House of Cards (Part A) #nlpoli

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This is the third in a four part series on the current financial crisis the provincial government is facing.  The first instalment – “The origins of rentierism in Newfoundland and Labrador” – appeared on Tuesday and the second – “Other People’s Money”  - appeared on Wednesday.  The third instalment – “Rentierism at the national and sub-national level” -  appeared on Thursday.

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Finance minister Jerome Kennedy told the Telegram’s James McLeod on Wednesday that the provincial government had a structural deficit problem.

His proof was that government spent 60% or so of its total outlay each year on the social sector.  That includes health, social services, justice, and education.  If that’s what Jerome is worried about then he and his cabinet colleagues should know that in 2005, they spent 67% of their budget on the social sector.  In 2003,  the last year the Liberals ran the place, they spent about 64% of the budget on the social sector.

Before he goes all Grim Reaper, Jerome should know spending that kind of percentage on the social sector isn’t unusual for governments across Canada.  That’s been pretty much the norm since the late 1960s when governments introduce publicly-funded health care. In Ontario in 2012, for example, all but about $30 billion of the government’s $126 billion budget went to social program spending.

That doesn’t mean the provincial government doesn’t have a huge financial problem. They do. It just means that Jerome is looking in the wrong place to find a sign of it.

Rentierism at the national and sub-national level #nlpoli

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This is the third in a four part series on the current financial crisis the provincial government is facing.  The first instalment – “The origins of rentierism in Newfoundland and Labrador” – appeared on Tuesday and the second – “Other People’s Money”  - appeared on Wednesday.

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A rentier is a person who lives off the income from property and investments.  That distinguishes a rentier from a person who earns income through labour.

For the past 40 years or so some political scientists and economists have studied something called a rentier state.  In simplest terms, a rentier state is one that derives a significant portion of its national government income from the money they get from oil and other high-value, but volatile commodities.  [FN 1]

For our purposes, we’ll rely on a definition of “significant portion” as being 40% or more of  government income.  [FN 2] We’ll also focus the discussion on states that derive most of their income from oil.

What we are talking about here goes by several names including  the Dutch Disease or even the resource curse.   Jeffrey Frankel of the Kennedy School of Government put it this way:

It has been observed for some decades that the possession of oil, natural gas, or other valuable mineral deposits or natural resources does not necessarily confer economic success. Many African countries such as Angola, Nigeria, Sudan, and the Congo are rich in oil, diamonds, or other minerals, and yet their peoples continue to experience low per capita income and low quality of life. Meanwhile, the East Asian economies Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have achieved western-level standards of living despite being rocky islands (or peninsulas) with virtually no exportable natural resources. Auty (1993, 2001) is apparently the one who coined the phrase “natural resource curse” to describe this puzzling phenomenon. …

Other People’s Money #nlpoli

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This is the second in a four part series that offers an interpretation of the current financial crisis the provincial government is facing.  The first instalment – “The origins of rentierism in Newfoundland and Labrador” – appeared on Tuesday.

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As much as people imagine a great difference between the Confederate and anti-Confederate forces during the National Convention, the two agreed on one thing:  someone else would have to pay for Newfoundland’s return to responsible government.

The London delegation asked the British government to provide the erstwhile country with money. The British balked, pleading their own financial hardship after a long and costly war.  That refusal is largely what prompted Peter Cashin to claim that the British were trying to sell the country the Canadians.  As many words that have been spilled and as many books sold trying to prove the conspiracy existed,  there’s never been a shred of proof that such a plot ever existed outside Cashin’s frustration.

The Ottawa delegation found wealthy Canada more receptive to the Newfoundlanders expectations and after a first referendum and a run-off vote, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians voted to become part of Canada.  For Labradorians the moment was especially sweet.  The National Convention and the referenda were the first time any residents of the mainland part of the country had ever been allowed to vote.

Structural Versus Cyclical: a quick look #nlpoli

Is the government facing a structural or cyclical deficit?

Good question.  Their economist says it is a structural problem but his comments to the Telegram on March 13 suggest he is approaching the problem as if it would sort itself out.

The whole structural versus cyclical question hinges in part on the question of government revenue when the economy is working at full output versus when it isn;t.  Well, in Newfoundland and Labrador, that is a bit hard to figure, especially when the government claims that locally everything is great but that it doesn’t have any money.

People get confused.

Well, one  way to start getting a handle on this is to look at the 2011 and 2012 budgets and the related income and spending.

The Origins of Rentierism in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

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Over the next four days, SRBP will offer an interpretation of the political underpinnings of the current financial crisis.  This series goes beyond the immediate to place recent events in both historical and comparative, international perspective. 

The first two instalments briefly describe some characteristics of the political system and Newfoundland political history before 1934 and from 1949 to about 1990.  The third post will look at the concept of the rentier state and the relationship between dependence on primary resource extraction and politics at the subnational level (states and provinces).  The fourth post will place recent developments in Newfoundland and Labrador in the larger context. 

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Before 1949, the Newfoundland government’s main source of income was taxation of imports and exports.  The Amulree Commission reported, for example, that the government brought in around $8.0 million dollars in the fiscal year ending in 1933.  Of that, 71%  - $5.7 million  - came from customs and excise duties.  The next largest amount was $700,000 (about 9% of total) that came from income tax while the third largest source of income was postal and telegraph charges totalling slightly more than $587,000.

Newfoundland also had almost no experience of local government before the Commission Government in 1934.  St. John’s was the only incorporated municipality and the city council was quasi-independent of the national government. 

Beyond the capital city, the national government “managed a highly centralized system through the stipendiary magistrates stationed in each electoral district, “in the words of historian James Hiller in his recent note on the Trinity Bay controverted election trial in 1895(FN 1).  The central government also appointed the members of some local  boards to manage education and roads.  The money for all of it came from accounts controlled by St. John’s.

The members of the House of Assembly had enormous control over government and that public money.

Hobson’s Choice #nlpoli

The provincial Conservatives love to spend public money. 

That doesn’t sound very conservative and it isn’t.  Politically, the provincial Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador are more like Republicans than the Progressive Conservatives who used to run the province in the 1980s. American Republicans like to cut federal taxes and jack up federal spending and then blame the resulting financial meltdown on the Democrats.

Around these parts, the Reform-based Conservative Party, as the Old Man used to call them, blames everything on the Liberals.  That is the Liberals who, in case you missed it,  haven’t been in power in a decade.

After ever after

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Not so funny now, is it, Peter? #nlpoli

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The Wrong Tool #nlpoli

About two thirds of the people in the province who file tax returns earn less than $35,000 a year before taxes.

It’s the kind of detail that you cannot banish from your mind when you read about the politically popular economist Wade Locke.  The guy who directly and indirectly helped the provincial government create the current financial mess is on a leave from his university job to help with the new budget.

As the Telegram reported on Wednesday, Locke’s “contract with the government stipulates that he'll be paid $250 per hour for his consulting work to a maximum of $75,000.”  That would be on top of the 80% or more of his university salary that he is entitled to for being on what the faculty contract calls a “sabbatical” leave.

The Telegram also reported that Locke said he would only bill taxpayers one dollar at the end of his contract.  Let’s take him at his word.

Still, you have to wonder why he would sign a contract in the first place for more than twice what most people in the province make in a year.  Don’t misunderstand.  A consultant should get what he can earn and if Locke can get someone to pay $250 an hour for his services, then more power to him.  Given the context, though,  the contract is still rather distasteful.

Locke’s supporters will defend any amount of money because they value his advice. And that’s really where we can peel back the cover on this little can and see what is inside.

Land of Confusion meets World of Hurt #nlpoli

From Tuesday’s Hansard comes this chilling reminder that even the Premier has no idea what is going on with the province’s finances.

Mr. Speaker, I again have to implore the members opposite to stop pretending that you do not understand the fiscal structure of the Province. The $600 million that was earmarked in the Department of Natural Resources was not contained in the current budget, Mr. Speaker. That was contained in investment. There is a difference between a capital budget, the investment budget, and the current budget. 

Muskrat Falls has nothing to do with the deficit we are experiencing this year…

Let’s break it down.

The Ongoing Net Debt Fallacy #nlpoli

In a post that starts out about Muskrat Falls, the Telegram’s James McLeod does a fine job of laying out some basic information about debt, deficit, current account, capital account and other bits of the provincial budget.

Read it.  Unless you have been living this sort of stuff up close for years, you will learn something.  If nothing else, you’ll get some insight into how some local politicians have been buggering up this sort of stuff because frankly it is complicated and they don’t understand it.

Regular readers of these scribbles will know that SRBP includes Kathy Dunderdale and Tom Marshall among the people who get confused.  You can add others from all parties.

The Arse that Laid the Golden Turd #nlpoli

The provincial cabinet has been burning the midnight oil the past couple of nights. 

Literally. 

Late night sessions that ended God-knows-when, night after night.

Apparently, they are trying to figure out what to do in order to get out of the massive financial and political hole they have dug for themselves over the past decade.

As bizarre as that might seem to some people,  the politicians who created the mess have no idea yet what they are going to do.  All that Premier Kathy Dunderdale and finance minister Jerome Kennedy have been able to offer lately are lots of vague comments about when the budget might be or how many lay-offs there might be. Dunderdale put a number of 500 lay-offs out there a few days ago but frankly, that’s about as reliable as her forecasts from last year. 

And when Jerome told David Cochrane that they were still working out the Sustainability Plan, he was not bullshitting.  He meant it, even though he claimed they had already started implementing the plan last year.

If you are familiar with government budgets and how these things normally get sorted, then odds are you are reading this now that someone has been able to revive your unconscious form.  

Are you ready for this again? #nlpoli

It seems like only yesterday that the young man from the Pearl was the mayor of the cozy city.

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Tories below 30 #nlpoli

By now you’d be living in a cave if you hadn’t heard any news of the latest Corporate Research Associates poll.

The NDP are slightly ahead of the Tories and both are about 10 percentage points ahead of the Liberals.  More people want Lorraine Michael as Premier than want Kathy Dunderdale.  And a majority are unsatisfied with the government.

Now this is an historic set of poll results as Don Martin tweeted to tease people about the release on Monday morning.  The release doesn’t make any reference to that, preferring instead just reporting the results blandly.  By contrast, Mills hyped the living crap out of poll results a few years ago that hit historic highs. 

More and Less #nlpoli

Finance minister Jerome Kennedy is supposed to know about the economy and stuff.

During an interview with CBC provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane for On Point, Kennedy said that in the 1990s the government was the main employer in the province.  The implication was that the public sector wasn’t what it used to be.  People laid off from the public service could find work much more easily in the private sector as a result.

Well…

Err…..

No.

Muskrat Falls weakness: the North Spur #nlpoli

The north side of the site of the future Muskrat Falls dam has a problem.  The soil is made up of clay that has a tendency to sheer away in landslides when it gets too wet. The North Spur, as it is known, is a key part of the reservoir.

Cabot Martin has documented the whole thing in a slide presentation based on documents released during the environmental reviews of the project.

According to Martin, Nalcor won’t have a potential solution to the problem or know the cost until sometime this year.

No adult supervision #nlpoli

Not even 24 hours after the Premier insisted that the daily layoffs would continue until finance minister Jerome Kennedy delivered his budget speech,  Jerome issued a news release  - at 1:30 PM - announcing that they would be holding off on further layoff announcements until he delivered the budget speech.

As it turned out, NTV’s Mike Connors had tweeted around noon that the “Premier says government has decided to stop the trickle of layoffs until budget day.”  CBC’s David Cochrane tweeted the same thing.

Cochrane and Connors also noted that -  as Cochrane put it -  “Premier says more than 500 jobs will be cut in budget. Not all layoffs. There is retirement incentive. No more cuts until budget.”

Meanwhile, 17 employees in a raft of departments got word today that they were headed for the door. 

Apparently, those are the last ones until the budget speech.

Body Count #nlpoli

“We've now confirmed 98 layoffs across government today,” tweeted CBC provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane on Thursday afternoon.  “Working on departmental breakdown…” 

Cochrane broadcast the casualty figures for each department later:

Breakdown by department: 10 Advanced education/skills. 6 CYFS. 13 Environment. 4 Finance. 6 Fisheries. 23 Health. …7 Exec Council. 2 IBRT. 10 Justice. 9 Natural Res. 2 Tourism. 6 Transportation. 62 of 98 jobs cut were union jobs.

That’s the way it has been for the province’s political reporters since the end of February. Cochrane, NTV’s Mike Connors, and the Telegram’s James McLeod tweet on how many layoffs happened on that day, the number in each department,  how many belonged to which union and how many were non-unionised.

No planning and priorities: Conservative cabinet committees - 2013 #nlpoli

There’s one little gem in James McLeod’s pile of censored orders in council that isn’t censored.

It dates from January 2013 and gives the current list of cabinet committees.

There’s the economic policy committee:

There’s the social policy committee:


There’s the treasury board:

And there’s the routine matters committee:

Charlene Johnson and Tom Hedderson also sit on that routine committee.

There’s a curious omission in this list and it doesn’t appear to be a case where the committee make-up didn’t change after the cabinet shuffle with Jerome Kennedy and Tom Marshall.

There’s no planning and priorities committee, apparently. That’s odd because P and P is usually the key cabinet committee chaired by the Premier and responsible for the strategic direction of government. Kathy used to have one in her cabinet.  Every cabinet in Canada uses a planning and priorities committee.  Most have had one for the past three decades or more.

At some point, the Newfoundland and Labrador one seems to have vanished without an effective replacement.

That would explain a great deal.

It would explain, for example, why the Premier often seems to be unaware of what is going on inside her government.  She wouldn’t know because she doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the running of cabinet.  And that, more than anything else, is what the Premier is supposed to be doing. 

Rather than being the boss, Kathy Dunderdale often appears to be nothing more than the government’s official spokesperson, the dead parrot as it were.

In the absence of a P and P committee,  cabinet would have to hope that the key committee chairs could sort out among themselves what to do.  They would be:

• Joan Shea, chair of economic policy,
• Susan Sullivan, chair of social policy, and,
• Jerome Kennedy, president of treasury board.

Whatever the government is doing, these three would know about it and approve of it. 
In December 2010, cabinet had a P and P committee.  It’s members were:

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The New Secret Nation #nlpoli

On the front page of Wednesday’s Telegram was another instalment in James McLeod’s blockbuster on the provincial government’s policy of censoring public documents.

This one focused on the claim by a spokesperson for the public engagement office that orders in council were not covered by a section of the province’s access to information law that prohibits disclosure of cabinet decisions even though the orders are essentially cabinet decisions.

At the same time, the spokesperson said the orders were subject to other sections of the act that allowed government officials to censor them selectively.

Yes, that is exactly as screwed-up as it sounds.