Frank Coleman’s idea for change in Newfoundland and Labrador is to keep everything the way it is.
As CBC reported in March, “Coleman said one of his priorities if he assumed the role of premier would be to maintain the economic momentum created by the Tories.”
He might even want to roll back the clock a bit, too, on some things.
But on economic policy, Coleman is firmly committed to the Conservative plan to use public money to subsidize private sector businesses.
Nalcor’s effort to have local taxpayers subsidize electricity exports to Massachusetts came up in the House of Assembly on Thursday.
Well, sort of came up.
New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael asked a couple of lame questions and got – not surprisingly - a few equally lame answers.
Here they are, in their entirety.
Farley Mowat passed away on May 7, 2014, aged 92.
The prolific Canadian writer and environmentalist was just shy of his 93rd birthday on May 12.
Mowat wrote about his experiences in three books: The regiment (1955), And no birds sang (1979), and My father’s son (1993).
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If nothing else, the controversy over the sweet heart deal the provincial Conservatives cut with Frank Coleman’s son at Humber Valley Paving should dispel the fairy tale that Coleman and his family are political outsiders.
They are very much the quintessential political insiders.
Transportation minister Nick McGrath admitted to reporters on Tuesday that he’d never been involved in a negotiation before about road paving contracts like the one with Gene Coleman for Humber Valley Paving.
That takes juice. In itself, that should give an idea as to why the deal stands out in people’s minds and why the Coleman influence is obviously so strong. The Coleman influence is so strong, in fact, that it clouds people’s minds.
[In a hole with a jack-hammer update at bottom]
The controversy around Humber Valley Paving got worse for the provincial Conservatives on Monday as transportation minister Nick McGrath confirmed that he actually released $19 million in performance and goods bond’s supplied by the paving company despite the fact they failed to complete the tender as original awarded.
But that’s not all.
Put McGrath’s comments in the House on Monday together with media reports last week and you have a pretty clear picture of the pretty sweet deal McGrath cut with HVP.
Nice to be wrong update: The Liberals started Question Period on Monday hammering the Conservatives over the Humber Valley Paving controversy.
This is a big story with huge implications.
Original post follows
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As far as when Frank Coleman might find the time to get around to taking over the Premier’s job, not much as it seems.
It’s till vague, undefined, and potentially will happen quite some time from now.
He appeared on VOCM Open Line on Friday and still talked about wanting to take the job some unspecified time after July 5th. As for when he will get a seat in the House, Coleman is still talking – hypothetically – about some unspecified time in “the fall.”
Some people might think the cabinet shuffle changed a lot. The Telegram editorial board is hung up on the cost.
Meh.
The provincial Conservative Party is in the midst of such an intense revival of interest only about a dozen people turned out on Wednesday night for the annual general meeting of the district association in Mount Pearl South.
They were there to elect delegates to the party convention in July. Even though there’s no leadership contest, you’d expect that a party on the rebound might manage to attract more than 12 or so to a delegate selection meeting.
A few weeks ago all of 126 people turned out in Charlene Johnson’s district and that was when they actually still had a leadership race. That’s 10 times the number that showed up in Mount Pearl. It is still a far cry from what the Liberals – in about the same spot in 2001 as the Conservatives these days - managed to turn out in their leadership contest at the time. It’s also a far cry from what Conservatives turned out in their past either.
Renewal and revival just aren’t what they used to be or what they seem or something.
After 13 days, Nalcor boss Ed martin finally responded to a simple request from the Telegram’s James McLeod for an explanation of what impact a delay in construction might have on project interest costs.
Read McLeod’s original article from Wednesday Telly. it’s a tidy summary of what Martin told him about that specific issue.
The problem for taxpayers is that Martin did his usual job of only talking about what he wanted to talk about. He didn’t try to explain the whole thing to McLeod in such a way that he could actually get the full impact of what was going on.
Martin’s interview was highly political, in other words. Unfortunately for Martin, McLeod posted back-up information consisting of the audio of the whole interview plus a couple of pages of background from Nalcor. They reveal a lot more than the company has previously disclosed.
The Alberta Conservatives are looking for a new leader. The old one quit last month amid a caucus revolt and a loss of popularity in polls.
Former federal cabinet minister Jim Prentice is interested in the job, as are a few provincial cabinet ministers.
A source close to the campaign told CBC that Prentice will make an announcement in a few weeks “at which time he will outline his vision for the province.”
According to the Calgary Herald, some of the likely contenders might drop out once Prentice confirms that he is in. According to the Herald:
Political analyst Duane Bratt from Mount Royal University said with Prentice now running to be the next premier, he expects the PC leadership contest will “not be competitive” as the former MP gains support from across the party.
Unlike other would-be candidates from within the Tory cabinet ranks, Prentice won’t carry any of the baggage of the unpopular decisions tied to the Redford government, he noted.
“He’s coming in as the white knight,” said Bratt.
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In a scrum with reporters after a public meeting about the Corner Brook hospital last Thursday, Frank Coleman showed he has picked up the tendency of some politicians to talk about themselves in the plural.
The reporters asked about Coleman’s tendency to shun media interviews and to pop up here as if he were playing peek-a-boo.
“We” had a strategy, Coleman told them, of talking to the “family” first and “we” would get to everyone else after. Coleman contrasted that with the opponent he wouldn’t name who spent a lot of time talking to “mainstream media” instead.
That’s a noticeable choice of words – “family” and “mainstream media” just like it is curious the way he referred to what will happen when he becomes “leader”.
People like things in life to fit together.
When things don’t fit together, people get upset. They get fidgety. They try to make things fit together.
It’s an idea regular readers know from other posts. Take this bit from a post from 2012 as a good example of how some people react when faced with a situation where what is happening doesn’t fit with their pre-conceived notions. The context was a decision by then-Premier Kathy Dunderdale to refuse to meet with the parents of a boy who had died tragically.
CBC Radio’s St. John’s Morning Show is so off-put by politicians who issue prepared statements that they’ve found a former journalist turned journalism professor to discuss the growing trend not only in this province, but elsewhere. Interviews are important, said professor, because then journalists can ask questions and get more information.
If CBC really wanted to get into this issue, they wouldn’t ask a journalism prof. They’d be asking someone from the public relations or communications side of the street. That person could explain the value of using many approaches to send information, not just the prepared statement.
You see, prepared statements themselves aren’t the problem. They aren’t necessarily part of some growing and troubling trend, either.
Some enterprising political science graduate student will be able to write a brilliant doctoral dissertation a few years from now on the parallel ideas in provincial politics and popular situation comedy.
She will find fertile ground in the Big Bang Theory, especially the episode the in which Sheldon explains a complex idea in physics theory using the analogy of a cat in a box that may be either alive or dead based on a random earlier event.
Nalcor, for example, is like a giant box filled with Erwin Schrodinger’s cats.
Depending on which interview you listened to on Tuesday, Tom Marshall would be hanging around as Premier until the end of the summer.
At least.
That’s the VOCM story.
Marshall will run the place for two full months after the Conservative convention in early July while Coleman runs around the province attending all sorts of summer festivals.
Meanwhile, on CBC, Peter Cowan said in his report on Tuesday evening that Marshall expects to hand over the Premier’s job shortly after the Conservative party meeting in early July.
Which is it?
That’s a good question, but there’s no clear answer.
Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman did speak to the Telegram on Monday evening about the controversy that has been raging all weekend over his views on abortion and what that might mean for public policy in the province.
Coleman chose to issue a statement on Friday that didn’t address the central issues. He was silent all weekend and unavailable to other media all day Monday.
That only made Coleman’s problem of a big lack of legitimacy and credibility all that much worse, of course.
Late on Monday, Coleman has tried to put the controversy behind him, but he will have a fair bit of work to do.
Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman was off in Toronto on Monday – reputedly undergoing intensive media training - and so he wasn’t willing to talk to reporters about anything, least of all the controversy about his views on abortion.
When Bill Barry dropped out of the Conservative leadership on Thursday, Coleman became the leader by default. The only thing left is for the party insiders figured out when they wanted him in the job. That’s not a joke. That’s pretty much what Coleman said last week after Barry bailed.
Other than that, Coleman issued yet another official statement rather than talk to people. And when controversy erupted about his support of the province’s Right to Life group, Coleman issued another statement.
Memorial University political scientist Stephen Tomblin offered CBC some scathing comments on Monday about Coleman’s performance thus far.
Public sector pensions in Newfoundland and Labrador are underfunded. There’s not enough money in the fund account to cover all the likely money they’d have to pay out to people when they retire.
But make no mistake, the province’s public sector pensioners are not in any real danger of losing their pensions as a result. That’s because the Pension Fund Act guarantees that the provincial government will make up any difference between the money owed to pensioners annually and the money available from the fund. Unless some provincial government in the years ahead changes the law governing the pensions, people will get the money and benefits they’ve been promised.
The provincial government isn’t going to default on pensions any more than they are likely to take the completely irresponsible advice some might give them to change all the plans immediately - unilaterally if necessary - to make them defined contribution plans instead of defined benefit plans.
It’s important that people remember that because there is a concerted effort going on at the moment to mislead people about public sector spending generally, and pensions in particular.
In the crude, modern way of putting things, shit got real for Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman on Friday.
The Telegram’s James McLeod tweeted Coleman’s response to a question about whether Coleman planned to do this year what he normally does on Good Friday and participate in the anti-abortion march in Corner Brook.
Here’s what McLeod tweeted:
And then Twitter exploded.