial problem.

The Telegram editorial on Wednesday does an excellent job of summarising the convoluted, contradictory and confused way Kathy Dunderdale has talked about job losses and budget cuts in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Think about Kathy Dunderdale’s comments in a slightly different way and you can get a sense of the magnitude of her problems.  Instead of lay-offs, imagine she was announcing another life-altering decision. You can summarise her statements this way:  we will have to kill some people, maybe.  If we do kill them, there won’t be a lot of bodies, so they should all relax until we figure out how many. And even if we do wind up killing a few people they all knew they would only be here temporarily anyway so this is pretty much what they should have expected anyway.  It’s in their contract.

An exaggeration to be sure, but for the thousands of people in this province across the province, that’s not far off the chilling effect Dunderdale’s words have had. 

The provincial government budget covers about 20% or more of the provincial labour force.  That’s a heck of a lot more than 2100 people who Dunderdale has said are going to be randomly thrown out of work – possibly – in a few weeks time.

All those people have families, mortgages and other bills and all sorts of plans they’ve been making on the expectation they’ll have a job in a few weeks time.

All of them know that when any Premier starts talking about layoffs, program reviews and spending cuts, they aren’t likely to be just limited to this year and a couple of people.  Things must be bad. Lots of them have been through it before. 

And even if things don’t turn out as badly as those public servants might fear, prudence will likely dictate what experience might not.  They are going to change their plans for the next year or so.  New home?  New car?  Renovations?  Trip? Maybe not.  Those who get laid off will have to cut their spending, find a new job and start again.  And those who don’t will scale back just to be on the safe side.

That’s the practical economic impact Kathy Dunderdale will have on tens of thousands of people across the province.

Then there’s the impact on her bottom line.  Provincial sales tax is the second largest source of money for the provincial government, after oil royalties.  We already know oil royalties will drop this year.  Now factor in a drop in sales taxes due to the Dunderdale-induced chill. 

Drop sales tax revenue by 10%  - for argument’s sake - and you have about the same amount of money the Premier says she wants to save, that is, less than $100 million.  It would actually be around $82 million.

So the Premier and her colleagues cut $82 million from the budget – theoretically – with their job cuts.  And in addition they have induced another $82 million revenue loss as a result of the chill in the economy.  Dunderdale’s cocked-up communications have effectively She’s actually doubled the effect of her cut.

At this point, though, we don’t know how much the provincial government will chop.  Anything more than a small handful of jobs lost, coupled with reassurance that those few are all, and the Premier can guarantee the lost revenue and the economic contraction will be much larger. 

Now factor in cuts to federal spending and a loss of federal jobs that will come on March 29. Incidentally, that’s the real reason the provincial government is delayed until April.  All this talk of internal reviews and such is just fluff and nonsense. 

The provincial government will introduce its budget likely around the end of the first week of April.  They are waiting  - and the only thing they are waiting for – is to see what the feds do.  Provincial finance officials likely have some ideas of what will come.  They should have gotten them from their federal counterparts and their colleagues in other provinces. That’s what happens every year. 

The provincial officials have contingency budgets with adjustments here and there in the figures, based on what the feds do.  They can make any last minute adjustments and get the provincial budget out quite quickly afterward. For the most part, the whole thing is done.

The cuts Kathy Dunderdale is talking about may appear to be new to the Telegram editorialist’s reckoning but they aren’t. Dunderdale and her cabinet have apparently settled on them some time ago. How big the cuts will be may depend on the federal budget. 

What the telly-editorialist and others might wonder about more profitably, though, is how a government with billions in cash laying about is thinking about laying off a single solitary employee based on the size of the hand-outs the provincial government will get from Ottawa.

Now that is something to marvel at.

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Government hiring process revealed #nlpoli

From your humble e-scribbler’s e-mail this week came a copy of what is purported by an anonymous e-mail to be a sooper sekrit document.

It appears to be the rules set down for hiring people in temporary jobs with the provincial government.

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It’s all about export, eh #nlpoli

On Tuesday, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the House of Assembly:

Essentially, what Muskrat Falls does, it allows 40 per cent of the power for the Island to meet the Island needs, 20 per cent for the export - 170 megawatts which allows us to then gain access to the markets in the United States, in the Maritimes, but also to develop other hydro and wind sources on the Island, and 40 per cent of the power for Labrador.

Of course there are no chances of exporting the extremely expensive electricity from Muskrat Falls into any other province, let alone export it and make money.

But hey, let’s humour Jerome! for a bit.

Don’t forget to notice the part that is about the link to Nova Scotia:

170 megawatts which allows us to then gain access to the markets in the United States, in the Maritimes, but also to develop other hydro and wind sources on the Island

Export.

That goes with Jerome’s comments over the past few months about all the revenue that will come from Muskrat Falls.

So what did Jerome say on Wednesday, a mere 24 hours later?

… we see the Maritime Link as a great opportunity to gain a billion-dollar asset for our children and grandchildren, Mr. Speaker, an asset that will continue to produce revenue, which opens up the ability to move power when needed, Mr. Speaker, to the Maritime Provinces, but also it allows us to bring power back…

There’s that revenue thing again, even though Nalcor has no customers for any Muskrat Falls power outside this province.  Basically, if they can’t force people to pay for Muskrat Falls, no one will.

But look at the words at the end.

…it allows us to bring power back…

The energy warehouse will be importing electricity now, according to Jerome Kennedy.  All those people who will be making money from Muskrat falls – if you believe Jerome – will also be able to live the dream he has and buy electricity from somewhere else.

Why would our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren do that if  - according to the provincial Tories - we have more than we need and want to export it all forever and a day especially after 2041 when we “repatriate” Churchill Falls?

Sometimes you really get the sense that Jerome and his friends just make stuff up as they go.

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If the people are silent… #nlpoli

…if the people are silent, you call them content;  if they protest, you say that they are given to disorder; and in the one case as in the other, they can look to you for nothing…

William Ewart Gladstone,  (29 December 1809 - 19 May 1898) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister four times (1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886 and 1892-1894).  Gladstone was a notable political reformer, known for his populist speeches. 

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Unions oppose energy conservation device #nlpoli

Unions representing Hydro-Quebec employees are oppose to a plan to install so-called smart meters in Quebec homes.  According to the Montreal Gazette:

One week before the Régie de l’énergie is to begin hearings on the controversial venture, the Syndicate des employés de techniques professionnels et de bureau d’Hydro-Québec denounced the move at a media conference.

The union has submitted an economic analysis of the project to the energy board that contends Hydro-Québec would lose $104 million over 20 years, while the new network would wipe out about 1,000 direct and indirect jobs.

 

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When you suddenly become the enemy… #nlpoli

For those of us in Newfoundland and Labrador who  - from the outset - opposed the political style that settled on this province after 2003, it’s been a fascinating exercise to watch others suddenly take up the same issues.

Danny Williams’ Conservatives imported the style and applied it ruthlessly to anyone the Old Man felt was not sufficiently compliant with his wishes.

The pattern of behaviour is very well documented.

Until lately the province’s New Democrats and the labour unions that back them enjoyed a very special relationship with the Conservatives.  Generally, they backed the Tories on major projects and issues.  They could find lots of common ground on all sorts of issues.

And as for things like free speech, well, those things were nothing to get bothered about.

Well, those days are gone.

Federation of labour president Lana Payne isn’t signing provincial Tory praises any more now that the Tories have turned on her friends.

And so it is that Lana wrote in her Telegram column this past Saturday that the “divisive smear politics” from other places “has found its way” to this province.

It is disheartening.  No good can come from this.

Well,  of course, it was disheartening.

No good did come of it.

What was most truly disheartening in this province after 2003, though, was the way that people and organizations you would expect to fight for basic rights and for progressive causes couldn’t be bothered to do so as long as the Tories kept the public purse strings loose.  

Maybe Lana could write a column about that some time.  If she did, then maybe she might have an ounce of credibility in her sudden love of fundamental rights and freedoms.

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Discussion is healthy, indeed #nlpoli

From the Telegram a former chief of staff in the Premier’s Office puts it as eloquently as only he could:

If public discussion, questions and debate on any issue should be dropped because “the people who have the political and corporate power to make it happen want it to happen,”  then logically there should be no talk of improving search and rescue operations, fisheries mismanagement, deficiencies in health care, industrial safety, workers’ rights, robocalls or any government or corporate action.

Indeed, why would we need public opinion vehicles like letters to the editor and open-line shows?

Why indeed?

Edsel Bonnell gives the answer:

It may be a tiresome process to some, especially those who deal with it every day in government and media, but it’s the price we pay for democracy. The pragmatic alternative is unacceptable.

Amen, brother. 

Amen.

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Lay-offs, Noseworthy and other things the Premier talked about #nlpoli

Listen closely and you can hear the beep-beep-beep of the garbage truck of government comms as it backs up on the idea of laying off public sectors workers as a result of government’s “review” of programs and spending.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale scrummed [link to CBC’s raw video]outside the House of Assembly on Monday and CBC’s David Cochrane - the guy who on Friday got her to accept the premise that she might lay people – led off the questioning.  He repeated comments by public sector union boss Carol Furlong.

Notice that Dunderdale doesn’t talk about layoffs in her first answer except to start out by saying that people need to relax.  That isn’t a direct retraction of her comments from Friday, but take a look at the rest of it and you can see where she is going.

Dunderdale claimed that she has said time and again that this is about “good fiscal management” and nothing more.  Of course, the truth is that Dunderdale said a great many things, some of them contradictory.  Her comment to the media is one of her stock approaches whenever she frigs up.  Dunderdale claims she has said the correct thing all along, with the clear implication the rest of us are just not grasping her brilliance.  For one of the earliest examples see Dunderdale and the Joan Cleary mess in December 2006.

Dunderdale also said that government needs to “constantly” review programs to make sure they are efficient and effective.  Then she  referred to some unspecified programs in Joan Burke’s department that are upwards of two or three decades old.

Fair enough.

Except that the government got into its current mess because they didn’t review anything ever.  Instead, they just piled on the hiring and piled on the spending with no goals.  They had no idea where things were going. 

To give you a sense of out far out-to-lunch Dunderdale and her colleagues took things, consider this table from a post back in September 2010.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador spends more per person to deliver programs than any other government in Canada, bar none.

In fact, Kathy Dunderdale and her colleagues in cabinet spend more than $3,000 per person more than Alberta does.  That’s not good.  That’s how grossly inefficient and ineffective they are.

The reason is simple.  As with anything in life, if you have no idea where you want to go, you can never tell when you get there or if you get there. So it is that a government that has more money coming through the doors than any of its predecessors has to talk about cuts to spending and layoffs.

In the scrum, Dunderdale said that might be related to the people administering the programs but that permanent employees are safe.

Cochrane comes at the layoffs issue again and this time Dunderdale doesn’t duck.  She accepts the potential there might be layoffs. She emphasises that the review is not about what she terms “gutting” the public service   She puts the review down to effective management of the public service itself. 

Of course, that rings hollow in light of the facts of the matter.

Dunderdale swings to the old line about permanent employees being protected.  Then she adds a twist:

… and others can be redeployed

By 2:53 of the scrum though, Dunderdale is back to acknowledging that cabinet has a number of potential cuts in mind.  She goes on about how “temporary” means only around for a short time.

By 3:36 in the scrum Dunderdale says she “is not going to lie” about it.  Who said anything about lies?

Cochrane then comes back at her to ask what the number is.

So having successfully cooled everyone’s jets in the first couple of minutes, Dunderdale then says she and her cabinet colleagues are considering lay-offs for 800 employees or, “far less than” 800.

And at that point, with a suck of air, someone else takes up the questioning.

Time into the scrum:  four minutes.

And in those four minutes, Kathy Dunderdale has changed directions in her messaging twice in completely contradictory directions.

She started by backing the truck up.

And then by four minutes she is in forward gear again and driving right over the same issue she tried to back off of a couple of minutes earlier.

Dunderdale gets a respite from the layoffs for a second as she answers a question about John Noseworthy and his pork-barrel job.  Dunderdale does what Joan Burke didn’t do in the House.  Dunderdale ties the hire with Noseworthy’s supposed unique skill set.

Then Cochrane goes back to the lay-offs.

“We will look at all of the temporary employees,” said Dunderdale, “the same way we will look at all of the permanent employees.”  Of course since permanent employees aren’t being looked at,l this sounds very confused and confusing.  And indeed it is.

But there’s that beep-beep-beep again.

However, by 6:00 minutes into the scrum, Dunderdale has said that there will be lay-offs but  that the number will be less than 800.

Look at Dunderdale’s face at this point in the scrum as she gets another question about Noseworthy.  She’s clearly pissed off. She doesn’t know anybody better qualified to do the job, Dunderdale insists.  That is actually part of the problem, of course:  hiring people with connections as opposed to qualifications. 

In response to another question, Dunderdale does the pre-emptive denial, saying that no one made any promises to Noseworthy when he decided to run in the last election.  She puts responsibility for Noseworthy’s job on Joan Burke, saying that Burke brought the name to Dunderdale.

At that point, the scrum switches to other topics.  It’s a wonder everyone wasn’t dizzy what with all the shifts of position.  Expect more shifting to come. 

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Kremlinology 39: What Burke didn’t say #nlpoli

In defending the $140,000 –a-year patronage job she gave to former Tory candidate John Noseworthy, advanced skills minister Joan Burke told the House of Assembly:

Mr. Speaker, no one can argue that Mr. Noseworthy has a unique set of skills.

Indeed no one can make such an argument.

Former auditor general John Noseworthy doesn’t have any special skills at least, in this case.

He is an accountant with lots of experience as a provincial auditor.  In that role, he has been known to make a few serious fumbles.

Everything that Burke said her department needed to help the department sort itself out could be had from a great many people out there.  Some would be former provincial public servants here or from other provinces.  Some would be former federal public servants and some would come from the private sector. What’s more, all of those people would know more about the core mandate of Burke’s department than than John Noseworthy.

Joan Burke is right.

No one can argue Noseworthy has a unique skill set.

He doesn’t.

And to her credit, at no point in her response to questions in the House did Burke actually say he did. 

Looks like someone foisted the guy on Burke and she got stuck trying to defend someone else’s pork-barrel decision.

The clue is in what Joan didn’t say.

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Government cash give-aways #nlpoli

CBC’s Rob Antle has updated work done over the past couple of years on government give-aways to private sector businesses in the name of economic development:

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has funnelled more than $20 million into grants, loans and the direct costs of business-attraction initiatives that have provided a net benefit of fewer than 100 new jobs — a quarter of them seasonal.

Faithful readers will notice some familiar names in the story and the associated documents posted with the online version of it.

Kodiak got $8 million to expand its operations at Harbour Grace.  They laid off workers instead.That isn’t the only example of that sort of thing happening.

Then, there’s Dynamic Air Shelters,which has more government cash in it than many Crown corporations

None of this is surprising since Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province in Canada where the private sector prefers to be publicly funded.

It’s another way in which the provincial economy has grown increasingly fragile over the past eight years.

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Poll Math #nlpoli

Just for the heck of it, here’s the most recent CRA marketing poll adjusted to take out the misleading way CRA reports its clients poll numbers.

Here are the Conservative Party voter choice results from the fall of 2010 when Kathy Dunderdale took over the Tory leadership until the most recent poll in February.

The solid blue line is the percentage of respondents who picked Conservative.  It’s the real percentage, not the share of “decideds”.

The light blue dashed line is the actual percentage of eligible votes the Tories got in 2003 and 2007.  Yes, friends, 43% of those eligible to vote picked Tory.

The bottom line is the share of eligible votes the Dunderdale Tories got last October.  If you can’t quite pick it out, the number is 32%. It’s the lowest share of eligible vote any Tory government received and won re-election to government.  The previous record low was 33% in 1975

So while there’s nothing in these numbers that would send the Tories into a panic, the fact is that the Tories don’t have the kind of overwhelming electoral support that would allow them to do things like…say… slash public spending without risking a pretty significant turn around in popular support. 

Keep that in mind over the next few weeks.

You see while the Tories might be 20 points ahead of their nearest rival according to CRA, that really means that only an 11 percentage point swing puts the Tories in second place, behind the New Democrats.  Even a five point swing to the NDP would send shock waves through provincial politics.

Heck, if the Tories drop down in the public polling to numbers below 50% in the misleading way CRA reports them and you’d see people raise their eyebrows.

Slow down government spending to any great degree, chill economy with talk of lay-offs or – to be really daring – actually lay people off and you can bet there’ll be a change in the polling numbers.

It’s important to keep these things in perspective.

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