Lighter and Lighter #nlpoli

Three separate stories over the past three days highlight changes to the local media world.

On Saturday, Telegram editor Russell Wangersky slammed the publicly funded CBC Radio for turning its morning show into the sort of light, fluffy morning program heard on commercial radio.

(Is "We're broadcasting from Tim Horton's" really that much different than that old private radio staple, "We're broadcasting live from L&M Carpeting, your best carpet buy in the tri-state area"?)

There are stupid host and guest tricks: let's make the mayor of Mount Pearl, Randy Simms, wear a party hat for that city's 60th birthday. Let's make him blow on a party horn. Let's Tweet the pictures. Let's dress someone up as a turkey and film them doing tricks.

He’s right.

But Russell is also wrong.

Money and Politics – the Chronic Enforcement Problem #nlpoli

We can have all the rules in the world about how political parties and political candidates receive and spend money in Newfoundland and Labrador, but they are useless without meaningful enforcement.

It’s been illegal since 2011 for municipalities to make political contributions.  The association representing the province’s towns and cities knew about the 2011 amendment to the Municipalities Act.

The people at the electoral office didn’t.

Money and Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

Some people are making a big deal over the fact that the judge heading the boundaries commission made political donations to both the Liberal and Conservative parties in the province before he was appointed to the Supreme Court Trial Division.

Justice Robert Stack made donations totalling $1,718 to the provincial Liberal Party between 1996 and 2003 and $2,032 to the provincial Conservative party between 2001 and the time he was appointed by the federal government as a Supreme Court judge in 2009.

No one has actually explained how what is a normal activity for ordinary citizens in every province in Canada is problematic in this case.  There’s just the innuendo that goes with a comment like this:

“Nobody's really questioning that Justice Stack has the qualifications to do what he's being asked to do, it's about whether or not there are other connections that then make it a little more questionable.”  [See new comment by Kelly Blidook at end of post]

Insinuation and Innuendo aren’t evidence of anything except the exceedingly bad judgement of the people making the comments and the news media who are repeating them.

The Boundary Commission Fun is closer #nlpoli

The Chief Justice has named Justice Robert Stack as the chair of the boundary commission appointed under the Electoral Boundaries Act.

We now have to get four other members of the commission, appointed by the Speaker of the House of Assembly so the whole crowd of them can start their 130 adventure.

Will it be done on time?  And if it isn’t,  will we be trooping to the polls on schedule in the fall to vote in 48 districts instead of 40,  as NHTV reported on Monday night.

Amazing as it is, some people still haven;t quite sorted it through.  Let’s save them further anguish and lay out the possibilities.

The Other DarkNL #nlpoli

For as long as anyone can remember,  some people in Newfoundland and Labrador have had a love of conformity.

They loathe discussion and debate. 

They dislike democracy.

Reforming the budget process #nlpoli

We already know that the provincial government won’t unveil its budget for the new year until late April or early May.

That’s not as unusual as it might seem.  In 2012, for example, they introduced the budget on April 24.  Five years before,  Tom Marshall read the budget speech on April 26.  The next year – 2008 – Tom again read the budget speech in the House in late April,  the 29th to be exact.

The fact the Conservatives aren’t planning to release the budget until a month or so into the new fiscal year – it starts on April 1 – isn’t surprising.  It isn’t unusual.  And odds are very good it isn’t related to the fact the federal government has delayed its budget until around the same time.

Government by Committee #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 5

In the fifth and final  instalment in this series on politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, SRBP looks at the latest move in continuing efforts by politicians in the province to make the House of Assembly irrelevant.
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If you want to understand politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, look no further than Bill 42.  That’s the plan to cut eight seats from the House of Assembly before the next election.

Don’t look at the reasons the politicians offered for the cuts. Just look at who did it, what they did, and how they did it. After all, actions speak a lot louder than words.

Elections and Voting #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 4

The politicians in the province share a lot of common views and tend to agree on most things despite being organized into political parties that are – theoretically  - supposed to have some sharp differences among them.  The House of Assembly itself is organized to minimise the chances that the government won;t get its way, quickly.  

In the fourth instalment in this series on politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, SRBP looks how elections work.
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Yvonne Jones was the first woman leader of the Liberal Party. 

She was the first woman to serve as leader of the official opposition and, more recently, she became the first women to represent Labrador in the House of Commons.

Yvonne Jones will go down in history for another accomplishment, though.  That one has nothing to do with chromosomes.

Yvonne Jones was the last person to be elected to the House of Assembly as an independent candidate.*

The Dysfunctional House of Assembly #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 3

In the third instalment in the series,  SRBP looks at the way the House of Assembly operates.
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Liberal finance critic Cathy Bennett’s recent op-ed piece in the Telegram said that the provincial government’s current financial mess is about more than unexpected changes in the price of oil.
She’s absolutely right.

Bennett pointed to the Equalization offset transfers under the 1985 Atlantic Accord as the root.  The provincial government got about $4.6 billion under the deal.  “The province collected $4.6 billion in federal funding under the Atlantic Accord,”  wrote Bennett.  “A long-term financial plan should have been put in place to account for the future loss of those revenues.

Equalization transfers.

Sounds a wee bit familiar, doesn’t it?

One Big Party #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador – Part 2

The plan to cut public representation in the House of Assembly has drawn public attention to more than just the plan to reduce the number of elected representatives in the legislature by eight. 

In this new series, SRBP will examine politics in Newfoundland over the last 15 to 20 years The first instalment - “Making the rich richer” – and the second – “One Big Party” - look at the curious agreement among the parties on major public issues.

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Cast your mind back.

Go back to 2008. Yvonne Jones was the leader of the Liberal Party. She was one of three members, sitting right next to Kelvin Parsons and Roland Butler, the sole Liberal survivors of a near sweep of the province by the Conservatives in the 2007 general election.

Jones turned up in the Telegram with what is, in hindsight,  a fascinating suggestion.

I always say that we're such a small province, when you've got three political parties, there's always a lot of energy and time and expertise spent in, I guess, staking out everybody's turf in the political arena...

I used to say to myself, "maybe we're expending it in the wrong direction? [sic]"...Maybe if a lot of that was just put into strengthening policy for people, we might end up with a lot better result at the end of the day.

Jones didn’t see any differences at all among the political parties. The members all believed exactly the same things. They wasted time and money “staking out everybody’s turf”, whatever that means. So Jones thought aloud that maybe it would be better if there were no parties, just a bunch of like-minded people, all working hard “strengthening policy for people.”

Making the rich richer #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador – Part 1

The plan to cut public representation in the House of Assembly has drawn public attention to more than just the plan to reduce the number of elected representatives in the legislature by eight.   

In this new series,  SRBP will examine politics in Newfoundland over the last 15 to 20 years  The first  instalment  - “Making the rich richer” – and the second – “One Big Party” - look at the curious agreement among the parties on major public issues. 
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The provincial government subsidises tuition fees at Memorial University for Canadian undergraduate students. They go to school for fees far less than the cost of providing the buildings, technology, and instructors need to educate them.

The annual cost of the tuition subsidy is about $40 million, according to the most recent report by the province’s auditor general.  That’s part of about $388 million the provincial government provides to the university to fund its operations.

All three political parties support the subsidy. The Liberals started it and the Conservatives continued it. The New Democrats back it enthusiastically.

The tuition subsidy benefits Newfoundlanders and Labradorians primarily.  Over the past five years or so,  Memorial has been able to attract growing numbers of students from outside the province.  They come for the cheap education, not the quality of the education, although there’s no reason to believe that Memorial University provides a substandard education to anyone.  So lots of people benefit from the subsidy, many of them from outside Newfoundland and Labrador.

The tuition subsidy costs about 20 times what the cuts to the House of Assembly will theoretically save annually.

Gil Bennett: fact checker #nlpoli

Gil Bennett, Nalcor vice-president in charge of the Lower Churchill project, took some exceptions to comments in yesterdays posts on Muskrat Falls and electricity prices.

Rather than go back and deal with his comments in a re-write of the original post, let’s deal with Bennett’s comments here and link the two together so people can get the full effect.

For those of you who didn’t read the original post, go back and do so.  It will help.  In this post, Bennett’s tweets are in bold print.  Your humble e-scribbler’s reply is in regular type.

Nalcor: the power of hubris #nlpoli

On the last electricity bill to arrive Chez Scribbler,  the price per kilowatt hour was a little over 11 cents, all in.

On Wednesday,  Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro applied to the public utilities board for a six percent reduction in electricity rates pending a thorough review of electricity prices now that oil has dropped through the floor.

Nalcor claims that Muskrat Falls is the lowest cost way of meeting electricity demand on the island in the future.  The truth is Nalcor didn’t produce any evidence that they compared potential sources of electricity before they decided to build Muskrat Falls in 2006.*

Acting Like a Leader #nlpoli

In his first major public appearance since cutting public representation in the House of Assembly last week,  Premier Paul Davis flatly rejected the objections of the province’s municipalities and a gaggle of academics.

The cuts to the House of Assembly will go ahead.

When another government asked a commission to go out, ask people and come back with alternatives, it didn’t work, according to Davis.  So this time we set clear rules.

Davis talked a lot about process with reporters during a scrum.  Everything was just the way it was supposed to be and people will get a say, even if the say is all but meaningless.

People can talk about the details of all this until they fall over dead.  This is not about cuts to the House, democratic renewal, saving money, or anything else of the sort.  This entire House cutting exercise is designed to show Paul Davis looking like a leader.

Opposition grows to antidemocratic House cuts #nlpoli

Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador,  the umbrella organization that speaks for the province’s towns and cities, doesn’t like the plan to slash the number of representatives the people of the province have speaking for them in the House of Assembly.

“We believe that a reduction in representation will have serious implications for municipal governments and the communities they represent, “ MNL posted to its Facebook page on Monday.

Easy and frequent access to our MHAs is critically important to municipal leaders. So much of municipal work is done in partnership with the provincial government, and any erosion of this relationship would set us back - particularly in rural communities. Effective democracy comes at a price. We need to think long and hard before we decide that price is too high.

A group of university professors also released a copy of a letter they sent to members of the House of Assembly.

A swing and a miss #nlpoli

The usual round of Saturday chores this weekend brought with it the usual accidental meetings with all manner of friends and acquaintances.  Even the least political among them wondered what went on in the House of Assembly last week.

Good news.  There is help for them.

Your humble e-scribbler laid out the positions of the various players before the debates started.  There was a comment on Tuesday, another on Friday, and a more detailed description of the political landscape the morning  the debate started in the House of Assembly.

On top of that, two news reports appeared over the past weekend – from CBC and the Telegram -  purporting to tell the inside story of last week’s emergency debate in the House of Assembly.  They cover different aspects of the goings-on.  The CBC one in particular adds a bit of detail but generally confirms what the Tories were up to.

Pull back from all the details, though and a much clearer picture emerges.

The Fraser Institute and Laughably Flawed Analysis #nlpoli

The latest Fraser Institute assessment of the financial management prowess of premiers is to sound economic analysis what homeopathy to curing cancer.

The Fraser Institute issued a news release on the first anniversary of Kathy Dunderdale’s departure from politics that declared her the best fiscal manager of all the country’s premiers. 

That wasn’t sarcasm.

That’s what they said.

Review faces stiff competition from province’s politicians #nlpoli

If Paul Davis and his beleaguered band of provincial Conservatives started the week on a high,  it didn’t last very long.

They opened the House on Monday to debate a bill that would reduce the size of the House of Assembly by 10 members.  They had the instant support of the Liberals and, going into the session, they knew that Ball and the Liberals had already agreed that the fall election would now come sometime in 2016.

They announced another ridiculous twist in the already ridiculous fight over European free trade.  The media reported the whole thing positively at first, although before the day was out major economic groups in the province had slammed the provincial government for their anti-trade stance.

On top of that,  the three maritime premiers were in town for a meeting of the Atlantic premiers council.  Reporters asked them about the feud.  We’d be ticked off too, in the same position, they agreed, but if there’s federal cash to be had, we want a piece as well. That does nothing except highlight why the provincial government was just plain dumb when they passed on the original deal and tried to turn it into something else.

Okay, so Monday wasn’t really all that high, but when this time last year,  the Conservatives were being burned in effigy for heat and light as people sat around in a blackout caused by the provincial energy corporation, Monday was pretty damn good.

Then Tuesday came and, in the hideous cliche of hack television reporters,  things went horribly wrong.

Abbott and Costello meet the Trade Deal #nlpoli

If you are confused by the provincial government’s struggle over free trade with the European trade, find comfort in the fact you are not alone.

Pretty well everyone is confused by what the government is up to. 

That includes, incidentally,  intergovernmental affairs minister Keith Hutchings and industry minister Darin King, who announced on Monday that the provincial government was pulling its support for every free trade negotiation Canada has going at the moment except for the European trade agreement.

Ballsiness #nlpoli

Before Christmas, Liberal leader Dwight Ball had been calling for an election as soon as possible.  After Christmas, faced with the chance to chop a few seats from the House as he had already pledged to do, Ball was quick to agree both to the cuts proposed by the Conservatives and to a delay in the election at least until November. 

Ball’s hasty decision will cause him two very serious problems, as we have already noted.  Now that the bill is in the House there are new dimensions to the problems faced by Ball and the Liberals.