Democracy is a beautiful thing.
The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are witnessing its full beauty in the filibuster against the Conservative government’s latest assault on openness, transparency and accountability.
The real political division in society is between authoritarians and libertarians.
Democracy is a beautiful thing.
The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are witnessing its full beauty in the filibuster against the Conservative government’s latest assault on openness, transparency and accountability.
Here’s a map showing the possible seat results for an election where the Tories wind up with 41% of the vote, the NDP get 38% and the Liberals get 20%. That’s basically the next public opinion poll from CRA if the current trending continues.
Rarely does one cabinet minister put on not one or two spectacular displays of incompetence in one session of the legislature, but justice minister Felix Collins has done that this spring in less than a month.
“We will amend the Access to Information legislation to enhance the transparency of government actions and decisions.”
Danny Williams, Leader of the Opposition, February 2003
There truly is a greater fraud than a promise unkept. That would be the promise that is consciously and deliberately broken.
In February 2003, the provincial Conservatives – then in opposition – pledged to increase public access to government information. The latest round of changes to the provincial access to information law suggests they are continuing their practice of hiding as much information they can.
Here are some examples of the sorry provincial Connie legacy of Freedom from Information:
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Last Friday, your humble e-scribbler gazed into the old crystal ball and produced a possible poll result if the recent trends continued.
If you reported them the way Corporate Research Associates does, you’d get the Tories at 42%, NDP at 38% and Liberals at 20%.
Wonder what that might mean to seat counts if you had that as an election result?
As a rule, when a cabinet minister speaks publicly about a private sector company’s significant financial problems, things are not good.
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the world on Friday and Saturday that Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited had a heavy bank debt and an unfunded pension liability of about $80 million. Kennedy said the mill that hasn’t made money since at least 2006.
Things are so bad that Kennedy that he expected Joe Kruger was coming for a meeting to tell the provincial government he was closing the west coast paper mill.
So why was Kennedy gabbing about stuff he’d known about for some time but kept to himself?
"I would go to an election tomorrow on these numbers," Premier Kathy Dunderdale told reporters on Thursday. "You know, these aren't bad numbers. Look where my opposition is."
Fair enough. They are pretty good. It’s the trending that sucks.
But if Kathy Dunderdale is so confident in her strong public support and in the rightness of her Muskrat Falls cause, maybe she’d drop the writ and let the public settle the issue.
It can be a matter of days or weeks after it's been tabled before a piece of legislation makes it to the floor of the House of Assembly for second reading.
This interval is the crux of what we're talking about here today.
“Premier Dunderdale has the highest personal popularity of all Atlantic Canadian Premiers” the Tory faithful tweeted and retweeted on Thursday night to help ward off the chill of recent polls. It was the 21st century equivalent of clicking their ruby slippers together and whispering that there was no place like home.
Sadly for the darlings, they did not have Toto and this is not Kansas, anyway.
The toll the Tories mentioned came from Angus-Reid. In it, 46% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians approved of Kathy Dunderdale’s performance while 44% disapproved. She may score the highest of the Atlantic Premiers but with the population evenly divided on her, she is not doing all that well. As your humble e-scribbler reminded them, what they were really saying is that their hero du jour just didn’t suck as much as Darrell Dexter. Big deal.
Anyone who was wondering why the Tories ramped up the attacks on the NDP this week can now find the answer. The clue to the future is that the Tory attacks were pathetically weak and ineffective. Rather than deliver a killer virus, all the Tories did was help the NDP build up their immune system.
Bad move.
The news: the provincial Conservatives had the support of 34% of respondents in the last Corporate Research Associates poll, about 11 percentage points ahead of the provincial New Democrats.
These are numbers you get if you take out the CRA skew of talking only about decideds. Here’s a picture of the party choice numbers, including the undecideds since last year, just so we are all on the same page.
That black line is the undecideds.
Now here’s what it all means.
The best answer to the Old Man’s latest bullshit about his mine and Muskrat Falls is what he used to say to companies that wanted to get the province’s non-renewable resources at a bargain:
And on a related note, remember what he said to established Labrador miners in 2006/2007:
"We do acknowledge that this is a huge company which makes a big contribution," Williams told CBC News.
"By the same token, they also have to understand that we have to get a fair return for the people of this province."
Alderon should expect to pay the commercial rates for electricity set by the public utilities board using the current rate-setting approach, not the taxpayer subsidised give-away Danny set up before he ran from office.
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Wonder no more, dear friends.
Stop scratching your chin.
Now we know why Nalcor and Emera have not signed a deal now some four or five months after saying they were so close to finishing their negotiations that they didn’t need to set a new deadline.
In advance of the latest Corporate Research Associates poll, check out the SRBP post on the February results.
Here’s the Tory voter choice number, over time, compared to actual vote results in 2003 and 2007 and in 2011.
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Talk of financial problems at Eastern Health brought to mind an operational review of the former Health Care Corporation of St. John’s, completed by the Hay Group and released in May 2002.
Go back to the official record of the House of Assembly – Hansard – and you’ll quickly be struck by the similarity between the way the opposition approached the issue then and now.
Consider these comments by Ross Wiseman, the Liberal who crossed the floor to the Tories and later served as health minister:
The union says, once again nurses and other health professionals in this Province are holding their breath to see if their jobs are going to be lost.
Fear of lost jobs. Wiseman asking the minister if he will reject the report.
All too familiar.
Not surprisingly, Kruger issued an ultimatum on Tuesday to workers at its Corner Brook mill. CBC quoted the message from the company to the union in an online story:
"The first step to go forward will be to obtain a firm committment [sic] from employees by achieving a satisfactory agreement that will allow CBPPL to be competitive in the market," said the Kruger statement.
"Given the critical situation of the mill, this collective agreement will have to be reached by June 15 so that we can quickly move on to the next crucial step, which will be to submit the pension plan funding relief measures to a second vote and hopefully be able to apply them before the mill’s situation deteriorates any further."
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As an astute reader pointed out in a n e-mail Tuesday morning, the Hebron-Muskrat Falls connection is not really as important these days as the the connection between the future of the Kruger mill at Corner Brook and the plan to develop the Lower Churchill.
Manitoba Hydro International noted that connection in their review of part of the Muskrat Falls project for the public utilities board. In instance, a relatively modest change in the project cost coupled with the closure of the Corner Brook mill, erased the Muskrat Falls advantage:
Also, should the existing pulp and paper mill cease operations, and its generation capacity be available for use on the system (approximately 880 GWh), and should the capital costs of both the Muskrat Falls Generating Station and Labrador-Island Link HVdc projects increase by 10%, the CPW for the two Options would be approximately equal.
Nalcor has no export markets for most of the electricity from Muskrat Falls.
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy is right:
“There's obviously an obligation…on any member in this house when presenting a petition to ensure that accuracy, to ensure that statements made to this house are ones that can be relied on ... This is a very serious matter."
The obligation for accuracy doesn’t just apply to petitions. It applies to everything a member of the legislature says.
And if the member of the House is also a cabinet minister or the Premier, then the obligation for accuracy goes up another few notches.
Dunderdale said she expected there would be a second vote on the pension restructuring plan.So while the pols are laying on the tough talk in a fairly obvious effort to sway the mulligan vote, what the rest of us should wonder is how much public money the politicians plan to pour into the mill to keep it running.
Once those issues are resolved, she said, the government is committed to stepping in to ensure that the mill is sustainable.