This one is for all the musicians…band musicians, that is.
The bands of the guards regiments of the Household Division are among the best bands of their type, made up of the some of the finest musicians in the world.
Here’s a massed rehearsal recorded earlier this month and posted to youtube. leaving the music to one side for a moment, it’s fascinating to watch the director and how he conducts the rehearsal. Watch how the musicians respond to his direction and how they adjust and adapt.
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Justice minister Felix Collins offered a spectacular example on Wednesday of how serious is the current administration’s political problem.
Collins makes a complete arse of himself trying to explain why he and his colleagues are refusing to act on a promise they made in 2007 to introduce legislation that would protect public servants who disclose information - in the public interest - about wrongdoing in government.
The video of Collins’ scrum with reporters is worth watching
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy in the House of Assembly on Wednesday explaining some of the financial aspects of Muskrat Falls:
The one thing I need to make clear though to the people of this Province that any equity investment in Nalcor is on the basis of the project being sanctioned. The money stays in the Department of Natural Resources and is then disbursed to Nalcor as money is spent, Mr. Speaker. Also, it does not go to the net debt of the Province because it is a capital investment. In this particular case, Mr. Speaker, we have a revenue generating asset which can produce monies and revenues for this Province, along with hydroelectricity, for 100 years. [Emphasis added]
In the first bit he describes how the cash goes from the provincial government to Nalcor. That would be the $2.9 billion they plan to spend on the dam itself.
The problem comes with that bit in bold print.
Few people who pay attention to public life in this province will forget the abuse the provincial government - particularly former Premier Danny Williams - heaped upon Max Ruelokke for having the temerity to be a better candidate to head the offshore regulatory board than the guy the premier wanted to stuff in the job.
Ruelokke had to sue the provincial government to force them to do what the law directed.
So detestable was the provincial government’s – i.e. Danny’s - behaviour that the judge who heard the case stated in his decision:
Having considered the above, I find that the conduct of the Respondent (in relation to the Applicant) has been callous and “reprehensible” and is deserving of “reproof and rebuke”. Accordingly, I will exercise my discretion and award the Applicant his solicitor and own client costs.
We may be headed for the same mess again.
For those who remember the post from 2009 on problems some paratroops have had exiting the aircraft, here’s one that makes the old heart stop.
There is no audio so it is hard to tell exactly what happened. In any event, the fellow dangling on the end of the fouled static line and parachute assembly eventually gets to live thanks to the Hung Up Parachutist Release Assembly.
While the soldier is dangling, the crew in the back of the transport break out the HUPRA parachute rig and hook it onto him. They eventually release him and the guy floats to the ground. You can see the red nylon of the HUPRA pack just as the guy floats downward. His landing was likely a hard one, but at least he lived.
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Four years from now, Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation and Hydro-Quebec will automatically renew the 1969 power contract for another 25 years.
Everyone knows that, surely.
What you may not recall, though, is that 2016 is the year that the federal government will renew its annual payment of $8.0 million to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador under Term 29 of the Terms of Union.
In 1996, the provincial government negotiated an advance on the Term 29 payments totalling $130 million. Here’s the quote from the 1996 budget speech:
We will receive $50 million of the advance this year. The federal government has agreed to provide us with another $80 million over the three year period.
Of course, while people call them Term 29 payments, they are actually the amount set by the commission appointed under Term 29 to study the financial position of the Newfoundland and Labrador government within the first decade after Confederation.
The commission was to recommend “the form and scale of additional financial assistance, if any, that may be required by the Government of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador to enable it to continue public services at the levels and standards reached subsequent to the date of Union, without resorting to taxation more burdensome, having regard to capacity to pay, than that obtaining generally in the region comprising the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.”
The legislative authority for the payment comes from the Newfoundland Additional Financial Assistance Act.
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The townie Tories are all a-twitter over federal Dipper leader Thomas Mulcair’s endorsement of Sheilagh O’Leary for mayor of Sin Jawns in the next municipal election.
On Monday, reporters asked Premier Kathy Dunderdale about Mulcair’s comments. Here’s a bit of what she said, via CBC:
"I don't know how somebody who doesn't live here, is not on the ground, doesn't appreciate the demographics to start with and the particular issues, could be offering advice on who is best suited," said Dunderdale outside the House of Assembly Monday. [capitalization corrected]
“So the frig what?” would seem like a better, i.e. appropriately dismissive, response. Instead Kath used a comment that begs for the retort that she does it all time: talks about stuff when she doesn’t “appreciate the demographics” or understand what is going on.
An innovative cover of “Somebody that I used to know”…
And, the inevitable parody of the creative cover that is creative in a whole other way…
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The Telegram’s James McLeod took some time during a recent Estimates committee hearing on Monday to dash off a post at his blog about the ceremonial aspects of the legislature proceedings.
He mentions the number of items in the House of Assembly chamber that came as presents from other provinces after Confederation. He finishes off with this bit:
Arguably the coolest gift of them all came from B.C. They gave us a massive gold mace. The mace is so cool, it actually gets a parade every day when the House is sitting - it's a small parade, just the Speaker, and a handful of other folks, but still, a parade! You can read more about the mace here, including the old wood one that sits outside the public galleries.
The wooden mace on display in the public gallery of the House of Assembly is the one used in the first parliament in Newfoundland in 1832. How it got there is a story in itself.
As SRBP noted in an earlier post, the first step in getting yourself out of a hard political spot is to recognise that you are in a hole.
What often happens – as seen in the provincial Conservatives and the Burton Winters tragedy up to now – is that they cannot see that they are in a hole in the first place.
On Monday, the local Connies took it a step further.
One of the most telling indicators of what government does is how much legislation they put in front of the legislature for approval. After all government can only do what it is allowed to do by the House of Assembly.
Active governments that are doing lots of work usually have lots of new laws or amendments to existing ones. They are called bills until they are approved by the members of the legislature.
Compare Newfoundland and Labrador with Nova Scotia and you can get a striking contrast between two neighbouring provinces
Premier Kathy Dunderdale refused to meet with Burton Winters’ family to talk about the boy’s tragic death last winter.
The explanation offered by both the Winters family and the Premier herself is that the family wanted to talk about details of the search effort. As such, the Premier would not meet with the family. She referred them, instead, to municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien who is also the minister responsible for fire and emergency services.
The Premier’s lingering political problem just got worse.
Premier Kathy Dunderdale seems to have a chronic problem of saying things that are not correct and also saying things she does not mean.
This is not just a poor imitation of George W. Bush. Kathy Dunderdale is in a league of her own.
Politicians don’t set out to screw up but their good intentions are no proof against making bad decisions.
Tories on Twitter act like twits. Then they complain in the House of Assembly that other people are misbehaving.
Yes, they are hypocrites.
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
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.
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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.
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.
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