Six Rationalisations Pretending to Be Policy #nlpoli

Policy solves problems.

At it's simplest level,  policy answers a question.

Cancelling Muskrat Falls is a good example.  We are facing a financial crisis.  Muskrat Falls is a huge expense.  There's the problem.  Turn it into a question and it becomes whether or not we should cancel Muskrat Falls.

To answer the question, you'd have to look at other issues. Muskrat Falls  was supposed to be the answer to our power needs. We'd have to look at that issue:  do we need the power?  We'd have to look at finances:  can we afford it? What would it cost to take one course versus another?  We'd have to ask about legal implications:  what do our legal commitments say we must do?

Implicit in those questions is the idea of alternatives.  What choices do we have?

A written report on those questions would have some structure to it.  You'd expect it to start out with a clear statement of the question the author reviewed.  It might even be posed as three options: continuing as we are,  halting the project completely, or an intermediate options like slowing the project,  cancelling bits of it, and so on.

The paper would review the existing state of the project and then project ahead based on what we knew.  Then it would have to branch off from today to examine each of the answers to our string of questions.  Given the size of Muskrat Falls and the complexity of itl you'd imagine any serious discussion of cancelling the project would take months to prepare, would involve a great many people, and would certainly take more than 10 sheets of paper.  Just to make sure you appreciate the magnitude of what we are talking about, go back and look at just a tiny bit of the paperwork prepared for the public utilities board review of the project.  The Manitoba Hydro report was enormous.

Now read the 20% of a document prepared for Dwight Ball's cabinet released to CBC under the access to information law.This briefing note is apparently about the implications of cancelling the project.

Responsible Government #nlpoli

Many of you may not have heard of Jerry Dean until this past week.

Jerry is from Botwood. Last fall the people on Exploits district elected him as their member in the House of Assembly.  He's been a around the block a bit.  His official biography says he worked for Abitibi for 30 years and since 1997 he's been active on his town council and in some volunteer groups.

Last week Jerry said something in the House of Assembly that got some folks upset on Twitter. That helped get him some media attention  - here's the TransCon and CBC versions - and so the fellow has been getting a bit of a rough ride.

Up the harbour and down the shore... once more #nlpoli

Here's another one that started life as a column at the old Independent. 

And, as with "The politics of history" it can serve as a reminder of just how little has changed in local politics over a very long time.

In this case, it shows how little has changed in a very short time.

As it turned out, Danny Williams and his colleagues didn't create private sector jobs.  They created public sector ones that they knew were unsustainable. 

The politics of history (again) #nlpoli

Originally written for The Independent in 2003 "The politics of history" has become a post that continues to resonate with your humble e-scribbler if no one else. it first appeared in July 2005, came back in a reprint in 2010, and now re-appears once more.

Some of you will have read it at least once before. I you recall it, then you will probably feel those uncomfortable sensations of familiarity as you look at politics today and then think back on the recent past. Readers who have only recently discovered these scribbles will hopefully get a jolt out of it to make you think about the repeating patterns in local political rhetoric. 

Clearly we are not on a mere merry-go-round of words.  We are on one in which ideas and actions come back again and again.  The time between the repetitions seems to be decreasing. There is one glaring error in the post.  Voters are not getting better at spotting the charlatans. They embrace them more fervently than ever.

Stunnel mania #nlpoli

Right off the bat, let's fess up to a mistake.

The 2004 research into the Stunnel cost "cost a total of $351,674, with a contribution of $281,339 from ACOA and $70,335 from the province." You can find the figures in the original news release from February 2004.

That means that the latest study into the potential for a fixed link between the Great Northern Peninsula and Quebec is a bit more than double the cost of the 2004 study.  But notice that the province is going it alone this time and to the tune of 10 times what it cost the provincial government more than decade ago to get to the same place.

In other words, the fixed link to the mainland is technically feasible but economically nutty.

Choices and values: ideologically-driven nonsense versus reality #nlpoli

Memorial University history professor Robert Sweeny discovered something recent.  he discovered that the finance minister's budget speech and the Estimates contained two different sets of numbers.

Hot on the trail of this discrepancy,  Sweeny delved deeper. He clacked out a really long account - even by SRBP standards - of his search for the truth. Then the folks at theindependent.ca  posted the whole thing including a very big table documenting how some parts of the government were getting less money and others were getting more.

There was only one conclusion.  Well, only one for Sweeny.  This was all part of a vast international conspiracy.  "Cathy Bennett, the fast-food millionaire, has pulled a fast one on the public,"  concluded Sweeney. "The finance minister is either incompetent or dishonest—take your choice—but she most definitely must be held accountable, as too must Premier Ball. The very quality of our democracy depends on it."

If the quality of our democracy depends on the melodramatic twaddle Sweeny is peddling, then we are royally shagged.

Measuring Thick: either or edition #nlpoli

While Des Whelan was clacking out his column for Saturday's Telegram one of the editors -  Brian Jones  - came at the government's financial mess from another direction the day before.

In the bizarro world of local politics,  people think that Des Whelan and the business crowd are on the Right while Jones and his friends in the NDP and the public sector unions are the Left.  Nothing could be further from the truth, as some famous politician once said.

"Bennett and Ball’s first tough decision was straightforward,"  wrote Jones. "It was to determine who is more important: the people of this province, or the credit-rating agencies in New York?"

It's telling that Jones sees it as a choice of one or the other. It's also revealing that he found it hard to watch what Jones described as "trolls, Liberal diehards and people secretly ashamed of having voted for Ball spout predictable putdowns."

What was his example of a put-down?  “'What’s your solution?' they demand, as if any and all alternative suggestions are automatically unrealistic and impossible."

If that is an insult, poor Jones isn't going to want to read any further.

Measuring Thick: business edition #nlpoli

You cannot manage what you cannot measure, says Des Whelan, president of the Board of Trade this year.  Des gets a column in the province's largest daily newspaper.

Des is right.  You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

Unfortunately for Des, we can measure the Board of Trade's record on the public sector spending, debt, and policies over the past decade.

We call the measure  Thick.

Thick measures 4.

Hole in ground to give Labrador "advantage of fixed link" to mainland: premier #nlpoli

The provincial government will spend $750,000 this year to study the feasibility of digging a hole from the Great Northern Peninsula to Blanc Sablon, in Quebec.

SRBP told you on Tuesday that the goof-ball idea - last dismissed as a waste of money in 2005 - will get another check to see if any of the stupid has worn off it in the past 11 years.

The goofiness doesn't end there.

The feasibility study came up in the House of Assembly on Thursday.

Apparently, the people of Labrador need a fixed link from the island to the mainland. People are wrong to dismiss the idea as a waste of money. That would deny the people of Labrador of a great opportunity.

Here's Premier Dwight Ball defending the feasibility study:

For the Member opposite to simply to say that it is a waste of money, to give the Labrador portion of this province the opportunity to see the advantage of a fixed link.

Doesn't Labrador already have a fixed link to the mainland?

Just a question.

The other side of the hill - choices and values 2 #nlpoli

Wednesday's post - Choices and values - came from the perspective of someone outside the echo chamber of politics in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ordinary voters - who mostly do not work for the government -  don't feel like the pain from this budget is shared fairly by all.  They just don't believe any assurances that everyone else will feel comparable pain in the future.

But on the other side of the hill, the politicians have a perspective that we shouldn't ignore either.

Choices and values #nlpoli

Gerry Rogers, a New Democrat member of the House of Assembly, got a bit enthusiastic on Twitter the other night about "building [a] budget fr[om] set of values/priorities," as if that wasn't what every budget is.

David Easton, the American political scientist, described politics as "the authoritative allocation of values."  A budget is the way the government puts its financial resources to work to accomplish its goals.  The budget is a visible symbol of the political system at work.  it shows you what the politicians think is most important. The budget shows you what the politicians value.

In their hour-long show on CBC Monday night,  Premier Dwight Ball and finance minister Cathy Bennett talked about their values a lot.  You might have had to listen to find them buried under a bit of bureaucratic jargon but they are there.  You'll also have to look past false choices, as in Bennett's claim on Monday that the only alternative to the levy was "some type of [additional] cuts, and that wasn't something at this particular point that we thought made sense."

Province to spend $750K to study feasibility of hole in the ground #nlpoli

At a time when the provincial government does not have any money to spend foolishly, it is hard to fathom why cabinet is taxing books to raise $1.0 million and yet spending $750,000 through the Environment and Conservation department to update a feasibility study done in 2004 into building a tunnel to connect the Great Northern Peninsula to Labrador.

It is putting a tax on knowledge to pay for stupidity.

We are talking about the Stunnel, or Stunned Tunnel. Regular readers will recall the Stunnel idea got some powerful support in 2003.  You'll find a post in 2005 that described the project as it stood a year or two earlier:

The Stunnel "would cost $1.3 billion or thereabouts. It would need an average of 1400 cars travelling across it per day, with a peak of 3, 000 per day, in order to be viable. Proponents also claim it would produce upwards of 40, 000 direct and indirect job during construction, although this would last for a total of three years. Using the ever popular argument, proponents say the Stunnel would be an engineering marvel and attract tourists from around the world. "

The original feasibility study cost only $100,000. As SRBP summarised in early 2005,  the study concluded you could build the cheapest option - a bored tunnel that ran an electric train back and forth - for about $1.7 billion. The government would have to put in pretty much all of that and it would take 11 years to finish.

We don't need to spend seven and a half times that much to figure out how crazy the Stunnel idea still is.

A cut too far #nlpoli

There's a scene in the movie A Bridge too far where the British soldiers are trying to push down a road as part of a major attack on the Germans in September 1944.

The whole plan was built, according to the movie, around dropping parachute troops at key bridges and then having ground troops charge along a single road.  The soldiers on the ground had 48 hours to get to the last of the airborne soldiers, who were at Arnhem.  They didn't make it, hence the idea that the plan always involved going one bridge too far.

There are wrecks everywhere and the dead are everywhere after the first clash in the campaign.  As soldiers clear the way and take away the wounded, one officer looks up at another who is sitting on a scout car.  How do the generals expect them to keep up the pace under these conditions, the fellow asks looking up.  The fellow sitting on the armoured car has his binoculars and is scanning the road ahead.  J.O.E Vandeleur,  played by Michael Caine, looks down at his cousin, Giles,  and says:

"You don't know the worst. This bit we're on now?"

"Yes,"  says Giles, quizzically.

"It's the wide part."

Flying the checklist - Government's comms problem Part II #nlpoli

The Liberals under Dwight Ball have had a steady run of problems with managing issues, policies, and positions.  The current mess they face with the 2016 budget is really nothing more than a very big version of the problems they have had continuously for the past 18 months.

Last year, some Liberals thought they had solved the problems by changing around some people who had the word "communication" in their job title. Nothing changed. That confirms that the problem isn't at the level of the people they changed around. The problem is higher up the decision-making chain and has much more to do with how the Liberals look at the world than it is with how a particular staffer does a job.

That was the point in Tuesday's post.  Today, we are going to look at another aspect of the Liberal problem, namely the organisation they have taken over in government.

Not fit for it, indeed #nlpoli

Once upon a time not so long ago, you would think politics in this province was a mash up of  Nineteen eighty-four and Animal Farm.

These days,  the Orwellian times in which Danny Williams thrived seem a kindergarten compared to the Franz Kafka novel which we now inhabit.

"Before any election the [Auditor General] should make public the financial state of the province,"  some fellow said on Twitter Wednesday morning. 

"This should be done yearly by a non-partisan person. hold the gov accountable, TO US VOTERS,"  said another fellow in reply.

"It's already done,"  said one of the Known Critics.  "It's called the Public Accounts [issued by the Auditor General every year]."

"REALLY???"  replied the US VOTERS guy.  "Liberals say this, PC'S say that.. which is it? who do ya believe?"

Winston Churchill and taxes (revised and updated) #nlpoli

You have probably seen the quote and a picture of Winston Churchill flying around Facebook or Twitter since the provincial government introduced its budget in the House of Assembly a couple of weeks ago.

"For a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."  Winston Churchill.

People don't like the massive jump in taxes and the creation of new fees and charges like the levy. They pass this around as their statement of protest.

Three things to know about the quote, besides the fact that Cathy Bennett used it in the budget debate last year to argue against a hike in the HST:

MQO poll shows big Liberal slide #nlpoli

Just for the fun of comparison, here's the CRA polling results for a year covering the last time the provincial government saw a change of party and the new crowd introduced a killer budget no one expected.

The Conservatives dropped from 55 points in November 2003 to 33 points in May of the next year.

They only climbed out of the hole by abandoning their austerity program and launching a costly jihad against Ottawa.

Delivering a bad budget is one thing.  Delivering a bad budget very badly is something else entirely.

That's why, As bad as the polling numbers are for the Liberals in MQO's April 2016 poll, there is nothing in it that's surprising to anyone paying attention to local politics.

The Government's ongoing Communications Problem - the political side #nlpoli

To understand the communications problem the Liberal administration faces,  look at the first and so far only decision they have taken on communications to date.

Everything stays just as it is.

Nothing changes.

Nobody changes.

The official excuse a Liberal minister will offer when asked is that the cost of severance would be too great to get rid of them all.

But as bizarre as it was to leave directors of communications for Conservative Premiers in charge of communications for a new Liberal administration, the partisan bias of some of the folks in the jobs isn't the point.

The problem is that their entire approach to communications has been an obvious, dismal failure for five years.  Today, we'll take a look at the political problem the Liberals have.  On Friday, we'll dissect the Conservative mess the Liberals continue to use.

Ring access ruling blames wrong culprit #nlpoli

To understand why access commissioner Ed Ring's ruling issued last Monday was troubling, you have to know some back story.

Ring was ruling in an investigation over an access request for two reports that should be in the Premier's Office.  An access request for copies of the reports got the reply that the office doesn't have them.  The actual response used the bureaucratic phrase "no responsive records."

Whoever went looking for the records appealed to Ring, Ring's office investigated, and then the report came out.  Ring chastised the Premier's Office for not keeping better track of its stuff.  In essence, he laid the blame for the missing files on the current crowd in the office.

That's wrong.

More worrying wobbles #nlpoli

You have to get very seriously concerned when a cabinet minister can't or won't answer a simple question that has only one, simple, direct answer.

Next week,  the provincial government,  the province's access to information commissioner, and some agencies will appear in court to deal with an application from the teacher's union and the nurses' union to roll back the clock on the public's right to know. Bill 29 did not go far enough for them.

The law says what it has always said:  the public can find out the name of the person in a public service position, the position the person occupies, and the remuneration the person gets for doing the job.  It's a fundamental point and the words are written plainly, in black letters, in the current access to information law, just as they have been in every access law since the first one in 1981.

Asked about the challenge to public access to information from some public sector unions,  Siobhan Coady told the Telegram's James McLeod "I will talk to Justice on what their position is, and I’ll have to get back to you on Monday."

How exactly can the minister responsible for the public's right to know not know what the government position will be?

Seriously.