Feds offer more help with Muskrat #nlpoli

The federal government delivered a $2.9 billion additional loan guarantee Thursday in time for the Liberal Party convention this weekend in Gander.

The added guarantee is less than the provincial government wanted - they went looking for $5.0 billion, apparently - but it will help to defray the escalating cost of the project.

The federal government can justify the money in a number of ways.  The most significant justification for helping with the debt is that the provincial government is in desperate financial shape. The federal government had the choice of helping or of almost certainly taking over the provincial government as a bankrupt in short order. As it is, the federal government may well have to take the government in hand in a few years' time anyway.

The $2.9 billion in the new loan guarantee brings the total backed by the federal government to $7.9 billion. At the rate things are going, the project may well cost another $7.0 billion beyond that before things are done.

The federal government will charge one half of one percent as a charge for the loan guarantee.

-srbp-

Muskrat Math #nlpoli

Stan Marshall told the province Tuesday that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador can never get their money back on this pig of a project called Muskrat Falls.

On Wednesday, people were bending their brains trying to figure out how this happened.  Must be a recent thing.  Blame it on fall in prices.

Well, no.

"Never get our money back" was the entire premise of Muskrat Falls from the day Danny Williams announced it in November 2010.  Amazing how folks missed these details.

The polls remain discouraging for Liberals #nlpoli

Heading into their convention this weekend,  the provincial Liberals have another poll that confirms what all the other polls have said for the past six months or so.

For those misled by reports about the MQO poll like CBC's initial one, see the bit down below.

Here's what you get when you take all the polls over the past six months together,  and make allowances for variations like the margin of error.

Three points:

• Only about 16% of respondents think Dwight Ball is the best choice for leader.
• If an election were held tomorrow,  somewhere between 20% and 25% of voters would pick the Liberal.  
•  About 60% of people think the government is headed in the wrong direction.

Not good.

All the reboots and changes and visions have done precisely nothing to change public attitudes about the Liberals and their leader.

How much do we owe? #nlpoli

CBC Radio Noon had board of trade president Des Whalen in the studio on Monday.  

Board of Trade thinks the debt is about $13 billion today.  Don't talk about Muskrat Falls.  That's in the past.  Yeah, well, when your humble e-scribbler challenged Des on the numbers the best he could come up with was "it's a really big number."

Kid you not.  That was all he had.

For the record, here's a table that shows the provincial government's total liabilities, taken from the annual Auditor General's reports.

If you cannot make out the picture as it is, you can click on it or read on for the high points.

The total of everything you owe, right now,  is about $29 billion. The St. John's Board of Trade says it is only $13 billion.  Yes,  well it hasn't really been that number low 2004.  The Board of Trade's favourite project - Muskrat Falls  - adds another $15 billion onto that $13 billion right there. Whelan got hung up on the idea the other crowd actually reduced debt.  The numbers make it plain that they didn't.  There's $28 billion without batting an eyelid.

Things get worse from here.

The Muskrat Circus rolls back into town #nlpoli

Stan Marshall appeared out of the shadows on Tuesday to do a round of interviews with every media outlet in town.

He told NTV what he told everyone else:  the cost of the protests and the environmental work coming from the agreement that ended the protests will slow the project and cost money.  Stan also said something that is true but that upset a lot of people.  We don't know for sure that the clearing  called for under the agreement will actually reduce the methylmercury output from the project.

In the CBC version of his interview, Marshall acknowledged that the folks at Nalcor hadn't always done a good job of explaining what was going on with the project.  Marshall pointed out something that is both undeniable and true:  lots of people involved in the protests really had no idea what methylmercury was. They were legitimately afraid but they were afraid of the unknown.

Building higher walls #nlpoli

A new government security policy does everything short of banning people from Confederation Building altogether.  Visitors to the main government building in St. John's now have to enter through a single entrance in the basement of the building at the back.  There's no parking available and the whole thing is so congested that on busy days people will have to line up out through the door into the parking lot to get into the building.

The real reason for the change is budgetary.  The politicians can save a few bucks by cutting off public access to the Confederation Building through one or two doors. Tight behind that as a reason for the new policy was a poop-in-the-shorts over-reaction to the recent protests.

So out-to-lunch are the folks behind this scheme that they forced toddlers from the staff daycare to make the trek outdoors to the entrance on the other side of the building when they tried to go on a parade through the building to show off their Hallowe'en costumes on Monday.

Just to show you how crazy the Poopy-Pants Brigade are about this security stuff,  take a look at the hastily scribbled sketch at the right. Confederation Building day care is located behind the East Block in a space that used to be occupied by the roads testing crowd from motor vehicle licencing.

To get in the main building,  the kids have been traipsing for years along the short route to where the X is.  This year the urchins had to take the other red line around to the only way visitors are now allowed in the building.

Mind you, the official reason for the policy is - as James McLeod reported in the Telegram on Saturday - concern about the safety of our politicians.  "Multiple sources also indicated that government MHAs have recently been receiving death threats,"  McLeod wrote.

"The number of threats that are coming in to MHAs is really, really ramping up. There is a significant risk threat,” one source said.

And, at that point,  you should smell a rat.

Ball, Bennett, Williams, and Marshall #nlpoli

One of the things finance minister Cathy Bennett told NTV's Issues and Answers this weekend was that the Premier Dwight Ball scrapped the fall mini-budget in September in favour of his own Grand Strategy for Moving Forward in a Generally Advancing Fashion with Vision.

Ball scrapped the financial course laid out in the budget because of the way people reacted badly to it. If anyone asked Ball asked him about it,  he would deny the polls had anything to do with the change of plans. Then again, last week's marathon meeting had nothing to do with protesters at Muskrat Falls either.

The change of direction actually happened much earlier than September.  Dwight Ball made it pretty clear last summer he'd reverted to his old plan.  That consisted of keeping government on the strategic course the Conservatives set in 2006ish:  spend as much as possible and change government organisation and spending only by the smallest necessary to shift money from one spot and put into another.

Sunshine, lollipops, and fluffy kittens #nlpoli

Finance minister Cathy Bennett read words that tried to make the provincial government's financial situation sound better than it was forecast to be last spring.

For all the wonderful words in Bennett's scripted remarks, Bennett could not hide the truth. Her tone of voice was more sombre and depressed than if Premier Dwight Ball had been there himself - rather than in Ottawa for a Memorial University fund raising dinner - and had done his very best Eeyore impression. Bennett was so stiff and wooden in her delivery that it seemed like her motions were written down as well, in stage directions: "As you can see from the slide  [look at slide,  pause,  then look back at script]...".

Then there was the bizarre bit at the end where Bennett thanked people. The reference to her cabinet and caucus colleagues, in the back of the room, seemed like a very obvious attempt to make it appear that they were firmly behind the government's actions. It was so obvious though that it would have the opposite effect.

Three for Thursday #nlpoli

Quebec opposes more federal cash for Muskrat Falls

The Government of Quebec has always opposed federal loan guarantees for Muskrat Falls on the grounds that it skews the hydro playing field.  This week, they just renewed their objections as the provincial government tries to score a second $5.0 billion guarantee.

Speaking of Ottawa and the loan guarantee,  Dwight Ball is skipping the financial update this morning to go to Ottawa.  Ball's doing a Memorial University alumni dinner but is he going to meet with anyone to talk financial aid for the province?

Expect as much sunshine as they can imagine

The midyear financial update is coming at 11:00 AM this morning.  There was supposed to be some word on the gas tax.  Expect some concrete information on when they will start to eliminate it. Invariably the provincial spring budget contains some fictitious numbers.  Over the past decade the government loved to low-ball tax revenues.  This would inflate the deficit and make it look much better at Christmas time, when the Conservatives used to do the mid-year update.  We might see a few of those little surprises.

What you will most definitely not here is any talk of cuts to spending by the government.  Those days are over.  And if finance minister Cathy Bennett hints at cuts, expect a long season of protests from now to the spring as people apply the Mustafa Principle in spades.

The Mustafa Principle #nlpoli

Go back to Friday's post about false choices.

That's where you will find the explanation for the 11 hour marathon meeting.  The final agreement is more about the Premier's need to appear to be in control than it is about the substance of the decision.  That's because the government had already agreed to the major demand for clearing.

This was always a simple choice between clearing or not clearing the Muskrat Falls reservoir area of soil and trees before the final flooding.  In the meantime, Nalcor needed to hold back water to avoid an accidental, uncontrolled flood that would damage the work site.

The government accepted the major demand last week when they accepted the notion of some clearing of soil and vegetation.  Some morphed to all in the final version and, in the meantime, Nalcor gets to carry out its planned hold-back of water.

So what changed?

Truth and Reconciliation #nlpoli

Long ago, so long ago no one remembers when, they did away with Virtue in Newfoundland​ politics.  To be on the safe side, they slit the throats of her twins, Truth and Justice, and tossed the little corpses on top of their mother's still-moving body before leaving the three in a shallow, unmarked grave in the woods.

Newfoundland politics is a daily metaphor of that Original Sin. This fall, we are seeing the crime repeated everywhere with more people drawn in than ever before. Such is the power of modern media.  Such is the state of democracy that mortal sin, like political power, is no longer the exclusive domain of the rich and powerful.  Everyone can get their taste.

There is no monument to Virtue and her murdered children but if Muskrat Falls is ever finished, we can perhaps use it to remember what happened, who was involved, and why.  That is the only way you can reconcile,  the only way you can sincerely balance the accounts  - financial, historical, political - one with the other.

Small town politics in the big city newspapers #nlpoli

The federal Liberals created a new process to pick judges for federal court appointments.  The process - as the Globe pointed out on Thursday - was to ensure they could ensure future appointments would be more reflective of the diversity of the country.

On Saturday,  the Globe editorial praised the recent announcement of a white, middle-aged man  - with no experience on the bench before taking a politically-soaked appointment to the trial division in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001  - as the first appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada from the far eastern province.

This appointment, heralded widely in Newfoundland as recognition of the province's identity, was not a case of playing identity politics, according to the Globe editorialist.

And,  the appointment of yet another grey-haired white guy was an affirmation of the government's new diversity process in appointments.  This was a triumph of qualifications over political connections, the Globe stated emphatically even though there is no evidence that what the Globe said is true or that the person who wrote the editorial was not under duress, mentally impaired, or drunk at the time.

A vintage Globe performance all-'round, in other words.

The editorial is quite obviously the result of something other than an unbiased assessment of anything.

But is it the result of some connections between the Globe and the folks behind the appointment?

Or is it yet another case of the Toronto Globe passive-aggressively poking at the Toronto Star?

You see The Star featured a story on Friday about newly minted Supreme Court Justice Malcom Rowe's decision in R v. S.B, a 2016 case from the Court of Appeal in which Rowe wrote the decision for the court.

The three justices on the panel criticized the trial judge for allowing the defendant's lawyer to read to the jury sexually explicit texts between the complainant and her lover as well as the graphic transcript of a consensual sex tape she made with her husband.  The Star story explains that the "complainant alleged she’d been raped vaginally and anally by her husband, and assaulted several times. He was acquitted on all counts by a jury."

The three appeals justices diverged on the outcome while agreeing the trial judge had made serious errors.  Then Chief Justice Derek Green, the dissenting voice, felt a new trial was necessary since the jury might well have reached a different verdict were they not exposed to the evidence of her sexual that had been presented to them inappropriately.

Rowe and his colleague White disagreed.  “I have reached this conclusion with reluctance given the unfair manner in which the complainant was dealt with,” Rowe wrote for the majority. 

“Nonetheless, I am persuaded by counsel for the respondent that the complainant, by her untruthfulness and the inconsistencies in several areas of her testimony, gravely undermined her credibility.”

“I think, by and large, what (Rowe’s) decision shows is that the criminal justice system is really quite bankrupt when it comes to dealing with our huge social problem of sexual assault,” [University of Ottawa law professor Constance Backhouse told The Star], “I think it says more about that, than it does about Justice Rowe.”

And a couple of days earlier, the Star editorial pointed out  - no d'uh - that Rowe hardly stands an appointment that reflects diversity.

Seriously.  And this is what the Globe missed in its rush to endorse the political nonsense represented by Rowe's appointment. 

News and editorial opinion, as it seems, is like politics. It is nothing if it is not local.  And, as in this case, it is nothing but local hogwash circling the boots of people who consider themselves Canad'as elites. Why people ever thought the Globe was more than a small town newspaper written by and for people with a small-town mindset is amazing.

Why people outside Tronna put so much stock in anything in its pages is an even greater mystery.

-srbp-

Massive re-write:  29 May 2019

The political dynamics of Muskrat Falls #nlpoli #dip-o-crites #cdnpoli

The people of Labrador who have now occupied the work camp at the construction site are exercising the only political influence they have in the only way they have been able to influence events thus far on this project.

There'll be a post later in the week to run through how we got to this place.  For now, let's just understand the political dynamics right now. People ignored by everyone else in discussions about this project have taken the only action they knew how to take. This is one of those disjointed protests that happens every once in a while.  It has a life of its own.

Outsiders see it from their own perspective.  Remember that as you see New Democratic Party politicians federally and provincially or local townie celebrities or mainlanders professing their undying solidarity with the indigenous people of Labrador in their fight against blah blah blah. Yeah. Whatever.

In 2010 and in every year since then,  these same people sided with the people building this project in Labrador. They backed the project despite the fairly obvious lies the proponents told, despite the many financial problems with the project, and despite the environmental problems including the problem with methylmercury. These folks had other interests then and their actions now are driven by interests other than the cause of the protesters.

False choices #nlpoli

It's not often you can see a "half-way" compromise as plainly as the one the provincial government announced on Wednesday about Muskrat Falls.

Government's starting point was to flood the reservoir now and not do any additional clearing of the area to be flooded.  The protesters wanted to hold off on flooding for a bit and to clear vegetation and topsoil from the flood area.

On Wednesday government opted to flood now but to do some clearing, plus have some folks do a study to see if more clearing would be good.  That's pretty much half way between the two positions.

And not long after that, you could see plainly that the attempt at compromise had no effect.

The Reverse Midas Touch Rides Again #nlpoli

The crowd running this place these days has an unrivalled ability to look at a problem and find the worst possible response imaginable.

On Wednesday,  natural resource minister Siobhan Coady and environment minister Perry Trimper announced that the government would tell Nalcor to keep flooding the Muskrat Falls reservoir but at the same time, they will have to cut down more trees and clear more vegetation from the flooding area.

This solves nothing.

Rumpole and Reversible Error #nlpoli

Brian Tobin's favourite judge may be on his way to the Supreme Court of Canada but along the way he will probably have to answer a few questions about his decision in the appeal in R v S.B.

The case is on its way to the Supreme Court of Canada and Rowe will have to appear before a House of Commons committee before his appointment is confirmed.

Justice Malcolm Rowe wrote the decision with Justice Charles White concurring.  Chief Justice Derek Green dissented.

In the original case,  S.B. was acquitted by a jury of "two counts of sexual assault upon C.M. in addition to six charges of assault (five against C.M. and one against another complainant), one count of assault with a weapon (against C.M.) and one count of careless use of a firearm." (R. v S.B.,  2014 NLTD(G) 84)

In the appeal,  Rowe wrote that notwithstanding "the serious errors made by the trial judge outlined above, the jury verdict should not be set aside. I have reached this conclusion with reluctance given the unfair manner in which the complainant was dealt with." (2016 NLCA 20)

The War of the Flea Circus #nlpoli

Muskrat Falls has become a three-ring flea circus.

In the first ring, we have the political ambulance chasers, a.k.a. Maudie Barlow and the Council of Xenophobes. The Safari Saviours rolled into town last week, issued a fill-in-the-blanks news release, and then frigged off having successfully tutted a few tuts and gained the media coverage they wanted,.

They, at least, want to end the project, which is more than you can say for the folks staging all sorts of protests here and there.  The folks in the third ring are likely the majority of folks in the province. They want Muskrat Falls finished,  no matter what the cost.  The only difference between Gil Bennett and Bill Gauthier is that Gil actually wants to spend less public money on a project that never made any sense at all.

In the centre ring of the circus we have the province's New Democrats and the self-described "progressive" white folks in the south.  The Dippers sent a letter to the Premier on Monday demanding that he open the House of Assembly "forthwith" in order to give the circus a bigger stage.  Make no mistake,  the Dippers don;t want to stop the project either.  They just want to slow things down a bit.  The NDP, like the Liberals and Conservatives and the overwhelming majority of people in the province want Muskrat Falls at any cost.

The Dippers, like some others, just want you to think they are against the project.  That is the flea in our flea circus.

And that, of course, is the flea in our circus.  It is the thing people insist is there  even when it obviously is not.

Caribous, Choice, and Craziness #nlpoli

For a while, it looked like one of the island's major communities wouldn't be able to put a senior hockey team on the ice for the new season.  Low ticket sales were threatening the Clarenville Caribous.  After a bit of publicity,  the team managed to sell enough tickets to finance the team.

There's no way of knowing if changing demographics were affecting the Caribous.  Clarenville has enjoyed a small boom driven largely by Hebron construction at Bull Arm. As that project is winding down,  the local economy is likely to shrink a bit.  Maybe some folks didn't want to shell out for hockey tickets given the local economic slow-down and the potential for more taxes or cuts coming from the provincial government.

We shouldn't be surprised, though, if more and more of these sorts of stories turn up as our population shrinks,  gets older, and migrates into some of the major centres, particularly St. John's.  After all, we've heard from municipal leaders over the past couple of years that some towns are having a hard time finding employees or even enough people to form a council.  In some places, councilors are picking up garbage and doing other jobs that the town would normally hire someone to do.

Refitting the USS Nimitz (CVN-68)

Ordered in 1967,  laid down in 1968,  launched in 1972 and commissioned in 1975,  USS Nimitz is the lead ship of  a class of 10 aircraft carriers in the United States Navy.  They form the backbone of American naval power in the world.

The ships in the class will be replaced by the Gerald R Ford class.  Current plans call for the navy to retire the Nimitz between 2025 and 2027.

The video documents part of the recent repair and refurbishment of the Nimitz at the naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.  It highlights refurbishment of the rudder,  catapult, and anchors and chain as well as the fabrication and installation of new sponsons on the hull.

-srbp-

The politics of Sally Albright #nlpoli

A surprisingly large number of people loved Monday's post about the political impotence of protesting against Muskrat Falls now that the thing is pretty much finished.

As if to confirm their impotence,  some of the protesters turned up on Tuesday at the government's dog and pony show.  The Premier cut out the back door to avoid them but most of the participants went out the main entrance and stepped around the folks laying about at the protest.

There was a bit of cynical joke, of course, because what was going on inside the "consultation" was a display of political irrelevance for all the folks in the building.  The whole idea of these consultations is to make people feel like they are playing some role in making government policy when, in reality, they are just being played for fools.