How to make bad decisions: The Self-Delusion Problem #nlpoli

Politicians don’t set out to screw up but their good intentions are no proof against making bad decisions.

The Twitter Perspective #nlpoli

Tories on Twitter act like twits. Then they complain in the House of Assembly that other people are misbehaving.

Yes, they are hypocrites.

The Difference Between Their Dippers and our Tories #nlpoli

When it comes to transparency and accountability for megaprojects, the New Democratic government in Nova Scotia is light years ahead of the Progressive Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador

The Poster Child for Useless #nlpoli

One of the rationales the provincial government has used to justify Muskrat Falls is the idea that the island will have electricity shortages starting in 2015 and by 2020 there’ll be blackouts, brownouts or some sort of unspecified catastrophe.

If you missed it, here is one official version, from The Economy, 2011:

After years of planning and analysis, Nalcor’s subsidiary, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro (Hydro), determined that developing Muskrat Falls is the least-cost solution to a looming electricity shortage in the province, which is expected in the next five to 10 years.

In 2015, Newfoundland and Labrador will reach a capacity deficit when, at peak times, capacity needs may not be met. By 2019, the province will experience an electricity deficit, where the province’s overall electricity demand is greater than what is available.

It’s the worst kind of fear-mongering but it is what they’ve been saying. 

The solution to that looming crisis is pretty simple, according to the provincial government.  Again, here’s what The Economy 2011 lays out:

Hydro assessed the options for new generation sources to avoid the capacity and electricity deficits. The Muskrat Falls project, coupled with a transmission link project to the island, was determined to be the least-cost option.

So with all that as prologue, consider this question posed by Dean MacDonald stand-in Dwight Ball in the House of Assembly on Tuesday:

… what is the government’s plan to those energy blackouts that residents will experience between 2015 and 2018?

You can guess what the answer was from natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy.

Mr. Speaker, the answer to the question is quite simple. What will prevent the brownouts and the blackouts between 2015 and 2020? Muskrat Falls.

If you are not either banging your head against the table or crapping your pants with laughter at this point, then you are just not paying attention.

This is funny stuff.  You could not possible script a more ridiculous line of questioning at this point in the public debate over the hydro-electric megaproject.

You could not make this stuff up.

Given the Premier’s penchant for telling us that Nalcor is filled with geniuses of other-worldly origins, one might more sensibly ask how it could be that the rocket scientists at Nalcor managed to let the island get into the state where we are on the verge of catastrophe.

After all, that is the logic of their argument.  In 2010, they noticed that the power needle was flirting with the edge of the red zone and the Big E. 

How in the frack could they have missed so obvious a thing?   After all, it is their job to keep an eye on that stuff.  They are supposed to make sure the people who pay their bills have a stable, reliable and low cost supply of electricity.

Now, as a politician, you’d ask the aggressive question because it shows pretty clearly that what Kathy Dunderdale says about Nalcor and  their actual demonstrated managerial competence are two different things.  After all, an opposition political party is supposed to ensure that the government accounts fully “for the management of the public affairs of this province…”.

By contrast, Dwight Ball asked questions  on Tuesday that would normally come from a Tory backbencher sucking around for a promotion to cabinet. For the leader of the Opposition, the questions  were amateurish and reeked of incompetence.

The other questions that Ball asked on Tuesday, like pretty well everything he’s done so far this session, have shown Ball to be the poster child for everything that is politically useless and ineffective. With only one exception, the rest of his caucus have been no better.

Small wonder that the Tories spend all their political energy attacking the province’s New Democrats. The Tories know that the Liberals are more a political threat to themselves than they are to anyone else.

-srbp-

A river runs through it #nlpoli

Jerry Bannister’s paper “A river runs through it:  Churchill Falls and the end of Newfoundland history” is now available in the latest issue of Acadiensis.

“A new Sprung Greenhouse”: one year later #nlpoli

Since May 8 was the 25th anniversary of the announcement that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador were going into the cucumber business, it seemed fitting to give a link to a post of April 5, 2011.

The title of the old post was “A new Sprung greenhouse in the wilds of Labrador.” 

Note how little has changed in a year:  Kathy Dunderdale is still insulting people left and right.  The reasons for her reliance on endless personal digs remain the same.  That reflects badly on her even more now than it did then.

her grasp of economics and the economics of her pet project remain today as abysmal as they were then.

And yes, the goal is still to have the people of Quirpon and Flower Hill pay the full cost for the electricity.  Any others will get it free (Nova Scotians) or far below the cost of producing it.  That’s what Kathy Dunderdale meant when she said:

They are not going to buy it from us, Mr. Speaker, for 14.3, so we have to go into the market and sell at what the market can bear.

The markets in the United States and elsewhere in northeastern North America cannot bear Muskrat Falls electricity even at the artificially-deflated cost of seven cents a kilowatt hour.  That is without the cost of getting it from eastern Labrador down the thousands of kilometres of transmission lines to wherever the crowd at Nalcor might want to sell it. 

To put that in perspective and to explain the connection to the Sprung cucumber fiasco, consider the basic economics of the project as laid out by the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage website:

A single Sprung cucumber cost $1.08 to produce, but sold for 63 cents in Atlantic Canada and just 25 cents (US) in Massachusetts.

That’s exactly the same concept as Muskrat Falls.  Well, exactly the same except that Sprung was actually able to sell product outside Newfoundland and Labrador.

And if you go back and look at all the controversy that swirled around the project and the defences of it mounted by the provincial government, you’ll likely start to feel decidedly uneasy.

It will all be too familiar.

- srbp -

Related:

• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes
• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes 2
• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes 3
• Great Gambols with Public Money:  Sprung Cukes 4

The politics of logic and history #nlpoli

“Government does not work on logic,” a wise man once told your humble e-scribbler.  “It works on the basis of history.”

When faced with a new problem, people tend to do what they did before, not what might make sense in the new circumstances.

You can see that the preference for history over logic in Kathy Dunderdale’s comments on Monday about what she and her colleagues would do for communities where the town fish plant had closed.

Mr. Speaker, we are doing the same thing for these workers, and will do for others the same thing we did in Stephenville, Grand Falls-Windsor, and Harbour Breton.

That would include moving in some provincial government jobs to stuff some cash into the local economy.  So if adding more provincial government employees is an integral part of Kathy Dunderdale’s response to the problems in these six communities, you can be damn sure she won’t be chopping any jobs.

Then again, regular readers of these scribbles already knew that claims to the contrary were bullshit.

The rest of Dunderdale’s comment are just routine political drivel:

We are committed to communities in this Province that find themselves in economic distress. We do not always have the answers at hand. There are not easy answers to be found by anybody, but we walk the walk with communities, Mr. Speaker. We do not just talk the talk.

And when she was done with drivel, she just popped out some truly vacuous bullshit:

Wherever the journey takes these people, their government will be there with them, and we do our best to diversify the economy and meet their needs in the meantime.

Diversify the economy.

Yeah.

Well, the economic development record of the current crowd is exactly zilch.  They spent so much time obsessing over polls and the Lower Churchill after 2003 that they simply didn’t do anything to diversify the economy.  And what they did try – giving away public cash by the bag-full – simply didn’t work. They haven’t been able to pay people to create jobs here.

Here’s how SRBP put it a couple of years ago comparing government spending in the mid-1990s with the current practice:

The province’s business development and economic diversification efforts – ITT then and INTRD and Business today – take less of a share of the budget now.  That’s despite government claims that it has a plan to expand the economy and that the plan is in place.

Mind you, the amounts spent have increased.  For example, the cost of operating the departments has gone from about $50 million for the Industry, Trade and technology department to about $66 million spread over Business and Innovation, Trade and Rural Development today.

The amount available for business investment is also up:  $18 million then compared to $29 million. Even then, though, the province’s business department -  the vehicle through which Danny Williams was once supposed to personally reinvigorate the provincial economy – actually doesn’t do very much with the cash in the budget.  Sure there are plenty of free gifts – like Rolls Royce – or the apparently endless supply of cash for inflatable shelters.

But as the Telegram discovered two years ago, the provincial government spent nothing at all of the $30 million budgeted for business development in 2007. And earlier this year the Telegram confirmed that in the past three years, less than one third of the $90 budgeted for business attraction was ever spent.

The result is that we have a very fragile economy.

Government does not work on the basis of logic.  They go with what they did before.

Like that has worked so well  for them so far.

-srbp-

Pots and Kettles #nlpoli

Pots and kettles are a staple of Newfoundland politics.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale in the House of Assembly on Monday, May 7:

We have had the Member for Torngat Mountains this morning on every media outlet in the Province talking about a cover-up of the Burton Winters tragedy, Mr. Speaker, in the face of the correction put out by the RCMP, propagating incorrectness for political advantage, I suggest, Mr. Speaker, instead of a pursuit for the truth. It is very offensive, Mr. Speaker, and then he wants an all-party committee.

Pay attention to those words:

“Propagating incorrectness for political advantage…instead of a pursuit for the truth.”

Okay?

Got the image?

Then there’s Kathy Dunderdale talking with Randy Simms about her Muskrat Falls megadebt project:

…the expertise that's at Nalcor, one of the finest companies, state-owned companies, in the world I would submit to you, the best brains, the expertise, built the Upper Churchill, running the Upper Churchill for 50 years without a hitch, …

None of the people at Nalcor built Churchill Falls.

None of them.

Not a one.

And strictly speaking Nalcor’s predecessor  - Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro – didn’t build it either.

So Dunderdale’s comment there would be pretty firmly in the category of “not true”.

It gets worse for her.

The Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation commissioned Churchill Falls in 1971. That would be 41 years ago. 

Not 50. 

The date people use for the purposes of the figuring out when the 1969 contract expires is 1976, though, which is, 36 years ago.

Again:  not 50.

And at the end of her little rant, Dunderdale said this about the people at Nalcor these days:

…these people just get dismissed...

That would be another entry in the “not true” category. 

People don’t dismiss the lovely people at Nalcor and all their expertise.  Some of us just don;t agree with them when they make certain unsubstantiated claims about Muskrat Falls .  There’s a none-too-subtle difference.

On the other hand, Kathy Dunderdale dismisses the opinions of people who disagree with her just because they disagree with her.

And, of course, she has a record of getting stuff wrong.  Call it “propagating incorrectness” if you wish.

Whether or not she does this stuff for political advantage, political gain, to support her political agenda or just because she thinks she is doing the right thing – like Randy Edmunds likely does – it all pretty much comes out to the same thing in the end.

-srbp-

The Black Letter of the Law #nlpoli

You’d think that someone who approves laws, including this amendment to the Highway Traffic Act in 2010, would understand  what the words mean:

Cellular telephones and other communication devices

176.1 (1) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle on a highway while holding, or using a hand-held wireless communication device or other prescribed device that is capable of receiving or transmitting telephone communications, electronic data, email or text messages.

The penalty for a conviction under this section of the Highway Traffic Act is a minimum of $100 or two days in jail and a maximum of $400 and 14 days in jail.

Politicians elected since 2003 should be familiar with this offence since one of them was done for it in 2008, before they broadened the scope of the section.

- srbp -

More pork for the buck #nlpoli

The CBC’s John Gushue has a tidy analysis of Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s recent suggestion that government employees could work from home in the future as a way of cutting down on government real estate costs.

Gushue notes that people have been talking about “telework” for a couple of decades.  But where it was once an idea, today it is commonplace.

Unlike other employers that have looked to telework to improve productivity and employee lifestyle, Dunderdale’s interest in the concept is pretty simple and – for politicians in this province – typical and old-fashioned.  As Gushue notes:

She suggested reducing the cost of the public service ... not by dwindling its numbers, but by shrinking the footprint of its office space.

The reason the provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador  costs more per capita than elsewhere in Canada is because provincial politicians use it for political purposes rather than just delivering government service to the people who pay the bills for the service.  It’s patronage.

Since taking office in 2003, the provincial Conservatives have done what the Liberals immediately before them have done.  Just as the Liberals transferred provincial paycheques to communities outside St. John’s, the Tories did the same thing in Grand Falls-Windsor and Stephenville when the local paper mill shut down. Overall, they swelled the provincial public service until it had become 25% of the provincial labour force.

Not surprisingly, the province’s public sector unions don’t like the idea of cuts to the number of people they represent.  In an interview last week, the head of the province’s largest public sector union claimed that the current size of the public service was the result of “rebuilding” after a period of cuts.  NAPE’s Carol Furlong said that “we really need to ensure that the people of this province have the services they need…”.

Of course, Furlong is full of crap.  The number of people represented by public sector unions has nothing to do with delivering the services the public needs.  There are plenty of ways to improve service delivery at a lower cost to taxpayers and with fewer members in Furlong’s union.

But, as you will see by looking at the Dunderdale and Furlong interviews, the politicians and the union leaders are in complete agreement on the question of the size of the provincial public service.  Neither of them wants to see it any smaller.

-srbp-

Political Effectiveness #nlpoli

As these things go, George Murphy’s two days of news about compliance with the province’s ban on pesticides was a tidy and effective bit of political theatre.

The provincial government announced the ban in 2011.  They set May 1, 2012 as the day for the ban to take effective.

Like any enterprising politician, Murphy trucked off to a local store a day or two after the ban took effect.  He found some of the chemicals for sale.  He took some pictures and asked the environment minister about it in the House of Assembly.

The next day Murphy turned up on CBC.  The chemicals had disappeared from the first store but they were still available at one other store CBC featured by name.

“You know we have to see some action on this,” said Murphy. “If the government is going to do something, then go ahead and do it ...get to the job that's supposed to be done here, get these products off the shelves,” he told CBC News.

Simple message.

Effective delivery.

Backed with an example of a department that failed the simple task of doing what they said they would do.

For his part, environment minister Terry French looked like a slack-assed, slack-jawed goof. Here’s what he said in the House of Assembly in response to Murphy’s question:

I just want to remind the hon. member, he seems to have bought them recently. I hope they were not on the black market, Mr. Speaker. I also hope he does not use them, because if he uses them, he will be facing a significant fine.

What you don’t get there is the joking tone French had. It conveyed a sense that French didn’t take the issue seriously.  French came across dismissively, as if saying yeah, we banned it, frig off ya little twerp.

In itself, the story may be relatively small. 

Add enough of these hits together and they will have an impact.

- srbp -

Something to look forward to… #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy in the House of Assembly on Thursday:

It breaks that geographical stranglehold of Quebec. I do not have time today to address Ed Hollett’s theory that we can send all our power through Quebec and get it back through Quebec, because that is just wrong.

This should be most interesting. 

We’ll all just have to wait and see what the minister says about the amazing appearing and disappearing stranglehold.

- srbp -

The Gathering Storm #nlpoli

Another week and another fish plant closes permanently.

This time it is one of the plants that should have been the basis of a vibrant fishery.  The Burin plant did mostly secondary processing rather than just basic processing turning fish into big frozen blocks for someone else to develop into a higher value product.

Those of us who warned that smashing Fishery Products International to pieces was stupid government policy take no comfort in this sort of development.

But there is no mistaking the pattern that the Burin closure continues.  it’s just the hurricane that will produce more dramatic change across Newfoundland than the 1992 cod moratorium ever did.

- srbp -

The Fairity Equation #nlpoli

It doesn’t matter if you are a Telegram editorial writer, a local blogger or even municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien on CBC’s St. John’s Morning Show (not online).  You can still get the details of O’Brien’s travel expenses  - things like purpose and amounts – just dead wrong.

So let’s just make sure we are all on the same page to start with.

The Public Cost of Kevin O’Brien

On Tuesday and Wednesday, CBC reported on the amount of money O’Brien’s department set aside to cover his travel and other expenses for the coming fiscal year.  Last year, the transportation and communications budget was set at $44,900 but the final spending was $92,900.  The 2012 budget is $44,900. 

In 2010, the budget was set at $44,900 and the final spending came in at $61,000. In 2008 and 2009 O’Brien wasn’t the minister.  The travel budget was $44,900 and the final tally was $44,100 and $35, 000.

You can see why people wondered what Kevin was doing.  O’Brien blamed the 2011 cost over-run on Air Canada, the friggers, and their evil mainland-conspiracy airfares.

Yeah, well, no.

The Cause of the Cost

As your humble e-scribbler pointed out on Thursday, O’Brien’s department spent about half its travel budget to cover the cost of shipping their minister from his house in Gander to the office in St. John’s. 

That’s the reason the travel bill was so high:  government expense rules allow ministers to live somewhere other than near the place their job is located.  Taxpayers foot the bill for the extra cost and that includes, among other things, these regular trips back and forth from his home to his main office to attend cabinet meetings and such.  To distinguish it from travel for departmental business, your humble e-scribbler called it commuting costs.  That’s what it is:  commuting to work.

The Comparison

O’Brien isn’t the only one who does this.  SRBP compared O’Brien’s expenses with those of Joan Burke, Tom Marshall, Patty Pottle and John Hickey for the period from December 2010 to November 2011.  In terms of total dollars, O’Brien’s commuting cost was the second largest amount  ($36,000) after Patty Pottle ($40,400).

As a percentage of total travel, Fairity was in the middle of the pack.  Pottle’s commuting was 63% of her ministerial travel expenses.  At 46%, Fairity was slightly below Burke (51%) and a dozen percentage points behind Marshall (58%)

But the key point is that none of that matters.  They all cost taxpayers more than ministers who lived near their workplace, as ministers have done for decades.

And then there’s the House of Assembly travel costs

In addition to the travel costs these politicians cost taxpayers out of their ministerial travel budgets, each of them also ran up travel and living expenses under the House of Assembly accounts.

Minister	01 Apr – 30 Sep 11	FY 2010
Joan Burke	$6,058	$18,309
John Hickey	7,384	15,788
Tom Marshall	7,221	14,017
Kevin O’Brien	9,742	16,695
Patty Pottle	14,012	25,559

Totalling the departmental commuting costs and the House travel bills are possible but it would take a bit of work.  The departmental accounts are reported out of sync with the government’s fiscal year.  The House of Assembly ones come at half way through the fiscal year and then with the whole year.

It would be even tougher to figure out how the two sets of travel claims relate to one another. The House lists huge amounts of detail, including specifically when the flights happened.  The departmental expenses have two dates only on each item.  it isn’t clear whether the first date is the date someone submitted the claim or the date they incurred the expense.

The Bottom Line

But even allowing for all that, you can see that Fairity’s annual cost to taxpayers for commuting would be something on the order of about $53,000  (36K +17K).  And to give a direct comparison for Fairity with a minister from central Newfoundland, look at what Susan Sullivan cost taxpayers.  Her departmental travel costs for the December 2010 to November 2011 time period was $26,068.  Her House travel cost for Fiscal Year 2010 was $14,200.  

In all these cases, the expenses don’t cover the costs of traveling to a meeting with a town council about a municipal grant or something directly related to the minister’s job.

Nope.

This is money that gets Kevin  and some of his colleagues from their homes to their jobs.  No other people on the public payroll get such a benefit.  Historically, ministers haven’t been able to get taxpayers to cover their commuting costs either.  This is a more recent invention, tied to the 2007 Green report and the way the Chief Justice structured House of Assembly allowances.

The cost to taxpayers is a good reason to review the whole thing and put it back on a basis that isn’t tied to where a politician lives.  In the system established in the early 1990s, the House travel budgets tied the amount available to the likely cost of travelling to and from the district.  That was never the problem in the House:  the problem was a scheme that let members use travel money for vote buying.  As such,  there was no reason to change it in 2007. 

Going back to a more practical system of setting House of Assembly travel budgets would disconnect ministerial travel from where a member of the House claimed a permanent residence. Since cabinet ministers’ jobs are at the government headquarters, they should live near by or cover the costs of getting to work themselves, like everyone else.

These costs wouldn’t matter if the provincial government had an unlimited supply of cash.  As we all know, the taxpayers don’t have an unlimited supply of cash.  If we have to cut back on expenses, then one of the logical places to start would be these sorts of discretionary – and entirely unnecessary costs. 

- srbp -

Why we are Muskrat Fallsing #nlpoli

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy explained it all in the House of Assembly on Wednesday:

…let’s be clear on why we are developing Muskrat Falls, if we develop it. It is to satisfy our need at home; to allow for a link to Maritime and Eastern US markets; and to provide electricity for mining developments in Labrador. So, essentially, Mr. Speaker, what will happen is that we will use the energy we have available, until we need to recall, on the spot markets. We are not looking, Mr. Speaker, for power purchase arrangements. There is, by the way, as Mr. Weil said in the CBC interview, markets in the Maritime area.

Note the order of priority:

1. “to satisfy our need at home;
2. “to allow for a link to Maritime and Eastern US markets; and,
3. “to provide electricity for mining developments in Labrador.”

On that last one, note that a year ago, Kathy Dunderdale wasn’t talking about using Muskrat Falls for Labrador development:

Now, Mr. Speaker, we have recall power from the Upper Churchill that is now available for industrial use in Labrador.

That was then. This is now. Stories change.

Then notice the added bit:

“…we will use the energy we have available, …, on the spot markets…”

Kennedy noted a wee bit after he said those words that Nalcor is selling power now to the United States through Quebec.  Funny how Jerome sometimes remembers that Labrador electricity isn’t blocked by Quebec.  Funnier how he forgot to mention that Nalcor loses money on the transaction any time it sells power in that wheeling deal..

Notice what we are not looking for:

We are not looking, …, for power purchase arrangements.

We are not looking for them because we cannot get them.  The only power purchase agreement Quebec has managed to sign lately was with Vermont for less than six cents per kilowatt hour.  Even allowing the Nalcor costing that pushes the cost of Muskrat to the distant future, Muskrat Falls will cost seven cents per kilowatt hour. 

And that is before you add on the cost of getting it through Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and however many American states before it gets to the customer.  If they can’t make money selling Churchill Falls power to the Americans, then they won’t make any money selling them juice from much more expensive project.

Kennedy understands this:

“There is a market, Mr. Speaker. The price is another thing because, remember, the Emera link gives us transmission access to the American markets without paying undue tariffs.”

There is a market.  Unfortunately, there are so many tariffs between Muskrat and the end user that Nalcor can’t sell power and make money at it.

The price is not another thing.

It is the only thing.

That’s why the only revenue Nalcor knows it will get for Muskrat Falls is what they will get from local rate payers.  Jerome knows it too.  Remember the first priority he listed.

- srbp -

Some NL cabinet ministers bill taxpayers for work commuting #nlpoli

Almost half the money (46%) spent on ministerial travel by the municipal affairs department between December 2010 and November 2011 went to cover travel by minister Kevin O’Brien from his home in Gander  to St. John’s for cabinet meetings and other government business.

O’Brien billed taxpayers for about $77,188 in travel and related expenses during the period.  About $36,000 of it was for travel between Gander and St. John’s.

The information is taken from expense reports posted by the provincial government on the government website.  CBC reported on Kevin O’Brien’s travel expenses on May 1 and 2 as a result of hearings by the House of Assembly estimates committee reviewing the 2012 budget. 

The CBC story erroneously labels the travel as being to O’Brien’s district  - it was from the district – and attributes the amount to Air Canada airfares. There’s more to it than that.

Provincial government  expense rules for cabinet ministers allow them to live outside the capital region and bill travel, accommodation and meal costs to the department when they have to travel to St. John’s for official business. The definition of “permanent residence” used in the cabinet policy is tied to the declaration ministers make to the House of Assembly to determine their allowances and entitlements under House of Assembly spending rules.

O’Brien isn’t alone in the billing practice.  For example, finance minister Tom Marshall’s commuting travel accounted for 67% of his departmental travel claims in the period.  Marshall billed taxpayers $23,400 in the period SRBP looked at for travel between his home in Corner Brook and his department’s head office in St. John’s.  Marshall’s total ministerial travel was $35,025.

Cabinet minister Joan Burke billed taxpayers more than $15,433 for commuting from December 2010 to November 2011. The total of her expenses listed on the provincial government website was $30,307.  That puts her commuting costs at 51% of her total ministerial expense bill. 

During his last year in politics, Labrador affairs minister John Hickey hit taxpayers for more than $27,682 for travel from his Goose Bay home to St. John’s for cabinet meetings and other government business.   Hickey’s bills that year included his share of two aircraft charters to bring him to St. John’s as well as two bills for long-term airport parking passes. His expenses total on the government website was $47,769.  That would make his commuting travel 58% of his ministerial travel costs

Aboriginal affairs minister Patty Pottle, billed the most of all for the home-to-work travel, though.  In her last year in office, Pottle billed taxpayers more than $40,400 for travel, meals and accommodations as she traveled from her home in Nain to St. John’s.  That represents 63% of the $64,300 in expenses listed for Pottle on the government website.

Pottle claimed a total of almost $35,000 in one six month period.Her travel to St. John’s on official business accounted for slightly more than $24,000 for the same six months.

Some ministers also claim car expenses under the ministerial expense rules.  They can either claim mileage or claim a car allowance plus operating costs incurred on government business.

The cabinet expense policy on the car allowance states:

The automobile allowance is $8,000 per year, prorated for the portion of the fiscal year for which the Minister serves in Cabinet (based on MC 90-1135).

Ministers will be reimbursed fuel expenses, consumable liquids and related expenses incurred while traveling on government business. Detailed original receipts indicating proof of payment must be provided.
Ministers receive the automobile allowance as a bi-weekly payment that coincides with the usual pay cycle.

The automobile allowance, fuel expenses, consumable liquids and related expenses will be issued on payroll cheques rather than General Account Cheques and is taxable in accordance with Canada Revenue Agency requirements.

In addition to his other commuting, Kevin O’Brien received more than $6,000 under the car allowance and operating expense policy between June and November 2011 alone. 

SRBP first noted the practice of commuting ministers in July and December 2008.  

From December 2010 to November 2011, O’Brien filed 36 expense claims for travel, meals and accommodations for travel between Gander and St. John’s.  The smallest claim was $231. The largest was $2,069.  Some of the claims may have related to the same travel.

O’Brien’s travel claims suggest his commuting was quite frequent at times.  His expense records for claims paid in December 2010 show claims for travel in October and November, 2010.  SRBP did not include them in the totals above since the travel took place outside the study period.

In those two months, O’Brien filed commuting claims for travel on October 13, 17, 29 and 31 and November 4, 14, 21 and 28. The total cost of those claims was approximately $9,952.

O’Brien also claimed for other ministerial travel besides the commuting.  For example, during the period examined for this post, he expensed travel, entertainment and related expenses totalling $985 for the presentation of a fire truck to the Town of Hampden in White Bay.

- srbp -

Diversifying the economy and slowing things down #nlpoli

Paul Oram was a colourful politician.

Well, colourful in the sense that he flamed out very quickly.  Regular readers of these scribbles will remember him as the guy who had no idea what had happened in the province during his lifetime.  Not long after taking over the health department, Oram precipitated a huge political crisis.  Then he high-tailed it from politics altogether with some pretty damning comments about how his colleagues were spending public money. 

These days Paul turns up as the token Tory on CBC Radio’s West Coast Morning Show political panel. he is still colourful.

On Monday’s show, Oram said that Muskrat Falls was a wonderful thing because it diversifies the provincial economy.  He did not say how.  Oram just said that it would.  No one asked him to explain what he meant.

That’s a lucky break for Paul.  You see, Muskrat Falls will not diversify the provincial economy. It is a public utility project.  What’s more, it does not produce any revenue other than what the people of this province will be forced to pay.  In that respect it is less of a way to diversify the economy as it is a new kind of government tax on the local economy.

But that’s okay: Paul has usually had trouble understanding this whole economic development thing.  That’s probably why Danny put him in charge of economic development at one point.

After bashing that around, the panel switched to talking about the provincial budget and health care.  Bernice Hillier – the host – asked Paul about the money in the budget for planning the new Corner brook hospital. 

Not a problem, said Paul.  The hospital is important.  The government will build it.

It’s just that times are tough, according to Paul.  The government is just slowing things down a bit until they have the money to build the hospital.

Interesting idea Paul had there.

Interesting because it is something that Oram’s old colleagues have categorically denied. 

Don’t have the money to build it now?

“That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard in a long time,” said finance minister Tom Marshall last week.   Here’s what health minister Susan Sullivan said in the House of Assembly on Monday:

What we had in the past was a replacement design. Mr. Speaker, we are much more progressive than that. We do not want a replacement of the Corner Brook hospital; we want a hospital that is going to see us into the future. Therefore, we have asked them to go back, and with this $1 million we will look at a hospital that will meet the needs of the future in terms of essential services that are going to be in that hospital, Mr. Speaker. When that is done, then we will move forward with a design concept for the facility itself.

Paul Oram was a colourful politician.

He still says some curious things. Makes you wonder what he is going to say next.

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How to make bad decisions #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale sounded genuinely exasperated last week when she chatted at length with Open Line show host Randy Simms about Muskrat Falls.

“Why,” she asked, “would a government want to develop a project that is not in the best interest of the province?”

No government would, of course.

No government ever has.

Not the current government, nor any in the past. Aside from a few naive people, the only ones who think otherwise are the nasty little partisan troll-shits who campaign with slogans like “no more give-aways” and actually believe their own propaganda.  

What goes around, comes around, as the saying goes. That seems to be why Kathy is so frustrated these days. having come to power on the basis of the “no more give-aways” propaganda, she is finding herself on the receiving end of the same sort of foolishness that she and her colleagues used to peddle about their predecessors in government.

Regular readers will recall the warning about this sort of idiocy in a post about the politics of history  in Newfoundland and Labrador:

In eight years time, they may find that many of the changes they hoped for, like massive new industries, will still be little more than the fodder for someone else's rhetoric.

Karma is a bitch, after all.

For all that, Kathy Dunderdale is convinced she is on the right track. As  she told NTV’s Issues and Answers in March, we “need to get to sanction.”

 Nothing will persuade her to change her mind.  And that, of course, is one of the surest ways there is to make a bad decision.

Go back to Kathy’s rhetorical question to Randy Simms.  It suggests that she has tied herself personally to the Muskrat Falls project. When you believe that fervently in your conclusion, you can do all sorts of things that can lead you astray

You can make a bad decision by only listening to people who agree with you.  Kathy Dunderdale has done this already:  she accepts as an expert conclusion the opinion of a lawyer with no experience other than what he’s gotten since taking up the appointment as “consumer advocate”  on the public utilities board.

And you can make a bad decision by dismissing people who don’t.  By contrast, Kathy Dunderdale suggested that former Premier Brian Peckford had very little involvement in energy policy during his 15 years in government serving both as energy minister and Premier.

You can make a bad decision by assuming you are smarter than everyone else.  Take a gander at unofficial Liberal party leader Dean MacDonald talking to CBC’s Debbie Cooper.  After slagging off the public utilities board as being nothing but disgruntled ex-Hydro employees, MacDonald notes that the people at Nalcor are among the smartest people in the world. They are the experts, according to MacDonald.  And by extension they’ve got to be right.

You can hear the same sort of thing in the way Kathy Dunderdale talks about the project:  all the experts and all the smart people back the project, according to Dunderdale.  How strange that Dean criticizes Kathy agree on everything, but yet they are perfect alignment when they talk about Muskrat Falls.  

You can make a bad decision by believing false information.  Kathy Dunderdale tied the two projects together in January in a speech to the St. John’s Board of Trade:

The gatekeepers of the natural transmission route through Quebec were denying us fair opportunity to get the power to market, and having been burnt once on the Upper Churchill, we were determined not to let that happen again.

Quebec does not have a stranglehold on Labrador development.  It’s that simple. 

You can make a bad decision by making a false connection between a current decision and the past one.  Muskrat Falls proponents love to talk about Muskrat falls in the context of the 1969 Churchill Falls contract. In that January speech, Kathy Dunderdale made the approval of the Muskrat Falls project proof that the people of the province have broken the Churchill Falls curse:

Failure to take the right course of action today would be no different than taking the wrong course of action a generation ago.

Rejecting Muskrat Falls – even if it made perfect sense for economic and rational reasons – would be an emotional failure according to Kathy Dunderdale’s construction. 

You can make a bad decision by jumping to a conclusion.  Kathy Dunderdale may like to say that Muskrat Falls is about meeting the island’s energy needs, but the truth is the project was a solution in search of a problem. The current provincial government committed to build something on the Lower Churchill in 2005.  Danny Williams tied his retirement to building the Lower Churchill.  After five years of trying, they couldn’t find any way to make it happen.

In 2010, they decided to build Muskrat Falls alone.  And everything since then has been a series of rationalisations to justify the conclusion they started with.  They did not examine alternatives before deciding to build Muskrat Falls.  They dismissed natural gas as being “purely hypothetical”.  They changed their story to claim they have looked at the alternatives and settled on Muskrat falls only after credible experts explained that natural gas from the local offshore is a viable, cheaper alternative to Muskrat Falls.

There are lots of ways to make a bad decision.

Your intention to do the right thing may not matter at all.

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The Bullshit Vision Thing #nlpoli

Dean MacDonald, the undeclared leader of the provincial Liberal Party spoke to a crowd in Port de Grave district on Saturday night.  There’s an account of his speech in the Telegram’s Monday edition.

Dean crapped on the provincial Conservatives for all sorts of things.  Most of all, he seemed to think they lack what George Bush used to call the vision thing:

“I don’t think we have a vision, I don’t think we have a plan for the province. I don’t feel that we’re all on a team who all know where we’re headed,” MacDonald said. “The party that’s been in power too long believes their own bullshit, and the party that will sweep into power doesn’t, and that’s us.”

Contrary to what the Telegram reported, MacDonald didn’t seem to offer much of a vision himself during the speech. Well, certainly the Telly didn’t report any vision-like utterances and no one who attended the session seems to talk much about Dean’s vision. The Telly just included a few quotes confirming that the handful of people in the province who still support the Liberal Party see MacDonald as the Saviour. 

This is not news.

Nor is it any sort of vision.

MacDonald reportedly spoke for 30 minutes.  He shat on Kathy Dunderdale. He has done that before.  And just as surely as he has criticised Dunderdale before, we should all remember that Kathy Dunderdale is doing nothing except continuing the plan of her predecessor, complete with his vision and using all the same people that her predecessor picked for their jobs.  Kathy Dunderdale is following the agenda of Dannyism, right down to the hydro-electric project Danny Williams used as an excuse to retire.

In January 2008, Dean told the world  - via The Independent - that what the province needed was 20 more years of Dannyism.  There’s no sign Dean  has changed his mind at all about that.  In fact, after Dean criticised Dunderdale’s unsustainable spending in 2011, he quickly sucked it all back again. 

Go back and take another look at Dean’s interview with David Cochrane last fall.  You won’t be disappointed, which is more than you can say for some of the people who attended the fundraiser on Saturday night.  Those would be the people who didn’t leap to their feet in applause at the end of Dean’s speech.  That would even include the people who did stand and applaud but who did so slowly, after others had started.  Rumours of wild enthusiasm were -  like the depth of MacDonald’s insights – greatly exaggerated. You see lots of people – not just parties in power too long – believe their own bullshit.

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The Persistence of False Information #nlpoli

In an interview on The Current last week,  Anthony Germain asked Premier Kathy Dunderdale why she wasn’t trying to sell Muskrat Falls to people in Newfoundland and Labrador as Danny Williams might have.

“If we are going to break Quebec’s stranglehold on the province…” suggested Germain, as he cast the project as an exercise in building the nation of Newfoundland. 

Well yes, all that is true agreed Dunderdale, but the project was worthwhile anyway because it gave the people of the province an asset.

Germain didn’t come up with the phrase by accident.  The official Muskrat Falls news release in November 2010 included this quote attributed to Danny Williams:

"This is a day of great historic significance to Newfoundland and Labrador as we move forward with development of the Lower Churchill project, on our own terms and free of the geographic stranglehold of Quebec which has for too long determined the fate of the most attractive clean energy project in North America…” [Emphasis added]

You’ll find variations of the same line  - about breaking the Quebec stranglehold - in most news stories on the project.  Just consider this a sample:  a news story in the Star from April 2012, a CBC online backgrounder on the project from April 2011,  a Telegraph-Journal story from April 2011, a Globe and Mail editorial from November 2010 and a gushing Canadian Business Journal piece from January 2011.

The idea that Quebec is blocking development of Labrador hydro-electricity is very familiar.  In that respect, there was nothing surprising  in the fact that Anthony Germain asked the question he did and that Kathy Dunderdale breezed over it as true and then went on to talk about some other detail of Muskrat Falls.

What is amazing about the idea is that there isn’t a shred of truth in it.

Period.

Not true.

Completely false.

We know that Quebec no longer has a stranglehold on Labrador development because Danny Williams said so.

The time:  April 2009.

The situation:  Nalcor’s sale of electricity from Churchill Falls to Emera in New York, wheeled through Quebec.

As CBC reported at the time:

"It shows that our power is not stranded power," [Williams] said.

"We're not forced to just sell it at the border to Quebec at whatever price Quebec wants to pay for it."

Now one can understand that this sort of reporting happened in late 2010 when people were still covering the events immediately in front of them.  But why has this particular piece of false information persisted in news stories about Muskrat Falls since then?

Partly it’s because politicians keep repeating the false information.  Here’s natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy in the House of Assembly on March 22:

…Gull Island is not possible because we cannot get through Quebec, …

For the mainlanders, you can put it down to the fact they just never heard of the April 2009 deal and know even less about electricity regulation in Canada and the United States.  Add to that the lousy fact-checking in the modern, highly-competitive, under-staffed newsrooms of the 21st century.

As for the locals, though, the persistence of the stranglehold claim is a bit of a head-scratcher.  After all, they covered the April 2009 wheeling deal and reported Williams comments at the time. That didn’t stop them from ignoring it entirely a year later when they covered news stories about  Nalcor’s unsuccessful appeals to the Quebec energy regulator about transmitting Labrador electricity through Quebec.

You can probably explain the locals with the Echo Chamber effect.  As it seems, the local media don’t challenge official pronouncements especially when nobody else in the community is doing so.  They report what others said or did, nothing more.   You can find a similar practice in other places, but the big difference between here and the United States, for example, is the existence in the US of strongly held and publicly expressed alternate points of view. 

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