August is polling month for Corporate Research Associates.
In the first 15 days of the month, the provincial government announcement machinery has been running in overdrive. Realistically, though, there have only been 10 working days if you pluck out weekends and Regatta Day,when the provincial government head office in St. John’s shuts down.
They call it Site C.
No, it isn’t a sequel to Jurassic Park or The Lost World.
Site C is a 900 megawatt hydroelectric dam project in British Columbia that BC Hydro originally estimated would cost $6.0 billion. The provincial government shielded the project from scrutiny by the provincial utilities regulator.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Keep a pad of paper and a pencil beside you as you read this book.
Jot down the biases you can relate to Muskrat Falls.
Try not to cry.
____________
This is a touching, highly personal account that doesn’t take you anywhere except inside the author’s head.
That’s all you’ll need to understand what he experienced, his psychological injuries, and how far McWhirter has come to be able to tell the parts of his story that are in this book.
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Last week, the Quebec Superior Court dismissed a motion to hear an appeal from Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro over decisions taken by the Quebec’s energy regulator in 2010.
As NTV reported on Friday, “Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro asked for transmission access from Hydro-Québec TransÉnergie in January 2006. But Nalcor says it was met with delays, so it appealed to Quebec’s version of the Public Utilities Board, the Régie de l’énergie.”
That’s a fair, if very general, account of the dispute. You can see the same thing in the other media, such as the CBC’s online account. The Telegram editorial on Monday described the dispute this way – “the Régie de l'énergie rejected all requested corridors for transmitting power through Québec” - although that isn’t even close to what actually happened.
Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation tried but failed in 2012 in an effort to see hundreds of thousands of pages of confidential Hydro-Quebec documents on the 1969 Power Contract between CFLCo and Hydro-Quebec.
A decision by the Quebec access to information commissioner in November 2012 denied CF(L)Co access to the documents under a section of the provincial access to information law that excludes requests that are so large that answering them would interfere with the normal operations of the public body.
Curiously enough that’s exactly the same ruling the Newfoundland and Labrador access commissioner made on a 2008 case involving a request for access to e-mails in the Premier’s Office. In his decision, filed in January 2009, the provincial access commissioner determined that:
the number of e-mails encompassed by the request was over 119,000. At a rate of 500 e-mails per day, it would take about 8 [sic] months to process the request. The Commissioner found that this was an unreasonable interference with the operations of Executive Council.
Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One.
There’s no sign of any commemorations or other events to mark the occasion, but undoubtedly there will be plenty. Your humble e-scribbler is working to finish off a major paper that’s been in the works for far too long. It builds on some original research into Newfoundland’s involvement and pre-war defence policy.
August 7th is the anniversary of the decision by the Newfoundland cabinet on what shape the country’s participation would take. What follows is a revamped version of a post from 2007 on the same occasion.
Here’s what St. John’s mayor Dennis O’Keefe told city council on Monday, according to the Telegram on Wednesday:
O’Keefe proceeded to talk about the fact the city lost the opportunity to hold a Springsteen concert this summer because it and the promoter couldn’t come up with a suitable venue.
This summer.
2013.
Bruce toured North America last year, 2012.
This year all his gigs have been in Europe.
What gives?
Appointing Ross Reid as her chief of staff is probably the smartest thing Premier Kathy Dunderdale has ever done and will ever do.
Reid is an experienced political operator with extensive connections and reputation for bringing people together successfully.
Given all the other decisions Dunderdale has made in her political career, especially since the Williams brothers made her Premier, that’s why this one just does not fit.
Cabinet made 12 appointments at the deputy minister and assistant deputy minister rank in the second quarter of the 2013 calendar year (01 April to 30 June).
The information comes from cabinet orders (orders-in-council) needed to make these appointments and released by the provincial government via its website.
That’s consistent with the 15 appointments made between 01 January and 31 March.
If the pattern continues, the provincial government will make a record 60 such appointments by the end of the calendar year, bettering the previous record of 49 set in 2012.
This does not include recent changes in the Premier’s Office or cabinet secretariat.
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If you want some really sharp insight into the latest developments in the Muskrat Falls saga, check out the Thursday post at Uncle Gnarley titled “Don’t tell the Newfoundlanders”.
Don’t stop when you get to the end.
Read the comments. There are 10 more from different people who add even more insight. Here’s a sample:
Des:
The Emera application was issued on January 28, 2013.
As soon as the carrot of Figure 4-4 was put in front of the UARB, Nalcor should have realised they were going to grab it, and refuse to give the carrot back. The process was de-railed as soon as this Figure 4-4 was shown to the people of Nova Scotia.
Newfoundlanders should read through the UARB hearings. There was a great deal of dialogue between Nalcor and Emera about surplus power availability. Yet during the June 2013 AGM, Ed Martin responded to questioning from Jim Morgan that he was not approached by Emera about surplus power. Something does not correlate. Something does not add up.
But if you want to see what benefits an open and transparent process brings, then read the economics that were presented to the UARB [Excel file at the bottom of the link above] A clear summary of the costs, the returns, and when the equity will be repaid. This is a level of detail and clarity that Newfoundlanders are yet to see, on a project which we will pay for.
Here in Newfoundland we have a premier who is now saying that the link does not require UARB approval. But if the cost are not recovered in the rate base (15 cents/kwhr) how will it be paid for on the open Market (5 cents)? Who pays?\
Our premier should also understand that in accordance with the National Energy Board, before any power is sold in the US it must first be offered to Canadian utilities at commercially competitive terms. So if they build a link with the intent to sell it to New England at 4 cents, then the terms of their NEB report license dictate that Nalcor will first must offer it to Nova Scotians at 4 cents.
Premier Dunderdale may get Premier Dexter re-elected yet.
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The Thursday morning post of Liberal leadership campaign videos included a technical note that explained why the videos in it didn’t fit with the formatting here at SRBP.
The reason for the problem – as the post noted – is that the people who posted the videos at youtube put some limitations on the embedding code. This simple point apparently escaped a couple of readers who spent some time lecturing about how your humble e-scribbler could scale the youtube videos or edit the code.
*sigh*
Leave entirely to one side the spectacle of the guy who gets paid as the consumer advocate sitting there on the CBC flailing his arms around explaining Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro’s latest rate request.
Tom Johnson sounded like a Hydro spokesperson as he went on about things called “puts” and how this sort of cost was up, and this was offset by something else. Prices on the island would go down, therefore, while in Labrador, where the issues are different, costs would go up.
Johnson did a better job of defending Nalcor than he did during Muskrat Falls.
Leave that to one side.
For those who want to read them, here are two decisions related to Brad Cabana’s recent Muskrat Falls case.
The first is the decision on his application to have the judge remove herself from the case:
Watch too many crime shows and after a while a few of the ideas start to sing into your skull.
Take blood spatter for example. In some kinds of violent death, lots of blood will fly around. The drops leave a distinctive spray pattern that can tell you lots about what went on.
And then there is sometimes the bits of the pattern that are missing. There is sometimes a void, a gap where something that the blood spattered on is missing.
The void – the missing stuff - sometimes tells much more than what is there.
Konrad Yakabuski warned in 2006 that Newfoundland and Labrador would probably get a huge financial shock trying to develop the Lower Churchill on its own.
Now, the knowledgeable Globe and Mail correspondent is back again with the observation that revenge motive behind Muskrat Falls is not a very successful business strategy… for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Consider this a public service for all those people who tweeted his commentary over the weekend thinking that he was chastising Hydro-Quebec.
Guess again.
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