His best shot #nlpoli

The most important measurement you need to take of Dwight Ball's great vision for the provincial government is that this is his one, best shot.

That shot consists of a hackneyed, worn-out, tired list of all sorts of things that government departments are already doing,  things that won't materially affect the problem or government's deficit or the economy, or that are just irrelevant to the problem that continues to loom over all our heads.

Take as a good example, the commitment to improve breastfeeding initiation rates from their current 72% to something like the national rate of 90%.  It sounds like a great idea since breast-feeding is a good way to improve babies' health. Healthy babies mean healthy adults and healthy adults cost less to care for than the crowd currently filling our hospitals. What's more, it sounds like there is a measurable target, going from 72 to 90 and all that.  Lots of evidence in there for the evidence based fetished among you.

But it isn't.

Remembrance Day 2016

Captain Nichola Goddard

-srbp-

Citizenship and Newfoundland's decision to join Canada - Raymond Blake #nlpoli

From Ray Blake's recent post on the Acadiensis blog:

Approaching the constitutional politics of Newfoundland in the 1940s from the perspective of the rhetoric surrounding citizenship provides a multi-dimensional framework that allows us to see how a majority of voters who had not traditionally imagined themselves as citizens demanded in the political debates of the 1940s certain protections, to secure certain benefits, and to be guaranteed particular capacities. It was on the basis of the discursive framework of citizenship that voters made claims on their political community. In this, voters in Newfoundland were no different than those throughout Canada, Britain or Australia, for instance, who wanted better quality education, better health care and better public services. After the Second World War, Newfoundland, like societies elsewhere, insisted that citizenship in liberal democracies had to bring real material benefits and provide a measure of security to all citizens and that may have been the main determining factor in Newfoundland’s decision to choose Canada.

-srbp- 

Why national history matters - Jerry Bannister #nlpoli

"Nations matter. National cultures matter. And national histories matter,"  historian Jerry Bannister writes in his commentary on the American presidential election just finished.  "As we try to understand what has happened in the United States, we should keep those three things in mind."

Bannister notes that historians are increasingly drawn to interpretations that cross national and international boundaries, drawing attention to ever larger patterns and force that shape events.   "Well," Bannister interjects, "if we ever needed a reminder of the importance of national history, we got it last night."

"Despite all the ink spilled on connections across borders and links across the Atlantic world, American history diverges in critical ways from Canadian history.  For all of our similarities as continental neighbours, our political cultures appear to be going in opposite directions. Those differences may seem minor to some, but this morning they feel more important than ever."

This matters,  as Bannister concludes,  because as "we search for answers and understanding, we need to reconsider the importance of national history, national institutions, and the road not travelled."

Read the whole post at the Acadiensis blog.

-srbp-

The real news in one sentence #nlpoli

According to its supporters, we need to have a special office for search and rescue in St. John's because Newfoundlanders spoke English so poorly that no one could understand us.

Lives would be in jeopardy because Merv Wiseman lost his job. Wiseman was one of the loudest critics of the federal government's 2013 decision to close the Maritime Rescue Sub-Centre.

That's the full extent of the argument advanced by Wiseman,  then-member of parliament Jack Harris, and a raft of others.  There were all sorts of hysterical claims about the decision, including the old chestnut that the evil Stephen Harper Conservatives were punishing the people of the province for something or other.

Well, the federal Liberals have promised to put the office back.  It will take them another two eyars, meaning that we will have a total of five years without it.

Apparitions #nlpoli

You can go back to September 2006 and find one of the earliest references at SRBP to the impact the aging, shifting population would have on Newfoundland and Labrador.  The argument in the speech came from projections dating back to the early 1990s.

There was nothing radical or new in any of it.  In the decade after that post, the provincial government ignored the projections,  ignored the obvious implications of an aging population, and did all sorts of things to make matters worse.  Along the way,  SRBP and labradore have written about the problem and the fact that the politicians were making it worse.

Now that the problem has actually been in our faces for five or six years,  you are seeing more and more references to the changes in some parts of the province.  Like say the Great Northern Peninsula, where one town has lost 10% of its population every year since 2011.   That town likely won't be there within the next five years.  Other towns are in worse shape already.  Still others will be in the same position before too much longer.

There used to be some nice illustrations of how the population is changing.  SRBP included a link in a 2013 post that also included a commentary by Matthew Kerby, then a political scientist at Memorial University. The illustrations are gone. The facts are still there.

The Premier is supposed to release his vision plan for the provincial economy in the decade ahead.  Pay close attention to what he releases.  So far,  the Premier has ignored the bigger picture just like his predecessors did.  If Dwight Ball's plan doesn't take into account the impacts of demographics, then it will be less a vision and more another government nightmare.

-srbp-

Politics and Theatre

Adam Schiff is a United States congressman representing the 29th district in California.  He's a Democrat.

His fictional namesake was the Manhattan district attorney in the original series Law & Order.

Adam Schiff's successor as district attorney was Arthur Branch,  played by actor Fred Thompson.

Thompson served from 1994 to 2003 as a United States senator from Tennessee. He was a Republican.

-srbp-

Appearance #nlpoli

What you know of the world outside your immediate physical sensation - what you can touch, taste, feel and so on - is a mental construction.

It is a fiction.

That doesn't mean it is all false. All fiction has some element of the concrete amid its vapour. Nor does it mean that appearance is reality, as many mistakenly assume.

We share a lot of that fiction with everyone else. The thing is, we all run slightly different versions of the same story in our heads. From time to time, our fiction runs up against a different version of events.

That's when things get interesting.

North Spur sideshow #nlpoli

Jim Gordon, an engineer previously critical about the design of the Muskrat Falls dam has revised his opinion.  Gordon had earlier believed that the landmass known as the North Spur was potentially unstable and could collapse under certain conditions.  He's now revised his view based on new evidence.

For all the concern lots of people have had about this issue,  it was never really a show-stopper for the Muskrat Falls project.  As it is, Nalcor has taken measures to reduce the amount of water in the clay, thereby limiting the potential for landslides.  In the worst case, Nalcor would have just extended a conventional concrete dam across the same span.  That would have driven up the cost of the project, but since the government is already committed to finishing the project at any cost that was nothing to worry about.

Natural resources minister Siobhan Coady has been in the witness protection program for months. The most folks have heard from her is the odd statement issued by her office.  A staunch and unquestioning supporter of the Muskrat mess from the beginning, Coady issued a statement about Gordon's change of opinion Thursday evening.

Coady's comments come across like a "told-ya-so" from one of the last die-hard boosters of the boondoggle. There's basically Danny Williams, Ed Martin,  the rest of the Tory party... and Siobhan Coady.  That's probably why her statement sounded like the sort of politically tone-deaf statement made famous by her predecessor Kathy Dunderdale, another unflinching charter member of the Muskrateer's Club.

Coady should save her energy for 2019 when she has to face voters' wrath for the insanely and needlessly high electricity bills Coady's project will bring.

-srbp-

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.