The Desolation of Smog #nlpoli

The Telegram’s Peter Jackson used the most recent JM paper on consumer electricity prices and Muskrat Falls as part of his Wednesday column.

Peter made some worthwhile observations, so head over and read the column if you haven’t already.  That includes pointing out that current forecasts have electricity prices in Ontario and British Columbia rising by 42% and 45% by 2018.

“All these numbers are maddening,”  writes Jackson,  “both in terms of scale and in terms of variability between Nalcor and critics.”

Absolutely true.

Convergence #nlpoli

A couple of years ago,  Liberal leader Dwight Ball said the Liberals would use earnings from Muskrat Falls to lower electricity prices for consumers in this province.

The Conservatives dismissed the idea at the time.

Then a couple of weeks ago, with news the cost of Muskrat Falls continues to climb, Premier Tom Marshall told the province that he and his colleagues had adopted the idea of using revenues from Muskrat Falls to lower consumer prices as their own policy.

That’s not all of it.  To understand the importance of Marshall’s comments fully you have to start at the beginning.

Electricity prices when Muskrat comes on line #nlpoli

Cost over-runs on Muskrat Falls as well as other costs not included in previous calculations by Nalcor will likely increase current electricity prices by almost double their rate in 2011,  according to a recent assessment.

JM,  a professional engineer who has worked extensively in the construction of large engineering projects,  totalled up revised project costs and other factors including:

• the most recent Muskrat Falls cost increases,
• the cost of a third line to the Avalon from Bay d’Espoir,
• a new line to western Labrador,
• lower-than-expected electricity demand,
• a win by Hydro-Quebec in its lawsuit, and,
• revenue from export sales of electricity.

JM estimates that any revenue from sales would only lower the price of Muskrat falls electricity by about three cents a kilowatt hour.

However, the reader should be reminded that the government of Newfoundland will be borrowing 1 Billion dollars to finance the equity contributions into the project. Assuming a 5% annual interest rate on the borrowed equity there would be an annual interest payment of 50 million dollars. What Nalcor put in one pocket, they take from the other.

Consumer electricity prices from Muskrat Falls

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The World According to Kent #nlpoli

If you are one of the political savants who thinks that dominating Twitter makes for a modern, inspired, and successful political leadership campaign, then say hello to Premier Steve Kent, right.

The guy and his Twitter army, some of them undoubtedly utter fakes,  managed to spam the living hell out of twitter over the weekend.  They far surpassed Con O’Brien, the solo anti-Muskrat Falls army who previously held the record for relentless tweeting. 

Con is ahead of the other Con on substance though:  O’Brien usually makes his own comments;  the Kent Klub tend to send around anything anyone else said about their man-boy, as long as it is positive.

Friday Bits #nlpoli

To understand the real Steve Kent and not the manufactured front he presents to the world these days, take a look at this 2007 post by Simon Lono back when he wrote Offal News.

There’s a great quote in it from Kent when he was thinking about a run at federal politics for the Alliance/Reform crowd.  You’ll be struck by how familiar it is. 

When you get over the willies, skip over to Uncle Gnarley.  Des Sullivan notes that the “narrative” on Muskrat Falls is changing as the project goes along. 

That’s it for the week.  Enjoy the summer sunshine.

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Political Fashionistas #nlpoli

Before the year is out, we will have yet another strategy from the provincial government.

We were supposed to have this one on July 1, however like pretty well everything associated with the current crowd running the place, it is a day late.  The minister responsible for the strategy – Fairity O’Brien – says we will now have it some unspecified time in the fall.  That will be after Fairity releases a document that tells us what the government heard during some sort of consultation process that they are almost as fond of as they are of strategy writing.

The thing will likely also be a dollar short, as well, if recent experience is any guide.  You see this “population growth strategy” is actually the second kick at the cat for the provincial government.  Their existing strategies aimed at dealing with some of the factors affecting population were all dismal failures.

Avoiding a cabinet shuffle #nlpoli

By the end of the week,  Premier Tom Marshall will be short at least two cabinet ministers.

Paul Davis quit as health minister on Wednesday and Steve Kent is expected to follow on Thursday as both vie for the party leadership.

On top of that he’s missing Joan Shea who quit last month.

Some think Tom will shuffle the cabinet.  He could do that, except that he doesn’t really have much to shuffle with.  On top of that, he’d also be stuffing people into cabinet who the new leader might not want to face as a cabinet minister in the middle of September.

Tom doesn’t have to shuffle his cabinet at all.  This is the slow time of the year as Trevor Taylor laughingly put it or, to be more accurate,  everything is on hold anyway while the party sorts out its leadership mess.

Therefore, Tom can rely on his table of alternate ministers,  established by order in council at the last major shuffle in May.  That’s the official list of substitutions to cover periods when the appointed minister of a department is out of town or incapacitated.

Paul Davis is gone.  Between Susan Sullivan as first alternate and Sandy Collins as second, the job of health minister will get done.   And if Susan goes, Sandy can get the job as stand in.

Over in municipal affairs, Fairity O’Brien will fill in.

And if Susan Sullivan jumps into the race – as she should given Paul Davis’ weak, amateurish  launch on Wednesday - there’s someone to replace her, using the same table.

Pas de sweat.

If Tom needs to have someone fill in on a temporary basis other than the alternates table,  he can do that using powers in the Executive Council Act and something called the Crown or Royal Prerogative.  It takes a cabinet order but surely the crowd running the place can manage to do that, as they did in 2013,  all without the show of a cabinet shuffle.  It’s really just paper work after all.

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The Mulligan Race begins #nlpoli

By the end of the week, the provincial Conservatives will have the leadership race they deliberately avoided the last time out.  That’s the one that ended with the Coleman fiasco.

It will be different in at least two ways:  first, there will actually be a race, in the sense that there will be three competitors.  Second,  unless someone shows up who no one has even whispered about yet, the race will be comprised entirely of party insiders.

Last time out, if you can cast your mind back three or four months,  people like Steve Kent – who will launch his campaign on Thursday – insisted that the party needed a fresh face from outside the circle of people running the party from the inside.

Commemoration Day, 2014 #nlpoli

Tread softly here! Go reverently and slow!
Let your soul go down upon its knees
And with bowed head, and heart abased strive hard
To grasp the future gain in the sore loss!
For not one foot of this dank sod but drank
Its surfeit of the blood of gallant men.
Who for their faith their hope – for life and liberty
Here made the sacrifice – here gave their lives
And gave right willingly – for you and me.

-srbp-

Paying everyone but ourselves #nlpoli

Nalcor boss Ed Martin told everyone in the province last week that his pet project has increased in price by almost another billion dollars.  It’s now more than $8.0 billion, when the 2010 price was $5.0 billion.

That wasn’t news.  Martin and the provincial government knew that last December, as SRBP pointed out last December.  We’ve known it since last year.  Martin and the provincial government just refused to tell the people paying for the project about it when the people building it knew the costs.

Martin insists it is still cheapest.  We know that isn’t true because Nalcor plans to buy cheaper electricity from elsewhere and import it here over the Maritime Link while charging local consumers for electricity that is far more expensive but that they aren’t getting. 

Martin also said something to the effect that we are just paying ourselves for this project and the electricity anyway.  That’s not true either.

We are paying everyone but ourselves.

Muskrat Falls costs break $8.0 billion #nlpoli

$6.99 billion is the new cost estimate for the Muskrat Falls dam and the link to the island.

With that much money and with such a record of inaccurate forecasts,  giving a cost estimate to two decimal places could only be a terribly cynical attempt at humour by the highly paid people running Nalcor. 

Seriously. 

Did Ed Martin, Gil Bennett and Dawn Dalley really think that people wouldn’t recognise the oldest and most transparent bit of retail psychology on the planet and think this project wouldn’t cost $7.0 billion?

No.

It’s almost $7.0 billion.

Anyway…

The ATIPPA Review Round-Up #nlpoli

Tuesday’s video is available at parcnl.ca.

Your humble e-scribbler is Number 2 on June 25. 

At the front end of the Number 1 video is Vaughn Hammond of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.  he made some really solid comments about a problem some of his members have been running into since Bill 29.  They used to rely on access to information in order to get information to bid on tenders.  In a competitive industry, such as some of the suppliers Hammond represents,  disclosing information helps get a better price for taxpayers.

parcnl.ca #nlpoli

If you want your SRBP fix this Wednesday morning check out the Privacy and Access Review Committee hearings at 11:00 AM.

They are streaming it live at parcnl.ca.

-srbp-

Summer Political Reading List #nlpoli

If you are looking for some political reading over the summer, here are a few books worth checking out.

Tragedy in the Commons by Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan. Here’s the whole Random House blurb: 

In Tragedy in the Commons, Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan, founders of the non-partisan think tank Samara, draw on an astonishing eighty exit interviews with former Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to unearth surprising observations about the practice of politics in Canada.

Though Canada is at the top of international rankings of democracies, Canadians themselves increasingly don’t see politics as a way to solve society’s problems. Small wonder. In the news, they see grandstanding in the House of Commons and MPs pursuing agendas that don’t always make sense to the people who elected them.

Grassroots #nlpoli

You’ll likely hear a lot of talk from Conservatives over the next few weeks about their “grassroots.” 

Trevor Taylor, for one mentioned them twice last week when talking about the aftermath of the Coleman fiasco.  The Conservatives need a contest that will “mobilize” the grassroots,  according to Taylor.  They need a leader who can “connect with the grassroots.”

The only problem for Trevor is that the party doesn’t have any grassroots.

Welcome Back, Cochrane #nlpoli

If you are needing a political fix this weekend you can get two of the better variety online.

David Cochrane is back from an extended absence and to celebrate, he’s clacked out a synopsis of recent going’s on in the Conservative leadership fiasco.  He’s got all the details of stuff that’s been flying around town, right down to the story about how the victims of the Friday Night Massacre found their security passes to the building cut off while they were trying to move out that fateful Friday.

Nothing was further from the truth #nlpoli

A decade ago,  the offshore regulatory board reduced its estimate of the recoverable reserves in the Terra Nova field from 405 million barrels  to 354 million barrels.

Danny Williams was trying to squeeze additional transfer payments out of the federal government in the guise of getting provincial oil royalties that the federal government supposedly took back.

The whole thing was a fraud of the first magnitude but hundreds of thousands of people in Newfoundland and Labrador fell for it.

Taking nothing out #nlpoli

Sometimes a comment is so profoundly revealing you just can’t let it slide by.

This one came from Milly Brown, the Premier’s communications director, in an exchange with Simon Lono on Twitter on Wednesday.  And just so everyone knows up front, this is not from Milly’s personal account, if she has one.  It’s a comment from Milly in her official capacity.

Wednesday Quickies #nlpoli

As your humble e-scribbler spent time on Tuesday finishing off a presentation to the ATIPPA inquiry next week  (11 AM, 25 June),  here are a couple of quickies you might find interesting:

1. In light of the chatter about polls in the Ontario election, here’s yet another commentary on the general uselessness of horse-race polls, despite the fact news media love them.Yet another argument against horse-race polls.  Via  Monkey Cage.
2. “How oil helps dictatorships survive” is another exploration of the connection between oil wealth and a decrease in competitive politics.

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Premier Mulligan #nlpoli

The news on Monday was not Frank Coleman’s announcement.

The news was in the reaction of provincial Conservatives to word that Coleman wouldn’t be Premier after all.

They skipped past the obligatory expressions of concern over Coleman’s unspecified family problem and quickly went on to talk up the chances the party now had to hold a “proper” leadership contest.
Conservatives were relieved that Frank was gone.  You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief.