CHC Helicopters’ shitty public relations #nlpoli

“CHC Helicopters Canada is establishing a presence in St. John’s.”

There is something about that comment from a spokesman for a company that, not so very long ago, had its international headquarters in St. John’s that makes you want to either laugh or cry. It’s hard to know which one would be the right response.

It’s pathetic that a spokesman for a company with such a rich history  makes a statement that sounds like the company never operated here before.  The official history of the company makes no mention of Craig Dobbin at all and his company – Sealand – is an incidental part of a story that claims the company grew out of British Columbia’s Okanagan Helicopters. 

That tells you that CHC considers this province to be just another dot on a map where their helicopters fly and the company makes money.  It’s no big deal.  In other words:  St. John’s doesn’t really matter.

Well,  since CHC obviously doesn’t really give a crap about St. John’s, the local business community,   local politicians, and local citizens should treat them the same way. As fast as they “establish a presence” in a city where the company once had a frigging global headquarters, CHC will be gone again.  So while they are here, charge them full fare, cut ‘em no slack, and make whatever you can off them all in the name of free enterprise. 

And no one will shed a tear when they leave again.

It’s not personal.

It’s just business.

-srbp-

The Vision Thing #nlpoli

The St. John’s Board of Trade is about the only business advocacy group in the world that doesn’t actually believe in free enterprise.

The Board doesn’t believe that government should control public debt.  They claim they are worried about it, but in practice the Board will shout with joy the more the government spends.

That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. 

The Board of Trade supports the Muskrat Falls project, for example.  The project involves a massive increase in public debt. There’s no evidence it is the cheapest way to meet the provinces electricity needs.  The only way it can work has been to create a complete monopoly in electricity production in the province that will force locals – including businesses – to bear the full cost plus profit, so that the provincial government’s energy corporation can sell discount electricity everywhere else except inside Newfoundland and Labrador.

The Board of Trade likes Muskrat Falls for two reasons.  Above all else,  the Board’s members want a piece of the construction phase for the project.  It’s pretty simple.  Right behind that,  the Board is notoriously sycophantic. It doesn’t actually advocate for business – like you might expect - as much as follow whatever line the provincial government lays down.

Bizarre, yes.  But simple to understand.

The Board is also a pretty funny organization, too.  Not funny as in bizarre or weird, aside from that anti-free enterprise thing, but funny as in roll on the floor and pee your pants laughing.

Pension Judy #nlpoli

Judy Manning will go down in history as the only unelected cabinet minister in Newfoundland and Labrador since the country gained responsible local government in 1855 who went into office with no intention of seeking a seat in the legislature unless and until she was ready to do so.

The Conservatives are deliberately breaching the centuries-old constitutional convention on cabinet ministers.  It’s spectacular, really, but the attitude that Premier Paul Davis and the Conservatives are displaying on this is hardly surprising.  They think they made the place and that nothing existed before them.  Therefore, they think they own the place.  Pride might go before a fall, but in the Conservative case, they are laying a carpet of breathtaking arrogance before them, as well.

Officially, Manning and Davis have said that she will run in the next general election, whenever that happens. We have a fixed election date, supposedly, so that election could be a year away.  Manning has said we don't know when the election will come and she’s right.  But while Manning has used that to suggest the election many come before next fall,  odds are equally good that it won't come much before the legal limit in October 2016.

So Manning could be working as a minister for upwards of two years without a seat in the House.  She’ll be paid as a minister,  meaning she will get the $54,072 set for cabinet ministers. The amount is small because it’s always been established as an amount on top of the base salary of a member of the House of Assembly.  She’s not getting that salary but, as the Telegram’s James McLeod tells us,  Judy will contribute to the pension plan for members of the House of Assembly.

Some of you might be wondering how that is possible.

IMPS SJ Hobby Show – November 9

The local chapter of the International Plastic Modellers Society will be having its annual model show and competition on November 9 at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s.

You can find more information at the chapter website along with some samples of what the talented local modelling community produces.

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It’s what your boobs are for #nlpoli

The first week of October is World Breastfeeding Week.

Check out babyfriendlynl.ca and you can find information on some of the activities going on across the province.

Breastfeeding is the SRBP cause,  for those who don’t know.  Check out this post from 2009 that proposes a provincial goal for breastfeeding that we can achieve:  66 at 6 in 2.  66% of newborns need to be breastfeeding at six months old. We can get from where we are to that 66% target in two years.

The current rates are way lower than that.

We can turn that around.

All we have to do realise it’s more important to get more of our babies on the tit instead of more local politicians.

-srbp-

Madness #nlpoli

The day after she took the oath of office,  Judy Manning, the province’s new attorney general and minister of public safety, and Premier Paul Davis, her boss,  are facing intense public criticism.

It’s hard to tell whether people are more upset by her evident, and admitted, lack of experience practicing law or the fact that neither she nor her boss are too fussed about getting her a seat in the House of Assembly any time soon.

Either one alone would be enough to call in question Davis’ fitness for the job.  The two combined are damning.  On top of that, you have to add in the completely unnecessary appointment of Keith Russell to cabinet. Then the day before, you have the latest twist in the Humber Valley Paving saga:  it’s really as rough a first couple of days as any politician has had.

There are so many things to discuss but to keep things manageable let’s down on the Manning Mess.

The Usual Suspects #nlpoli

The Conservatives who said Premier Paul Davis was going to doing nothing more than shuffle the cabinet that was already there got it absolutely right.

On Tuesday,  Davis announced his new cabinet and the names and jobs are all very familiar.  To give the illusion of change, Davis re-organized a couple of the portfolios and gave them some new names but basically, there are no changes of direction in the bunch.

Everyone noticed that Davis rewarded Steve Kent for his support leading up to and during the leadership convention.  Kent got the biggest portfolio – health – and will be the deputy premier and minister responsible for the Office of Public Engagement.

They also noticed the political unknown Davis found to take over the renamed justice portfolio.  The new minister, the unelected Judy Manning isn’t news on her own. Calling the department of police, prisons, and fire trucks the ministry of public safety is as old as the hills.

The big story in the cabinet shuffle is somewhere else.

Errors in judgement #nlpoli

March 13, 2014 was a Thursday.

Normal cabinet day.

According to Auditor General Terry Paddon’s report on the Humber Valley Paving contract,  Nick McGrath, then minister of works and transportation called his deputy minister at 8:45 AM and asked him whether he’d heard that HVP wanted to get out of their Labrador paving contract. (p.39) He hadn’t.

There’s no indication of how McGrath became aware of HVP’s problems.  According to Paddon’s report,  McGrath told him that he “may have” heard about HVP from colleagues. (p.54)  It’s all pretty vague.

The deputy called Gene Coleman at 9:15 AM, according to Paddon.  Coleman,  son of the erstwhile Conservative leadership candidate McGrath claims he had not heard of, confirmed the company “would not be going back to Labrador” (p. 54) in 2014, at least not without compensation.  Coleman indicated that without compensation,  HVP would want a mutually-agreed termination of the contract with the government. (p.39)

The Fairity Intervention

At 9:30 AM,  the deputy got a call from Kevin O’Brien.  He was calling about  the HVP contract, too, even though O;Brien had no reason to be involved.  (p. 39)  Asked by Paddon later how he became aware of the issue, O’Brien  - who was also an organizer for Frank Coleman’s leadership campaign - said that he had heard “colleagues” talking,  wanted to speak with the deputy about other issues but raised the HVP issue because of the potential connection to forest fires in Labrador.  (p. 54)   O’Brien was minister of fire and emergency services

All our yesterdays #nlpoli

Someone in Paul Davis’ campaign has a quirky sense of humour.

They picked Bill Clinton’s 1992 election theme music for Davis to use as his walk-in music during the convention.  Let’s leave aside the eventual Bill Clinton of stains on little blue dresses and just look at the 1992 presidential election for a second.

Clinton was the Democratic Party insurgent tackling the other half of one of the more popular Republican presidents in a generation.  Ronald Reagan had run two successful majorities and passed on the legacy to his vice-president – George Bush – who had won handily in 1988.  Bush himself had become hugely popular after defeating Saddam Hussein in 1991 during the First Gulf War.  He’d faltered though, as the American economy faltered. The result was that Bill Clinton won the election in 1992 and ended Republican control of the White House after a dozen years.

Premier Davis and the Dead Children #nlpoli

Paul Davis will get a lift down to Government House this afternoon and swear the oath of office so Tom Marshall can finally get out of politics.

It’s been about two weeks since Davis won the Conservative Party leadership and that’s a fairly typical period of time between election and taking office.  What hasn’t been normal is that Davis has been doing something in the Premier’s Office since last week.  He’s been standing in for the real Premier and we don;t know for sure what else he has been doing.

Davis doesn’t have a cabinet yet.  He’s going to name the cabinet and get them sworn in next week.  As for office staff,  Davis has named a chief of staff but there’s no sign yet of other names for other jobs.  One of the key jobs that is going begging is the person to run Davis’ public communications. 

There’s talk Davis will run a national competition for someone to take the job.  What would happen in the meantime – if he really goes that idiotic route – is anyone’s guess.  By the time they find someone to take the communications job, Davis’ political goose may already be cooked.

No Privacy Protection in Marshall’s Office #nlpoli

Someone sent a request to the Premier’s Office for access to all “Email [sic], memos, letters, notes between Elizabeth Matthews and the premier’s office [sic] between June 1, 2013 and June 1, 2014”.

The Premier’s Office sent the person a couple of e-mails.  They deleted some information under section 30 (personal information) and section 7(2) of the Access to Information and Protection of Personal Privacy Act. That second section basically allows government to sever information that is exempted from disclosure.

Read the completed access request and you will see the only thing they deleted was Matthews’ e-mail address.

Problem:  the entire disclosure violates section 30 of the ATIPPA. 

Cabinet documents and deliberations #nlpoli

One of the big changes Bill 29 made to the province’s access to information law was to give a list of documents that could not be released under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act because they were cabinet documents.

Before then, the law in Newfoundland and Labrador, like the similar laws in the rest of the country merely said that people couldn’t get anything that would make public what the cabinet ministers talked about, in private, among themselves.  A British Columbia government policy manual explains why:

Premature disclosure of Cabinet deliberations inhibits the ability of Cabinet members to debate issues openly and freely, thereby reducing the effectiveness of Cabinet’s decision making role.

One of the reasons no one bothered to define a cabinet document and bar that from disclosure is that no one could really say what a cabinet document is.  People who’ve never dealt with cabinet or who have never had occasion to think about these things wouldn’t understand that how cabinet operates can vary widely from first minister to first minister.  The changes made in Bill 29 reflect how cabinet operates these days but Paul Davis or any of the ministers who come along later may run cabinet in such a way that most of those mandatory exemptions of certain pieces of paper won’t matter a bit.

There’s no firm rule as to who may sit in the room with cabinet.  Some administrations have allowed only  the clerk of the council and a deputy clerk into the room to provide administrative support.  Other people may come into the room and make a presentation but they get shuffled out of the room before cabinet discusses anything. In other administrations, they’ve had all sorts of hangers-on sitting in the room.  Most often, the extra bodies are senior political people from the first minister’s office.

At times,  the Executive Council hasn’t included everyone with a ministerial portfolio.  And on occasion pretty well every cabinet will throw everyone out of the room and discuss something entirely among themselves.  But there might never be a paper for them to read in advance, a note, a presentation or anything of the sort.

To give you a sense of how cabinets operate,  consider that, until 1989,  cabinet didn’t keep minutes like most boards and committees do.  Cabinet met.  They talked about things.  The only record of any decision would be the official “minute” issued by the cabinet secretariat and approved by the lieutenant governor.  That’s what made the decision the legal authority someone would need to carry it out.

Even the form of the minute varies.  These days,  it includes a list of people who get a copy.  There’s a number on it and the actual statement of the decision includes all sorts of references to the authority cited for making the decision. 

Go back a hundred years and you will find piles of these minutes.  They might be as little as a sentence or two.  The certified minutes, the ones that needed the Governor’s signature, were written out long-hand in a book the Governor kept.

That’s where things get interesting.  Note that the minute above refers to a meeting of the committee of the Executive Council.  The ones a century ago that your humble e-scribbler has been reading lately say pretty much the same thing.  That’s the another way of saying the Executive Council without the lieutenant governor present for the meeting.  These days it is unheard of for the Queen’s representative to attend any meeting of the council, federal or provincial, here in Britain or anywhere else.  A century ago,  a committee of the council – cabinet ministers without the Governor  - met to discuss all sorts of routine things, including budgets.

Back then, there were meetings of the Executive Council.  They took place at Government House and, as near as your humble e-scribbler can figure, they included the Governor. A good example was the meeting held at 3:30 p.m. August 7, 1914 to decide on the Newfoundland contribution to the war.  You can hunt for any record of the meeting in the cabinet papers and you’ll never find a mention.  We know it happened, though, because the Governor refers to to it in letters.  There’s a specific note in his type-written daily diary and the Prime Minister mentions it in a letter or two written around the same time.  We know they discussed a proposal drafted by the Governor two days beforehand, apparently based on discussions with the Prime Minister.  The version cabinet approved is not exactly what the Governor proposed.

There’s no record of that meeting, though, just as there is no record or any other meeting of the whole council during the period from about 1908 to 1914.  There might be others but YHE-S hasn’t gotten to them yet.

There’s nothing odd about that, by the way.  The British cabinet didn’t keep any record of decisions until after the war started.  There could sometimes be a huge gulf among ministers about what, if anything, they’d discussed and decided.  The only formal record of any sort through most of the 19th century was a letter written weekly by successive Prime Ministers to the Queen, for her information.  Even then, what the Prime Minister said cabinet discussed and agreed on might not be what ministers recalled.

Incidentally, for those who might be wondering about the endless trips to Government House to appoint ministers lately, you need only check the Executive Council Act to see that it wasn’t necessary:  “The Lieutenant-Governor in Council” – meaning the whole cabinet – “on the advice of the Premier may appoint a minister as acting minister for another minister during the absence or incapacity for any cause of that other minister, and all acts of an acting minister shall have the same effect as if done by the minister in whose place he or she is acting.” 

They’ve appointed acting ministers countless times over the past decade,  most often to cover off Charlene Johnson when she was on one kind of leave or another.  Tom Marshall could have done exactly the same thing as ministers quit for one reason or another. The only question is why he chose to swear in new ministers and shuffle his cabinet around all the time.

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Needed: a local think-tank #nlpoli

Anyone who was paying attention to these things has known for about 25 years that the province would face a demographic crunch starting ‘round about now.

Anyone who has been reading Bond Papers for any length of time will know that demographics have been a big issue your humble e-scribbler has been banging on about pretty much since the beginning in January 2005. Go over to labradore and you will find what is known in the professional analyst trade as a shitload of posts, graphs and other sorts of information about demographics.

Collectively, we’ve got a good handle on both the magnitude of the problem and the implications. The problems are already here and the deliberate lack action by successive provincial governments means we are substantially behind where we need to be to cope with the consequences of a rapidly aging population.

So it is that after studying all the stuff that people have already produced about the problems the province is facing, the good folks at the Harris Centre at Memorial University have concluded that we need – brace yourself – “additional research” in order to “get ahead” of these changes.

Ye frackin’ gods.

Trouble getting SRBP? #nlpoli

Some people have been reporting problems getting SRBP through their Internet service provider or IT support team.

It isn’t clear what’s going on, but one of the problems seems to be a unique one confined to the provincial government’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

If you are having trouble getting SRBP,  drop a line to ed underscore hollett at Hotmail dot com.  Once your humble e-scribbler has a sense of the bigger picture we might be able to figure out how to fix the problem.

-srbp-

Edges #nlpoli

The Premier’s Office issued a couple of news releases last week about what someone they called the Premier-Designate would be doing. 

The first release was a curiosity.  The second one made the whole thing very strange since it was plain that Paul Davis would be attending these events as a sort of Premier-in-waiting,  replacing Tom Marshall. 
Paul Davis is a member of the House of Assembly.  He’s also just been elected the leader of a political party.  But in terms of the provincial government itself, Paul Davis is an outsider.  The news releases issued by the Premier’s Office called Davis Premier Designate, but that’s really just a name people have stuck on him because they don’t know what else to call him.  It isn’t an official title by any means

What’s more, there’s never been a government of the type we’ve had since 1855 anywhere in the world whose been in Davis’ spot.  It’s highly unusual, to say the very least. But when it comes to the crowd currently running the place this is very familiar.

Political Definitions #nlpoli

Political conservatives like to talk about how government ought to be run like a business.  They talk about it so much that it’s odd, then, that they never actually do it.

Part of it has to do with language. They use words that appear to mean the same thing when, in fact, they actually have two distinctly different meanings.

Danny Williams is a good example of how that peculiar breed of politician.  The Old Man talks about the public money his buddies on city council gave to his hockey team as an investment. As a businessman, though, Williams means something different when he talks about investing his own money.

No-brainer #nlpoli

Perhaps it is just Danny Williams’ ingratitude that pisses people off.

The multi-millionaire hockey team owner just got a massive subsidy from the taxpayers of St. John’s so that he won’t suffer any lost revenue.  It should be a no-brainer for the guy to say thanks to the people who have made him wealthy for the cash Williams’ buddies on city council handed him this week.

A simple “thank you” wouldn’t have hurt him.

it was a no-brainer.

But no. 

Instead, Ole Twitchy called the media together on Wednesday to whine, moan, bitch, and complain about those who don’t like giving tax dollars to people like Williams who don’t need it.

What a douche.

No more give-aways #nlpoli

Danny Williams is one of the richest people in Newfoundland and Labrador.  He is a multi-millionaire who owns a successful hockey franchise in St. John’s.

Danny Williams makes a lot of money from the St. John’s IceCaps,  If he didn’t,  Danny wouldn’t be in the hockey game.

Good for Danny Williams. If his business is profitable,  then Williams’ business is good for the city and good for the province.  That’s the way free enterprise works. 

The Ins and Outs of Newfoundland Politics #nlpoli

Ralph Champneys Williams was a career British public servant who came to Newfoundland as the Governor at the tail end of one of the greatest periods of political turmoil in the country’s history.

Sir Robert Bond went to the polls in the 1908 at the head of the Liberal to face his rival Sir Edward Morris, the Leader of the Opposition and head of a coalition of Conservatives and some others under the name of The People’s Party.

The result was a tied election.  Unable to form an administration that could survive the election of a speaker.  Bond went to the Governor to advise him to issue a writ for a new election.  The Governor – Sir Williams MacGregor – refused to issue the writ and instead called on Morris to form an administration.  He was in the same position, of course, and, when the House could not elect a Speaker,  MacGregor dissolved the House on Morris’ advice.  Morris went to the polls as Prime Minister and won a majority.

Williams arrived in Newfoundland in the wake of two years of political upheaval.  He found himself in a place that was likely very strange to him.

Insider baseball, again #nlpoli

Paul Davis delivered one of the shortest victory speeches Saturday night of any person elected to lead a party in power.

Davis said very little but what he said might reveal much:

This weekend we started down a path, a path to rebuild the PC Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I ask all of you to work with us as we work together and continue on that path to rebuild our party for the future and prepare for 2015. [via The Telegram]

Davis wasn’t alone in saying that. Rebuilding the party in order to defeat the Liberals was a common theme.

After a while, though, it seemed a bit…well… odd.  After all, Davis was the leader of the party in power, with a majority of seats in the legislature.  Sure, the party is in second place in the opinion polls but that’s not the same as the result of an actual election.