Nick Whalen killed a giant.
That’s the story of the 2015 federal election in Newfoundland and Labrador, bar none.
People told Whalen he was crazy to run against the popular NDP incumbent. No one gave him a chance. But Whalen wound up defeating the NDP heavyweight.
This is Craig Westcott’s editorial from The Pearl newspaper, reproduced with permission..
This is a tough column to write. Taking an editorial position in favour of one candidate over another when both have worked so hard in this election isn’t as easy as some partisans on either side might think.
My opinion is tempered by the experience of having run myself, back in 2008, when I didn’t stand a snot of a chance as the Conservative candidate in the federal election against the NDP’s Jack Harris, who had the full weight and force of Danny Williams’ popularity and provincial PC machine behind him.
As I said at the time, I ran not so much for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives as against Danny Williams’ ABC campaign and his bid to isolate Newfoundland even farther from the political mainstream of this country.
Two polls taken during the recent campaign showed Scott Andrews was losing in his old seat in Avalon.
| Decided and leanings | Mainstreet | MQO/NTV (October) |
| Liberal | 43 (37) | 31 |
| NDP | 19 (16) | 10 |
| Conservative | 14 (13) | 9 |
| Andrews | 19 (13) | 22 |
Number in brackets is decided only. UND = 17
The “undecided “in the Mainstreet poll was 17%. When Mainstreet probed them to find which way they were leaning, the numbers you got above came out the other end. The decideds only, without the leaning figures) is in brackets. NTV didn’t release the raw data.
The numbers in those polls shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. The Liberals turfed Andrews from the caucus over allegations of sexual impropriety. Andrews has talked around the issue but still hasn’t told anyone what happened.
As it appears, people aren’t interested in the issue. They aren’t interested because they have already made up their mind about Andrews. He is dead meat just as he has been dead since the Liberals turfed him from caucus. The campaign didn't change anything for him.
The rest of the field never mattered. You can see in these polls the fact the NDP has absolutely zero impact outside metro St. John’s. The Conservatives are pulling nine points in the most recent poll.
-srbp-
If the numbers from the Liberal campaign in St. John’s East are right, then New Democratic Party incumbent Jack Harris is in serious trouble.
Asked if which candidate they would vote for, the 1,000 respondents to the IVR survey conducted over 48 hours late last week picked Harris by one point over his Liberal rival Nick Whalen.
This would be remarkable on a number of levels, not the least of which is that Whalen is a relative unknown in politics. Harris, by contrast, first got elected in 1987. Whalen was 15 at the time.
Harris is a likeable fellow and his appeal cuts across party lines. That broad appeal is why he has won the two federal elections he’s been in by sizeable margins: 74% of votes cast in 2008 and 71% in 2011. That second huge victory shows that the internal feud within the Conservatives had nothing to do with his victory in 2008.
As the federal election winds down to the last day, the result is likely going to be nothing any of the pundits expected.
Okay, the election isn;t winding down for the parties. For them, it is winding up tighter than tighter, but for everyone else we are coming down to the end of things.
Anyway, even for the folks who will be working this weekend without much sleep, things now do not look anything like they looked at the start. more than two months ago.
Muskrat Falls will ensure consumers in Newfoundland and Labrador pay much higher electricity rates than they otherwise needed to pay.
The latest Nalcor estimate is that consumers in the province will see a 53% jump in rates between now and 2020, with rates hitting 19.8 as the project enters commercial production.
The information came in the reply by Nalcor officials to a question by Tom Baird. Here’s a screen cap of the portion he tweeted on Tuesday:
Double whammy there for Nalcor:
Bad enough. the 2020 date confirms recent projections from two different independent sources - via Uncle Gnarley - that Nalcor’s megaproject in Labrador is now two years behind schedule. There’s a very good likelihood the real date will be later..
Far worse, you now know you will be getting a massive - and entirely unnecessary - jump in electricity rates due to Muskrat Falls. The cost over-runs are just adding to the amount of the increased cost.
Nalcor’s official figures put the jump at 53% above your current charge For folks using 1500 kilowatt hours a month of electricity, you’d be looking at about another $100 a month.
Compare that to the “seven dollars” more figure Ed Martin was tossing around a couple of weeks ago when word of the last cost over-run and project delay hit the news. VOCM even used it in a headline on September 30:
Nalcor Expects Average Power Bill to Go Up About $7
Wrong!
The truth was that the seven dollar hike Martin was talking about was on top of several other Nalcor increased estimates that still didn’t account for the gap between where we are currently and where Nalcor’s estimates started. More on that below. Key thing here is that official Nalcor figures now put the rate increase at 53%.
Only problem is we can’t be sure Nalcor has its own figures right. Here’s why.
/What a difference 36 years makes.
There’s New Democrat strategist Robin Sears in a National Post piece complaining about the way the Liberal are running their guy named Trudeau in lots of situations that give him good visuals.
“He isn’t running to be a boxer or a canoeist, he’s running to be Prime Minister, which is a different set of credentials,” said Robin Sears, who spent several campaigns in the war room for former NDP leader Ed Broadbent.
Now jump back to 1979, courtesy of the National Film Board’s documentary about the federal election in which another guy named Trudeau figured prominently.
In 2004, Danny Williams fought for three months against a federal government decision that had been settled – at least for the federal government – earlier in the year as part of the usual budget cycle.
Williams got the money the federal government had allocated but won the domestic war for public opinion.
In 2007, Williams and his provincial Conservatives launched a second political holy war against the federal government’s budget decisions. Williams waged a much longer war, lost it, but was widely credited at home with a victory.
There were other similarities
At the heart of the ongoing civil war between Danny Williams’ provincial Conservatives and Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives is the claim by Williams that Harper broke his 2006 election promise on Equalization.
Williams wrote to each of the federal party leaders and asked the leaders to state their party’s position on Equalization.
Since people are wondering if Muskrat Falls really is still the cheapest way to make electricity for local use, let’s take a look at it.
The tale is actually very simple.
Nalcor argued that Muskrat Falls was cheaper than one alternative: an island system dependent on thermal generation using some sort of petroleum fuel like the heavy stuff burned at Holyrood.
Now that wasn’t true even in December 2010, as this SRBP post noted at the time. Even if you accept the contrived studies used in 2012 to justify Muskrat Falls, the massive cost increases for the project have made the Falls more expensive than the alternatives.
The only advantage Muskrat had over thermal (oil) was fuel and those prices have gone in one direction: down. Since you can build a new thermal plant near to the demand source, you wouldn’t need the expensive connections to the mainland. That all works for oil-fired generation and against Muskrat Falls.
Oil prices have plummeted in recent months and are forecast to stay low, Muskrat Falls’ only advantage is definitely gone.
Poof!
Last week, provincial fisheries minister Vaughn Granter held a news conference at a local restaurant known for its seafood dishes to announce that from now on, that restaurant and even ordinary consumers could buy fish.directly from a fisherman without facing any legal problems.
That may sound a bit odd to some people but truth be told the provincial government has for decades banned direct sales to consumers. Ostensibly it was based on concerns over public health but in truth it was just another way the government tried to control the hell out of the fish business.
Wonderful news.
But the really fascinating detail was buried away in Granter’s speaking notes.
The average consumer in Newfoundland and Labrador should expect to pay 51% more for electricity compared to their current rates once Muskrat Falls comes online, according to SRBP’s estimate. Nalcor figures available at the time of writing.the original version of this post suggested a rate increase of 51%.
A household that current pays $156 $179.25 a month for electricity (not including HST, basic charge or provincial rebate) will see their monthly charge increase by $94 $282 a month with Muskrat Falls included in 2020. Those calculations use Nalcor figures and current domestic electricity rates.
Former Premier Danny Williams, the man behind the project, dismissed the cost increases for the project as “mouse droppings” and nothing more than the “cost of doing business.”
Nalcor boss Ed Martin said last week that consumer prices would go up by an additional seven dollars a month due to the most recent increase. Martin didn’t explain that those calculations were merely the added costs from the latest increase added to Nalcor’s earlier forecast based on cost over-runs. What Martin also didn’t say was that Nalcor’s calculations started from an assumed price that was significantly higher than actual consumer rates at the moment.
Any oil company seriously interested in bidding on an exploration license offshore Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t likely to need the hyped presentation by the provincial government Thursday.
Exploring offshore is expensive.
Always has been.
Always will be.
Exploring beyond the 200 mile exclusive economic zone, in upwards of two kilometres of water, just makes the oil and gas all that much more costly. to find and more costly to produce.
The latest progress report shows that Nalcor had a productive summer, but an extrapolation by the researcher and writer JM of information in the latest progress reports points to first power from Muskrat Falls in September 2018 and full commercial power by the middle of 2019.
In at post at Uncle Gnarley, JM described the challenge facing Nalcor in 2015:
As correctly noted in the March 2015 oversight report the productivity improvements in Q2 2015 are essential to meeting the final milestone schedule. For the Muskrat Falls team, the summer of 2015 is really “make or break” for the project. They need to get the project back on track before the construction schedule is hampered yet again by another Labrador winter. Winter begins earlier in Labrador than it does on the Island. The project team knows this. The questions is this: is the productivity improving at a pace where the schedule can be recovered? [sic] If Nalcor have any hope for schedule recovery they must first start meeting their originally planned productivity targets. In the July 2014 schedule, they planned to complete about 6.7% of the project in Q1-2015. With all their mitigation measures, Nalcor should be looking for about 33% complete by the end of June.
New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair likely never imagined that an insult he threw at a couple of Parti Quebecois politicians in the Quebec National Assembly 20 years ago would come back to haunt him 2015.
Liberal candidate Nick Whalen likely never imagined that reminding Mulcair of the word he used – “Newfie” - would rob Mulcair of whatever coverage he’d hoped to get out of his campaign stop in St. John’s.
But it did.
Then the controversy over Mulcair’s remarks carried on for another two days as New Democrats whined and complained about the whole issue. That only served to keep it going.
And to make sure the story didn’t die, two national pieces - Colby Cosh (National Post) and Evan Dyer (CBC) – weighed in. Cosh and Dyer picked up on the context of the original comment and that’s where things stared to get really interesting.
Not surprisingly, Darin King has decided to leave politics after only eight years.
King is just the latest in a long line of pensionable Conservatives who have decided it would be better to quit politics now with a fat pension rather than risk sitting on the opposition benches for a few years.
If he is remembered at all, King will stand out among his colleagues in the current Conservative administration for two reasons.
