2050 hrs – Mulligan Update – scroll to the end
Leo Abbass is the mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
He is a staunch of supporter of the Conservative Party. He is such a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party – federal or provincial – that he can sometimes take on the appearance of the Pushme-Pullyou from Doctor Dolittle.
PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, somewhere in this process I will hopefully have the opportunity to demonstrate to people where their requests for information come from, and that is going to be very eye-opening to the people of the Province. Ordinary citizens who look to access information from this government do so readily, Mr. Speaker. They do it in record time, Mr. Speaker, at little or no cost. There are lots of vexatious requests for information, lots of phishing expeditions, Mr. Speaker, but they do not come from ordinary people here in the Province.
The temperature in the House of Assembly is not even cooled down and Tory legislator Paul Lane (Mount Pearl South) is likely to find himself in the middle of a controversy involving the disclosure of personal information that is supposed to be protected under the Access to Information and Protection of Personal Privacy Act.
Lorraine Michael should bear in mind that some very famous Newfoundland and Labrador politicians found themselves accused of defaming someone.
That’s really the essence of the current question of privilege Government House Leader Jerome Kennedy levelled against her last week. Kennedy knows the law well enough to know that what she did is a matter that he or Felix Collins ought to have taken to a courtroom on Duckworth Street. Kennedy likely also knows the law well enough to realise he stands virtually no hope of getting anything from a Supreme Court justice except the back of his or her hand. That’s why he is trying to win in the kangaroo court where he controls a majority of the votes.
To some people the provincial Conservatives are in fine political shape. They are so firmly entrenched in power that they can afford to piss people off, to polarise the electorate.
There is always time to recover.
Yeah well, when you humble e-scribbler started predicting that Danny Williams would not run for a third term, plenty of people thought that was crazy too, and said so. 18 months before the event it seemed impossible. Even a few weeks and days in advance, the Old Man looked like he planned to stay until he died in office.
Funny how things change.
In a speech to the House of Assembly on 14 June 2012, Collins used derogatory terms to refer to CLD, and claimed we had financial motives in publicising our research. CLD is no stranger to working in difficult political environments. Over the past year, we have conducted projects in Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Somalia and many other countries that are known for being particularly hostile to democratising forces. However, this is the first time that the integrity and professionalism of our organisation have ever been directly attacked by a political leader. [Emphasis added]
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MONTREAL, June 15, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ - Resolute Forest Products (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) today announced that it will indefinitely idle the Mersey newsprint mill located in Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. The facility, owned by Bowater Mersey Paper Company Limited (BMPCL), is a joint venture between Resolute (51%) and the Washington Post (49%). The indefinite idling will be effective on Sunday, June 17, 2012.
"The mill produces newsprint primarily for export markets and is unable to compete due to declining prices in those markets, caused mainly by unfavorable currency fluctuations, stated Richard Garneau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Resolute. "The decision to indefinitely idle production at the facility was difficult as we are mindful of the impact it will have on affected employees and local communities. We have worked diligently with the provincial government, our employees, union leadership and other stakeholders but simply could not overcome the inherent challenges."
The Company remains committed to customer service and delivery of high-quality products and will work closely with customers to ensure a smooth transition.
This indefinite idling will reduce capacity by approximately 250,000 metric tons of newsprint. Approximately 320 employees at the Mersey paper mill, associated woodlands, Oakhill sawmill and Brooklyn Power Corporation will be affected by this action. Resolute will continue to work collaboratively with governments to ensure that impacted employees are provided support during this transition.
The Company is currently assessing the feasibility of selling all of its assets in Nova Scotia, including its private timberlands, the paper mill, sawmill and Brooklyn Power.
...
For further information:
Media and Others
Seth Kursman
Vice President, Corporate Communications, Sustainability and Government Affairs
514 394-2398
seth.kursman@resolutefp.com
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There’s something about this frivolous and vexatious thing that caught people’s attention right from the start.
Under the provincial Conservatives’ new secrecy laws, a cabinet minister can refuse to disclose information if he or she thinks the request is “frivolous or vexatious”. (sec. 43.1)
Leave aside the idea that a politician gets to decide on who gets information and who doesn’t. As we learned from the Cameron Inquiry, Danny Williams and his political staff vetted access to information requests and blocked stuff they didn’t want to hand over or blocked people they didn’t want to give stuff to. The law didn’t matter. They refused. They stonewalled. They used every other trick in the book.
But that’s a whole other issue.
Let’s just look at this curious choice of words and see what they reveal.
The more they talk, the worse it gets.
In the House of Assembly on Thursday, justice minister Felix Collins gave some examples of what he would consider "frivolous and vexatious” requests for information.
Now before we go any further, we should explain what those words usually mean to lawyers. After all, Collins is a lawyer so he should understand the concept.
This definition is taken from a 2010 Ontario Court of Appeal decision in a case called Pickard v. London Police Services Board (canlii.org via Morton’s Musings):
[19] A frivolous appeal is one readily recognizable as devoid of merit, as one having little prospect of success. The reasons may vary. A vexatious appeal is one taken to annoy or embarrass the opposite party, sometimes fuelled by the hope of financial recovery to relieve the respondent’s aggravation.
One of the examples, Collins gave was of a person who asked for copies of e-mails sent and received by seven people over the course of year. Frivolous and vexatious harrumphed the law school graduate. And now under Bill 29 a cabinet minister can dismiss such a request out of hand and save time and money.
There are a few problems with Felix’s example.
Justice minister Felix Collins and his colleagues are having a bad week. Felix and his buds want to limit public access to government information. They want to make it harder for people to find out what they are doing with public money.
People don’t like it and they’ve been making that clear to them.
Felix and his friends got especially angry when an assessment of their new secrecy rules showed that what Felix and company were claiming wasn’t true. far from being a model of openness, transparency and accountability, the Conservatives were taking massive steps backward.
So infuriated did the Conservatives get that they issued a statement late Wednesday night taking issue with the CBC report. The statement. It read, in part:
The Department of Justice has reviewed the global ranking of countries assembled by the centre. What the news story does not make clear is that most countries that ranked the highest or strongest on this list are third world countries. Many of these countries are listed on travel alert watch lists, have known human rights abuses and high crime rates.
So?
“Oil and democracy do not easily mix,” wrote political scientist Michael Ross in The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations, his 2012 study of the impact that income from oil development has on governments around the world.
Regular readers will recall this idea from an earlier post.
Countries that are rich in petroleum generally have lower economic growth and less democracy that countries that don’t have oil revenues. Ross puts this down, in part, to a relationship that citizens see between government revenue and government spending.
Citizens in oil-producing countries, though, cannot directly observe how much their government collects in oil revenues. They must rely on the government and the media for their information. If they live in a democracy, the information is probably available.
Probably available.
That assumes, of course, that the media in those democracies can find out the information and publish it.
CBC demolished the false claims a couple of Conservative cabinet ministers made in order to justify their efforts to destroy the public’s access to government information.
Democracy is a beautiful thing.
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.
“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
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.