The trouble with bubbles #nlpoli

Another type of Bubbles

Stay in your bubble.

A cute, clever little phrase that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have been hearing for weeks.

We all assume it means something like protect yourself as you go about your daily life. 

Or stay at home unless you have to go out.

And if that’s what it meant, if that’s all the phrase was, then the notion of a bubble is innocent enough.

Last week, though, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians found out “bubble” was something else.

As the province’s chief medical officer unveiled what she called the strategy for living with COVID-19, she outlined a series of what she called Alert Levels.  In Alert Level 4, people would be able to mix their one bubble with another bubble.

Except that the bubble mixing was allowed to start while we are still in the current state of alert with all its greater restrictions.

People wondered if they could safely mix with more than one bubble.  Like say, in families with two sets of grandparents close by.  Would they be able to go over and check on both of them without having to look at them from outside the house?  What if they had to go over and help out with a problem with the house. The kids would love to see nan and pop and maybe that would boost morale.

No, came the reply.  One bubble and one bubble only.  You pick.

Bollocks said your humble e-scribbler.  Inherently and in the circumstances in the province mixing more than two bubbles at the moment has about the same risk as mixing one bubble.

Whoa there, said someone else. There was a mathematically knowable risk of mixing more than one extra bubble right now.  Better be safe than sorry.

Not a mathematical problem at all, said your humble e-scribbler in reply.

Oohhh yes, it is, said the knowledgeable one, missing the point.

The difficulty is not in the math but in the concept.

Bursting bureaucratic bullshit bubbles #nlpoli

The daily average for new CVD cases
has been declining since late March.

In one of the provinces hardest hit by COVID-19,  Ontarians got a roadmap on Monday on how the provincial government will loosen restrictions on their daily lives.

One of the indicators used to make the judgment will be two to four weeks of lowering daily numbers of infections.  Not zero cases, mind you, but a clear downward trend that was about half of the current rate, according to Ontario's chief medical officer of health last week.

Two other key indicators will a decrease in cases not traced to a source and a decrease in new hospitalizations.

In one of the provinces least affected by COVID-19, people in Newfoundland and Labrador found out on Monday that they could be locked down for weeks and potentially months more before provincial government bureaucrats and politicians will consider easing any of the restrictions imposed on them in mid-March.

That chilly outlook came from politicians Monday afternoon after a presentation by one of the government’s key advisors that confirmed:

• we are now in the fourth week of declining and lately low numbers of new cases per day,
• only two percent of cases across the province cannot be traced to a source, 
• that there have been no new hospital admissions for COVID-19 for more than a week (it's actually two weeks), and 
• no deaths for more than two weeks.

In Ontario, a decision to loosen restrictions will also depend on available capacity in the health care system to handle a surge of new cases.  In Newfoundland and Labrador, health managers emptied half the beds across the province by halting elective and non-urgent surgeries and postponing treatment for a wide variety of other conditions.

The three CVD19 pressures the NL government will face #nlpoli

Last week, SRBP raised the likelihood that declining numbers of active cases of CVD19 in Newfoundland and Labrador will put pressure on the provincial government to ease the current restrictions on daily life and the economy.

Officially, government officials like the Premier and health minister blew off the idea of restrictions with concern that supposed bad behaviour on the Easter weekend might trigger a renewed climb in numbers.

More testing.  Fewer cases.

Well, we are a week past Easter and the average number of daily cases is at two, down from three the week before.  At the same time, health officials completed two of the largest days of testing at the end of the week.

The number of active case son Sunday was 62, down from a peak on 06 Apr of 192.  Basically, the active cases on Monday date from infections dated after 01 April.  That is, they date from just before the peak.

Governments across Canada faced choices when responding to CVD-19.  They had two extreme choice, neither of which was politically nor practically feasible.

Trends #nlpoli

How do you keep in place the very necessary and successful restrictions on public life needed to combat the spread of CVD19 when the success of those measures reduces the local daily number of active cases either to zero or to a handful and hence the threat appears to have passed?

In the 15 years I’ve been writing SRBP, the one enduring feature of public discussion about my writing happened again this week, in spades.

People come at me on social media about what is going on in their own heads and attribute that to me.

They don’t deal with the point I was actually making.  They deal with whatever they imagine I said.  And no amount of explanation will dissuade them from their crusade to shut me up or take me down or do whatever it is they are hell-bent on doing besides understanding my point and then having a productive conversation.

On Monday and Tuesday, I wrote about the very real political dilemma facing the current government.  It’s the one spelled out in the first sentence of this post.  I thought it would come in a couple weeks.  It appears to have arrived Tuesday.

So much for forecasts.

John Haggie is already frustrated that people are not listening.  On Tuesday, I told him the government need to ditch the current daily briefing format and messaging for something else that was less patronizing.  In the Tuesday briefing, Haggie delivered his stock message but did it for merely 53-odd seconds before taking questions.

Not really the point, but if the current trends continue, as they seem likely to do, then we will likely also see the mounting public pressure to ease restrictions on life in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The federal government is already talking to the provinces about the return to something approaching normal with the mention of re-opening the economy.  The economy never shut so what they are using is a code word for easing up the limitations on the public.  Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and some others will undoubtedly do so by the end of this month or early next month.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, though we will have to think twice about that.  Our two bordering provinces – Nova Scotia and Quebec – are still fighting a hot war against the spread of the disease.  The risk of infection across the border is real.  New Brunswick will face the same challenge.

The challenge for the - quite literally – two or three people effectively running the government in Newfoundland and Labrador will be holding off that political pressure and sustaining restrictions because the threat of disease will remain.  The situation of needing to do something unpopular will not be unprecedented.  We have lots of experience recently with it. Every time, the politicians have failed.

Will the trend continue?

Time will tell.

-srbp-

Doctor Aggie's H'Answer #nlpoli

“What do I have to do to get you to listen?” health minister John Haggie asked rhetorically and with considerable exasperation at Monday’s daily COVID-19 briefing.

Haggie was ranting once again about people across the province who he claims are flouting the restrictions on public comingling during the current health emergency.

On Monday, though, Haggie’s daily rants started to sound a bit more shrill and more than a bit condescending.

Anyone can appreciate his deep concern to prevent an outbreak of COVID-19 of the sort people have seen in Italy, New York City, or even Quebec.

But Dr, Haggie has the problem that the measures put in place so far have worked so well at containing the disease across the province that no one can see the danger in front of them.

And to be honest it is hard for the ordinary person to see the immediate danger, at least in the extreme way Haggie apparently sees it.

Number of active COVID cases in NL declines dramatically #nlpoli

Newfoundland and Labrador is already emerging from the first wave of the COVID-19 infection.

The data from the provincial government’s daily COVID-19 media briefings is clear.

Starting on April 6,  the number of new cases detected was less than the number of recovered cases.  As the week progressed,  the number of recovered cases increased as rapidly as the infections had increased two weeks before. 

The result, shown in the chart at right, is that the number of active COVID-19 cases (cumulative total less cumulative recovered and deceased) has been declining steadily.  

By the end of this week,  the number of active cases should be about the same as they were before the massive increases started on 23 March 2020.

The most likely thing that could change that forecast drop in active cases is an increase in the number of tests conducted by provincial health officials.  But to produce a dramatic increase in the number of new cases – on the order of what we saw in the middle of March – the province would have to test thousands of people a day.

That’s because a consistent testing effort yielded a steadily declining number of new cases. An average of 177 daily tests the week of March 23 produced an average number of 18 new cases daily. 

The following week 208 daily tests yielded an average of 12 new cases per day.  In the first full week of April, though, an average of 178 tests a day produced only an average four new cases.

Financial Fustications #nlpoli

If we had Equalization, we'd have a budget surplus.

On Friday, 20 Mar 20, Premier Dwight Ball wrote to the Prime minister to say that the financial arse was out of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ball included in the letter not a shred of financial evidence nor did he include any hint as to what exactly he expected the federal government to do to fix this situation.

Last weekend, once the public heard about this alarming letter, the Premier was anywhere and everywhere confirming that the provincial government was mostly, completely destitute.

*This* weekend his finance minister is – not surprisingly – telling a completely different story. 

Bollocks #nlpoli

Kill the wabbit?

Moody’s has changed its outlook on the provincial government’s debt from stable to negative while sustaining the A1 rating it gave the province in July 2019. That, by the way, was a downgrade.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Moody’s said the change in outlook reflects the company’s view that the provincial government’s “credit profile will weaken due to the sharp decline in oil prices and its reduced budgetary flexibility to adjust to this shock. Under Moody's base case, oil prices are expected to average $40-$45/bbl in 2020 before returning to $50-$55/bbl in 2021…”.

Moody’s expects the provincial deficit for 2020 could reach 25% of revenue in 2020 and about 11% in 2021. Previously, Moody’s had forecast deficits of 11%  and 4% respectively for those years.

Moody’s expects the provincial debt will reach 270% of revenue by 2023 with pressure that this will increase after 2023.  In other words, Moody’s doesn’t believe that the government will balance the budget in 2023.

All around in circles #nlpoli

Going around in circles must be frustrating.

Plummeting crude prices have dropped refining margins to negative numbers and so it isn’t surprising that Come by Chance refinery announced Sunday it is shutting down operations for upwards of five months.

The official excuse is the pandemic but the real reason is economics. There’s no point in running a business that isn’t making money.  And you cannot make money in a global market where demand for petroleum products has dropped like a stone.

The same economic reality that is hitting the oil industry is hitting governments in provinces that depend heavily on oil royalties.  In Alberta, Western Canada Select was trading at less than five Canadian dollars a barrel on Friday. 

According to the National Post, the provincial government estimates that every dollar in crude prices costs the Alberta government $355 million in lost royalties. Economist Trevor Tombe estimates the drop in crude prices thus far has cost the Alberta government about $5 billion in royalties.

Newfoundland and Labrador is in worse shape.  Going into what is now the crisis year of 2020, Dwight Ball’s Liberal administration forecast as deficit of almost $800 million.  Last Thursday, the provincial legislature approved government requests to borrow almost $3 billion dollars directly or through the provincial hydro corporation.  Finance minister Tom Osborne told reporters outside the House of Assembly he had no idea how big the 2020 deficit would be.

Facing the financial wall, again #nlpoli

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro makes money by making and selling electricity. In 2018, the last year for which we have statistics,  Hydro made about 40 gigawatt hours of electricity and sold it for slightly less than a billion dollars. Most of the electricity went to Quebec and most of the money came from Newfoundland and Labrador.

On Thursday,  the House of Assembly gave Hydro permission to borrow $500 million in 2020 to cover losses from sales.  “Anticipated reduction in revenue during the pandemic” is the way NTV’s Michael Connors described it on Twitter.

That’s half Nalcor’s income.

No one explained on Thursday during the pantomime session of the legislature why anyone expected that half of Hydro’s business would disappear during April, May, and June.  No one nows if they will lose money,  natural resources minister Siobhan Coady said in the House.  This just allows them money if they need it.

Bank of Canada to help GNL make payroll #nlpoli

Bank of Canada
234 Wellington St, Ottawa

The Bank of Canada announced today that it will purchase up to 40% of money market securities with terms to maturity of 12 months or less that are  issued directly by Canadian provinces.

The Bank of Canada will make the first purchases on Wednesday, 25 March 2020.  The purchases will include treasury bills and short-term promissory notes. The Bank may adjust the percentage based on markets.

The program – called Provincial Money Market Purchase (PMMP) – will give help to all provinces.  It will be especially welcome news for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, which relies on short-term debt to fill in gaps in its cash flow. 

There is a relatively limited pool of capital for the provincial government anyway.  Its relatively low credit rating can make it harder for the government to borrow money at rates it can afford.  For about six months in late 2015 and early 2016, the provincial government came close to being unable to meet payroll due to a shortage of capital in the markets and uncertainty in the markets about the intentions of the provincial government after the 2015 general election.

The doctor is out... of the province #nlpoli

Health minister John Haggie announced on Friday that doctors in the province could now start seeing patients remotely either by telephone or using video conferencing.

Kinda bizarre, though, given that some doctors in the province have already been doing this.

In any event, using technology to see patients remotely is a good idea not only now but in the future.

It allows doctors to treat patients in remote areas where there is a constant turn-over of resident doctors.  Last year, SRBP wrote about the potential for technology to help with the supply of family doctors

Meanwhile, last week Shoppers Drug Mart also quietly rolled out a service in conjunction with a cash-for-service doctor company called MAPLE. 

This is “virtual care”  - a truly hideous term - as well but it comes with a big twist people need to watch out for besides the cat MAPLE isn;t covered by MCP. The same twist will affect any local patients who are in Newfoundland and Labrador but wind up being treated by doctors living and working outside the province using remote communication technology.

Under a new policy established in March 2017,  the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Newfoundland and Labrador has decided that care takes place where the doctor is, not where the patient is.  Under the old policy, CPSNL held that care took place where the patient was.

Under the new policy,  a patient in Comfort Cove who sees a doctor via Skype while the doctor is in British Columbia will have to complain to the BC College and deal directly with the BC College about it.  CPSNL will pass the complaint along but after that the patient is must find their own comfort.

The policy doesn’t just cover Canadian doctors, whose licences incidentally, the local College doesn’t recognize as valid anyway.  Same thing applies for a doctor living anywhere in the world.  You see, the CPSNL policy states that the “College considers the practice of medicine to take place in the jurisdiction in which the physician resides and holds a licence.”

So if the local patient winds up dealing with a doctor in the United States,  Mexico, Sri Lanka, or India, the complaint will have to go to whatever country the doctor is in.

These days, technology allows doctors from anywhere in the world to treat patients anywhere else.  It’s a common practice in commercial shipping where doctors work for international contractors.  Got a problem on a rig offshore or a ship at sea and you could find the captain calling a doctor in Europe whose company has the contract to supply health care to the ship owner’s crews. 

But people living in Arnold’s Cove are not used to that.

Patients need to look closely at the contracts they sign for medical service under virtual care by doctors not living in Newfoundland and Labrador.

And, of course, no one from the provincial government or the College of Physicians and Surgeons has told the public about this let alone warned them of the implications should something go wrong.  

After all,  there really isn't anyone in the province responsible for protecting the public in these sorts of things, is there?

-srbp-

Experience Counts - COVID Economic Balls-Up Edition #nlpoli

Update:  The links below don't work any more.

Both the screwed up one (March 20) and the revised one (March 21) appear to have disappeared from the government list of orders issued during the emergency.

___________________________

On Friday Premier Dwight Ball took a question from reporters about the Liberal leadership that is still underway.

In a moment of egotistical boasting, Ball said it “takes experience to get through this crisis that we're dealing with. Someone said to me this morning it takes experience to do that job, and not often do you see a card on the back of a fire truck saying 'Novice Driver’”.

On Friday,  the provincial government issued an order under the Public Health Protection and Promotion Act that directed individuals entering Newfoundland and Labrador from out of the province – either originating or returning – to enter a mandatory period of isolation for 14 days regardless of whether they were exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 or not.

Problem:  The Friday order, as written, effectively shut down the provincial economy and cut the province off from supplies of food and fuel.

All individuals arriving in Newfoundland and Labrador from outside the province must self-isolate for 14 days, including those individuals arriving from other provinces and territories in Canada.

The original order applied to *everyone*:

•  crews on Marine Atlantic ferries,
• tanker crews, including the folks coming to Come by Chance and the refinery, 
• OCEANEX crews and other shipping companies that bring food, fuel, and essential supplies into the province,
• people who work on one side of the border in Labrador and live on the other,
• people involved in supplying electricity to the province, 
• crews working on and supplying the offshore platforms,
• medical personnel arriving to help treat patients or back-fill positions, 
• airline crews and passengers of all kinds,
• helicopter crews servicing the offshore rigs, which are outside the three-mile limit that is the province's jurisdiction, and
• truck drivers who bring everything and anything into the province and who take manufactured goods out again.

No one in the provincial government, least of all the people who wrote up the order or the ones who approved it, realized what they were doing.

And so, after some uncertainty in the world outside government and a bunch of frantic calls and emails, the provincial government issued a second order the next day exempting all those people needed to keep the province running and keep people fed.

Someone check for a Novice Premier sign on the back of Dwight's car.

-srbp-

Cleaning up the mess of Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

There are a couple of points in his 1,000 page report where commissioner Richard LeBlanc refers to politicians and other officials of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador as being naive in their dealings with Nalcor officials about Muskrat Falls. He says Ed Martin took advantage of the politicians and bureaucrats.

It is arguably one place and perhaps the only place where LeBlanc is wrong in his description of Muskrat Falls and how it came to be.

Muskrat Falls was, from the outset a political project, initiated and then relentlessly pursued by a group of politicians for their own reasons.  Their leader, Danny Williams, selected Ed Martin to work with him on the Nalcor project, chiefly to build something on the Lower Churchill as Williams’ legacy.

Martin told LeBlanc that he had one job – to build the project – and that was all of it. But Martin did the job for Williams.  Along the way Williams recruited to his circle senior bureaucrats who also actively collaborated in the project for their own reasons.  It was this circle that met in April 2010 at The Rooms and decided to plunge ahead with the redefined project now known as Muskrat Falls.

They were not naïve.  They were not duped.  They did not care.  They had one goal. They worked together to achieve it from the time Williams launched the venture in 2006 until thd last of them resigned in 2016.

Muskrat Falls was the bastard child of ego and ambition, nothing more.  All the other ideas associated with it, such as retribution for the 1969 power contract, were never anything more than lies – rationalisations to gain support for the project.  The cabal from The Rooms deceived the public and they deceived themselves.

They wanted it built and nothing would stop them.

NL after the oil boom and hydro bust #nlpoli

Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society

George Story Lecture and Annual General Meeting

Marine Institute - Hampton Hall

The Return of History?

Newfoundland and Labrador 

after the Oil Boom and the Hydro Bust

Dr. Jerry Bannister

April 30, 2020

Building on the themes established in A river runs through it (2012), Dr. Bannister will explore the changing roles of history since the province’s economic downturn. 

He will trace patterns in political culture and collective memory from the Williams era to the present day, as the province experienced the end of triumphalism and the return to a politics of loss. 

In discussing the causes and consequences of the Muskrat Falls crisis, he will examines the ebb and flow of Newfoundland nationalism over the past 20 years. Is this province breaking with its past or returning to its 20th century narrative?

A graduate of Memorial University and the University of Toronto, Dr. Jerry Bannister is an associate professor of History and Acting Director of the Marine Affairs Program at Dalhousie University.   

Born and raised in Newfoundland and Labrador, he is a past member of the Executive of the Newfoundland and Labrador Historical Society.

Recent books:

• Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim, and Scott See, eds., Violence, Order, and Unrest: A History of British North America, 1749-1876. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
• Melvin Baker, Jerry Bannister, and Christopher Curran, eds., Essays on the Legal History of Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John’s: Law Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2019.
• Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan, eds., The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012
• William R. Keylor and Jerry Bannister, The Twentieth-Century World: An International History. First Canadian Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Jerry Bannister, The Rule of the Admirals: Law, Custom, and Naval Government in Newfoundland, 1699-1832. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

-srbp-

Remembering Simon Lono #nlpoli

Today is Simon Lono's birthday.

He would have been 57.

This coming Saturday there's a celebration of his life.

Drop by and share in the memories.

And if you cannot make it but want to remember Simon, consider making a donation to the Newfoundland and Labrador Speech and Debate Union.

-srbp-

Oil, Premiers, and Coming Soon #nlpoli

Impact of Hebron flat royalty at prices below US$50
click to go to 2015 post

West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude were both trading below US$50 last week.

Oil from the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore sells for Brent prices.  

If it is down, then government makes less.  Bit of an offset potentially in the exchange rate but they key thing is that when oil is worth less, the government makes less.

WTI price is important because it affects payment of a super-royalty on some projects that have already hit pay-out. 

With oil prices lower across the board,  the provincial government takes in less money.  Month-to-month that might not be a lot but over time it can add up. 

Watch out for the impact of lower oil revenues on the 2019 fiscal year, just coming to an end on 31 March.

... and...

Watch out for the forecast for oil prices in the 2020 budget.  

The provincial government already forecast a deficit next year of about $800 million (accrual).  That’s about 50% higher than the forecast deficit in 2019, once you take out the accounting for the Hibernia royalty transfer deal that keeps getting called the Atlantic Accord.

On the need for politics #nlpoli

Politics [is] the art of pursuing common interests through... active listening, advocacy, public persuasion, compromise and negotiation.

Bob Rae

William Ford Coaker,
the father of the Commission

The people from Newfoundland and Labrador quoted in the Globe and Mail on Friday described the problem facing the province today.

We are not talking about chronic overspending, an aging population that will need more health care, or the impact of Muskrat Falls.

The problem is the shared attitude among the province’s opinion leaders  - the ones quoted by the Globe and many more besides - that *any* solutions to the province's financial problems are bleak and politically unacceptable.

Here are the bits from the Globe and Mail piece, ironically by some guy named Greg Mercer, a name he shares with the current Premier’s chief of staff:

• Political science professor Amanda Bittner: “You’re going to be making some tough choices that nobody is going to be happy with, and it’s probably going to be miserable.”
• Lawyer and cable television show host Melissa Royle Critch described the problems as “daunting” and said the debt problem was “insurmountable.”
• Progressive Conservative leader Ches Crosbie: “We are in a death spiral.”
• Outgoing Premier Dwight Ball said that borrowing to cover continued deficits will be the major challenge facing his successor.
• Economics professor Scott Lynch said,” [Dealing with the financial problem is] going to be a nasty situation. These cuts will be extremely painful.”

We can add to that finance minister Tom Osborne who recently dismissed out of hand a proposal to put the government’s liquor corporation in the private sector, like Alberta did more than 20 years ago.  The result would create jobs,  preserve provincial tax revenues, and bring in a couple of billion dollars in the sale.

But Osborne, like all the others leading the province will brook no change in anything.

They simply want someone else to pay the bills.

Settlement in ExxonMobil dispute #nlpoli

CNLOPB regulates the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore

The Government of Canada and ExxonMobil have reached a settlement in the oil company's 16-year-old dispute over the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board's requirement for spending on research and development.

In the settlement, reached in January,  the Government of Canada will pay ExxonMobil CDN$35 million to end an arbitration under the North American Free Trade Agreement. 

ExxonMobil challenged a CNLOPB requirement that offshore operators of producing fields spending an amount of the earnings on research and development in the province.  ExxonMobil challenged the requirement in 2004 and in 2011 won an arbitration that found the requirement violated ExxonMobil's rights under NAFTA.  The award in the first claim was $17.3 million.

The second claim was for damages incurred between 2012 and 2015 not included in the first award. Before an amended version of the claim proceeded, the parties reached a settlement.

-srbp-

Interesting news, buried under bull #nlpoli

There are two aspects to Monday’s announcement about Muskrat Falls and electricity rates:  political and practical items related to Muskrat Falls.  

Another set of decisions are actually related to the provincial government’s non-Muskrat Falls finances.

And then there’s a little tidbit about how far behind Muskrat Falls is.

Political - If this is how Dwight treats his friends…

Monday’s announcement was a political stunt pulled purely for the province's benefit apparently to cover over the fact that there was no agreement as Dwight Ball had promised before Christmas.

The announcement came front-end-loaded with the sort of ego stroking and puffery that is not merely unnecessary but tends to turn off audiences listening for a major announcement about arguably the most pressing public issue.