With all the talk the past couple of days about the relationship between the provincial government and the provincial energy corporation, it might be a useful time to ask a fairly simple question:
What does Nalcor do?
Might seem like such an obvious question that it you are laughing, but hang on a second and let’s see what turns up if we go back and look at what the Conservatives said in the past about the energy corporation.
Nalcor Energy is running the Muskrat Falls project without any independent oversight from the provincial government.
In two interviews with the Telegram’s James McLeod natural resources minister Derrick Dalley identified Nalcor boss Ed Martin as the government’s chief source of information on the project. According to Dalley, Martin passes information to the deputy minister of natural resources who passes it to Dalley.
Additionally, noted Dalley’s communications director in an e-mail sent between the two interviews, the “Departments of Finance and Natural Resources work in close collaboration with Nalcor Energy and have regular meetings and exchanges of information…”.
McLeod asked Dalley repeatedly about any use by the provincial government of its own independent sources to vet Nalcor’s work. Dalley replied that the department didn’t have the expertise to duplicate that of Nalcor. What’s more, Daley asked rhetorically, “why would we duplicate within the department [of natural resources]” the work going on at Nalcor to develop the project.
Dalley cited external contractors - such as Manitoba Hydro - hired by Nalcor to vet work at each decision gate for the project as an example of work that “we have done” to validate Nalcor’s project management.
This year it is Charlene Johnson’s turn to host a series of meetings across the province that the provincial Conservatives cynically tout as a way for people to have some input into the provincial budget.
It’s cynical because – as the Conservatives know – the major budget decisions are already made before the finance minister heads to the first of these meetings. They are a waste of time.
The people who show up at these sessions have no idea what the actual state of the province’s finances are. The provincial government hides the real numbers until budget day. Therefore the people who show up can’t offer any sensible suggestions, anyway. Instead, they wind up begging like a bunch of serfs for more cash for this and more cash for that, even though the cash isn’t really available.
Digging through a set of files in the provincial archives once upon a time, your humble e-scribbler came across a particular file in a set bequeathed to the archives decades ago by the fellow who wrote the original legislation that helped create the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in the Great War.
The hand-written title on it was “unconscious press humour.” The file contained a raft of clippings from the local newspapers where the headline made an inadvertent joke when placed in the context of the story. We are not talking about “Stripper bares all”, the now legendary Telegram headline from the 1980s that wound up in the National Lampoon’s “True Facts” page thanks to Liberal member of parliament Dave Rooney. We are talking stuff where some earnest headline writer had put together a groaner entirely by accident.
These days, you’d title the file on your computer something like “inadvertent media jokes” or if you haven’t grown tired of it yet and wanted to stay true to the original name, “Bob Wakeham, Volume 15.”
When it needed a lobbyist in Ottawa to monitor the federal environmental review process for its Kami project, Alderon Iron Ore turned to Summa Strategies and a well-connected fellow named Tim Powers.
You can find out information like this thanks to the federal registry of lobbyists. Powers’ registration number for the Alderon gig is 777504-308605. It’s a matter of public record.
For those who may not know, Powers is also a registered lobbyist (777504-14002) for Nalcor Energy in its dealings with the federal government. Again, it’s a matter of public record.
But what about Alderon’s dealings with the provincial government and its agency, Nalcor Energy? Did they have anyone interceding on their behalf?
Good question.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer.
From the Chronicle Herald:
In its letter, the board also points out that parts of the project have been delayed. That includes a 10-month change in the timeline for the transition to start-up and operations. Commissioning of the 180-kilometre cable is slated to be completed by October 2017 rather than December 2016. [emphasis added]
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Writing good speeches is more art than science but even without much experience, you can tell when a part of a speech doesn’t ring true.
There was a spot like that in Kathy Dunderdale’s resignation speech.
Hearing it made you wince.
It just didn’t sit right.
Reading the passage doesn’t make it any better. Here it is:
“Bullshit,” wrote philosopher Harry Frankfurt a few years ago, “is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.”
Enter Danny Williams, Doc O’Keefe, and Tom Hann.
The T’ree Amigos dismissed the Conference Board of Canada’s recent population projection for the province with the simple argument that the booming economy in the province - due largely to oil - would attract people here in droves.
That’s a really interesting idea because we can actually look at the evidence available to see if that might be true. The province has been doing very well economically for the past decade. Arguably, the province was even doing fairly well for the decade before that, compared to the 1970s and 1980s what with oil development that started in the early 1990s.
So what happened?
Tuesday’s scrum with Danny Williams proved at least two things
The first is that the Old Man will say anything that comes into his head and most of it isn’t even close to true. Second is that the local reporters gaggled around him wouldn’t call him on his obvious bullshit if their lives depended on it.
Never have.
Never will.
Among other things on Tuesday, the Old Man claimed that building a new electricity transmission line to western Labrador from Churchill Falls is a “no brainer” because without the electricity the company whose board Danny sits on won’t build the new Kami mine.
When Nalcor needs a bunch of Quebec lawyers, one of the firms they go to is Fasken Martineau. Nalcor has been relying on FM for lots of things over the years, including the infamous series of appeals to the Quebec energy regulator.
Last week, FM issued a news release about the close of the financial deal for the project. It included a quote from Xeno Martis, the lead lawyer from FM for the project:
"Fasken Martineau conceived and proposed a modified "wrap structure" which sheltered the lenders from any project risk and provided them with direct recourse to the Sovereign," added Mr. Martis.
That was important, as one of the underwriters described in a Financial Post story a couple of weeks ago:
“The benefit of the guarantee was that no one had to look at the merits of the underlying project.”
Whatever the provincial government paid Fasken Martineau via Nalcor, that bit of work was worth it. After all, as a result of the way FM structured the deal, investors were protected from any risk and none had to look at the merits of the project before putting money into it.
The provincial Conservatives can also thank FM for other cash.
Timon and Pumbaa turned up at St. John’s City Hall for the rainbow flag raising on Friday.
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After Bill Barry - the only declared candidate - former cabinet minister Shawn Skinner is the least imaginary of the potential candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“What I’m running for is to form the next government,” Skinner told the Telegram’s James McLeod. What I am running for. Present tense. Definitive.
Not what I am thinking about running for. Not what I might run for.
What I am running for.
And yet Skinner hasn’t actually announced that he is running. The main reason he gave to the Telegram is understandable: the party hasn’t announced the rules for the contest yet.
One of the rules Skinner is particularly concerned about is the spending limit for the campaign.
A day after the shocking news that Tim Powers is not going to be a candidate for Conservative Party leader in Newfoundland and Labrador, another imaginary candidate dropped out of a race he was never in.
Charlie Oliver announced on Wednesday he would back Bill Barry, most likely.
And instead of running to be Premier, Charlie wants to fund some sort of “think tank” instead.
Now Charlie might come through with the dough, but the whole idea looks a lot more like something someone gave Charlie to say as a way of saving face.
Dale Kirby and Christopher Mitchelmore shifted their desks in the House of Assembly on Tuesday from the independent or unaffiliated part of the chamber to sit with the Liberals.
They left the New Democratic Party last fall voicing concerns as they left about Lorraine Michael’s leadership and the lack of election readiness in the party that had, in 2012, at one point topped the polls in the province.
The news on Tuesday was probably the least surprising news of any that’s happened in provincial politics in the past six months, but that didn’t stop some people from moaning about it.
A new poll by Abacus Data for VOCM shows the Liberals under Dwight ball leading the governing Conservatives in every region of Newfoundland and Labrador.
According to a new VOCM-Abacus Data random telephone survey of 500 eligible voters in Newfoundland and Labrador, the NL Liberals hold a 15-point lead over the PC Party among committed voters (Liberal 49% vs. PC 34%) with the NDP well back in third at 15%.
But that’s not all.
Two separate e-mails plunked the same article in the SRBP inbox on Friday.
Both highlighted the same quote from this National Post story on Muskrat Falls financing:
“The benefit of the guarantee was that no one had to look at the merits of the underlying project,” says Steve Halliday, managing director and head of global credit trading and distribution at TD.
So the investors bought into the project without looking at the merits of the project.
How many ways can that be bad for the people who will be stuck paying for it?
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Premier Tom Marshall confirmed on Thursday that the provincial government will be doing the review of the provincial information and privacy law a year earlier than scheduled.
They will also be appointing three people to serve as the commission conducting the review. The provincial government is also accepting nominations for commissioners.
While other details of the review aren’t public yet, the news so far is good.
When they got up on Wednesday morning, everyone in the province who was paying attention knew that Bill Barry was going to launch his bid for the provincial Conservative Party leadership later that afternoon in Corner Brook.
Barry made his plans clear the week before. He’s the only one definitely in the race so far. On Tuesday night, Barry posted an invitation on facebook for people to come out and join him if they were alienated from provincial politics and fed up with the way things were going.
Any news hunter scanning the radio dial on Wednesday heard about the Barry newser, but just before 8:00 AM, VOCM news director Fred Hutton played the tape of an interviewed he’d bagged the night before with former Liberal leadership contender Cathy Bennett. No one had heard from her since the Liberals elected Dwight Ball, but there was Bennett telling the audience of the province’s largest privately owned radio network that she was definitely running in Virginia Waters in the next election as a Liberal.
Gone was the Bennett of her campaign, at times brusque and stiff. In her interview with Hutton, Cathy Bennett displayed displayed all the skills she’d learned from her hard months on the campaign trail. She was articulate, confident and professional. Bennett affirmed her commitment to the Liberal Party and spoke confidently of the change she wanted to bring to the province as part of a future Liberal government.
What’s so striking about the race to replace Kathy Dunderdale as leader of the provincial Conservative Party is how spectacularly unspectacular it is so far.
Maybe things will change once the Conservative Party executive meets to figure out the leadership contest rules. But so far the whole thing has been decidedly dull.
Having tried to slide by without renewing their party, the provincial Conservatives are now talking up the joys of change.
They’ve talked about everything else.
Change is the only thing they haven’t talked about.
So now it’s their new talking point.
Problem is that they don’t seem to be doing much to … well… change.
The same people saying and doing the same things as they have always done won’t change anything
A provincial Conservative started out the week explaining why he cut a deal with a couple of provincial Liberals so he could get re-elected.
As part of his speech on Monday, Paul Lane said:
While there are indeed many people doing quite well in this economy…there are still many people who are not experiencing the positive impacts of our economy. As a matter of fact for many people, this economy is causing many people to fall further behind…
Those people include seniors, people with disabilities, people on fixed and low incomes, and in many cases, children. Government must focus on matters important to these people and the “everyday person”, said Lane.
Another provincial Conservative changed his political life last week. On Friday, Tom Marshall became the 11th Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. After talking the oath of office, Marshall said:
So it is therefore very important to me that all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians shall share fully and fairly in the benefits of our newfound prosperity, and have a voice in the way it is distributed.
So let us ensure that the fight against poverty and inequality intensifies in our province and we never forget the needs of those who are aged, who have disabilities, who are infirmed [sic], and who live on fixed and low incomes.
The words may be slightly different but there is no make that they both said the same thing: government must now turn its attention to something new.
There’s also no accident that the two said pretty much the same thing. Tom didn’t figure out what to say after hearing Paul. Far from it. Much of what Paul said - like when he spoke about “our” government - sounded like a speech he had planned for a Conservative audience.
What they were both reciting is the last script the Conservatives are turning to in their effort to find the magic message that they think will make the polls bounce upward again.
There was a lot of that - reciting talking points - among provincial Conservatives last week.
Since Kathy quit and Tom Marshall taking over on Friday morning, people are wondering when we will go to the polls.
There’s talk about a snap election.
There’s talk about the clock starts ticking on Friday so the election has to be done within the next 12 months.
To help guide you through it, here’s an overview of the issue.
If you have not read Kathy Dunderdale’s resignation speech, take a moment and do so now.
What is most striking about the speech is that there is absolutely nothing anywhere in it that Kathy Dunderdale can claim as her personal accomplishment as Premier. There’s nothing she actually did during her three years in the most powerful political office in the province.
What Dunderdale talked about in the list of accomplishments are things that the Conservatives have done – supposedly – since 2003.
But look at the speech again. There is nothing that Kathy set out to do and can now leave office safe in the knowledge she accomplished it.
Instead, you will find a sentence toward the end, as she was clewing up, that mentioned something she hoped:
As the first woman to serve as Premier, I hope I have stoked the fires of imagination in young girls in our province and inspired them to consider standing for public office.
That is the only part of the speech where Dunderdale spoke with some personal conviction. This was important to her.
Provincial Conservatives will get together on Wednesday morning and eventually admit the worst kept secret in local political circles: the local Tories will have a new leader before the next election.
Kathy always was an interim leader. The original plan was to keep her for a few months to keep the lights on and some heat in the office so the pipes didn’t freeze. Once the 2011 election came and went, the Conservatives were supposed to dump her, hold a leadership and carry on from there.
As it turned out, Kathy Dunderdale just lasted a lot longer than people originally intended.
Kathy is going.
Tom Marshall gets to quit politics as interim Premier.
That’s if the reports on Tuesday night hold through Wednesday morning.
Here are some quick observations:
In all the political chatter on Monday, no idea got a stronger negative reaction than the one from your humble e-scribbler that Paul Lane had secured himself a plum appointment in a future Liberal government, including a seat in cabinet.
For some reason, the idea of Minister Paul Lane just infuriated people.
Some said it was just not true.
Some said it was preposterous.
Others said that no one had made Lane any promises.
Let’s take a closer look at this.
Paul Lane scored big on Monday.
First, he secured his nomination and his seat in the next provincial election by running as a Liberal. As long as the party continues on its current track, Lane will win easy re-election not on his own merits but – as in 2011 – on the coat-tails of the party he was hooked up with at the time.
To be sure, Liberal leader Dwight Ball insisted Lane has no guarantee of a safe nomination, but in practical terms, that is a huge nose-puller. Incumbents are typically hard to unseat. Incumbents with a year and a half of profile before the nomination are that much hard to beat. And those with the enthusiastic and unqualified support of the party leader and the entire caucus likely could not be defeated with a crucifix, stake and a bathtub of Holy water. Paul Lane is safe.
And then there is the little bonus Lane garnered on Monday that few seem to grasp at this point. By convention, no party leader in Newfoundland and Labrador has ever left any of his opposition bench mates out of the fat once they win an election.
In 1989, the only incumbent who didn’t get to cabinet was Kevin Aylward. That was only because Aylward had blotted his copybook not once but twice over the leader and his seat. Aylward eventually got his reward. In 2003, Danny Williams rewarded all of his caucus mates with plum jobs of one kind or another.
These are the kind of rewards that require no overt promise. If asked, politicians can always quickly say they’ve made no promises. But everyone understands, with a figurative wink, that they’ll be looked after.
Dwight Ball will have a hard time breaking that tradition. It’s part of the unspoken constitution of politics. There are lots of things Ball and his people will say to justify Lane’s reward, when it happens. Some of it might even be plausibly true. But that doesn’t matter. The fix is already in. Paul Lane finished Monday with a guarantee of anything any ambitious politician would want: a secure future and, in all likelihood, a cabinet seat in a future government.
Evidently that is something the ambitious Mr. Lane he couldn’t get from the Conservatives.
If you want to understand what the provincial government’s audited financial statements really mean, you will have to skip Tom Marshall’s comments last week and look instead at the lengthy set of observations from the Auditor General released on Friday.
Paddon’s comments are especially important for two reasons.
First of all, Paddon is the former deputy minister of finance. He knows both the current situation and how the government got there. if he is speaking this plainly now about the government;s financial position, you can imagine what he was saying as the current administration got itself into a mess in the first place.
Second, Paddon explains a great many things in plain enough English so that anyone can understand his points. As you will see, they are not what the government has chosen to talk about.
It’s the sort of thing that leaps out at you.
As SRBP mentioned on Thursday, in her book Shopping for votes veteran political reporter Susan Delacourt put it in stark terms. Consumer spending has accounted for 60 to 70 percent of American gross domestic product since 1980. In Canada, it’s been more like 52 to 58 percent nationally. “So when politicians say that they are focused on the economy,” Delacourt wrote, “what they often mean is that they are focused on getting Canadians to buy stuff.”
Well, here’s a pretty chart to give you some local figures. They come from Statistics Canada CANSIM 384-0038 showing gross domestic product based on expenditure, in constant 2007 dollars.
The Conservatives used to say that Newfoundland and Labrador was eastern North America’s energy warehouse. Once Danny Williams ran for the hills and left Kathy Dunderdale in charge, she kicked everything up a notch.
Energy warehouse was too plain for Kathy, whose party ran on the slogan “New Energy” in the 2011 general election.
With Kathy running the place, it became a super warehouse. “We are an energy super warehouse,” said Kathy countless times.
The New Energy Party even clipped this bit of Kathy from the House of Assembly for its website back in 2011:
Mr. Speaker, this Province is an energy super warehouse. We have what the world wants. We will bring it to market. We will supply our own people, Mr. Speaker, and we will earn from those resources for generations to come.
“We will supply our own people, Mr. Speaker.”
There is always something interesting in the province’s audited financial statements and – sadly – it is often at odds with what the politicians have been saying.
On Tuesday, the provincial government released the audited statements for Fiscal Year 2012 (01 Apr 12 to 31 Mar 13) and they are no exception.
The rolling blackouts on the island of Newfoundland could warn of bigger problems to come, if a new paper by the analyst JM is correct.
Underestimating peak load and the potential impact on the Muskrat Falls solution
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Most people in Newfoundland and Labrador never think about the electricity into their homes. They don’t know where it comes from and they certainly don’t have any idea how it gets from the generating plants to their fridges, washing machines, and television sets.
People are thinking about those things a lot more these days, in the wake of the recent power supply crisis.
One of the issues you will likely hear a lot more about in upcoming hearings by the public utilities board is about a new power transmission line from the hydro generating station at Bay d’Espoir across the isthmus and on to Holyrood.
Here’s some additional information about the project.
The provincial government started its campaign to gain control of the political agenda on Thursday with its announcement that it would appoint someone to do something sometime in the future.
The conventional media outlets didn’t report Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s announcement that way. The Telegram, for example, called it an “independent” review but acknowledged in the second sentence of its brief story that Dunderdale “doesn't know the shape or scope of the review”.
CBC went farther in its online story, saying that the “independent review” would “look at the current electrical system in Newfoundland and Labrador; how it operates, how it is managed, and how it is regulated as the province moves from an isolated system to an interconnected system.”
But really, all of that is just an unsubstantiated claim, given that the news release includes these words in a quote attributed to the Premier:
…over the next six weeks my government will work to draft terms of reference and identify an independent body to conduct a review.
In January 2012, Ed Martin and his nasally drone ridiculed the idea of shifting demand for electricity from one part of the day to another so that his company wouldn’t have a problem meeting spikes in demand during the winter.
He dismissed the idea as “theoretical” even though it’s widely used across Canada in places where the electricity system is well managed.
Two years later, almost to the day, energy conservation and demand management are Martin’s best friend to help people get through what his Conservative friends are willing to concede was the current “inconvenience.”
The action of the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill once said, “is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
Some people in Newfoundland and Labrador likely felt that way after Day Three of Kathy Dunderdale’s one woman crusade to deny that the province is experiencing a crisis.
Most people just cock their heads to one side and mouth the three letters W, T, and F.
Kathy Dunderdale did two major interviews on the first working day since the start of the Nalcor generation crisis.
One was with registered Nalcor lobbyist Tim Powers (# 777504-14002) who is currently holding down a guest spot hosting on VOCM. The whole interview is actually online at vocm.com. The second was with CBC’s John Furlong on Radio Noon. As of Monday night, it wasn’t online. She also had a media availability later in the day with Earl Ludlow from Newfoundland Power.
If you heard both great interviews. If not, listen to the VOCM one. Powers repeated the interview on Monday night when he co-hosted the night-time talk show with Jonathan Richler. You’ll hear a whole lot that confirms the observations we made here on Monday. Let’s walk through the day.
Some observations:
1. Yep. It’s a crisis.
When you have a major utility cutting electricity to people in a blizzard at random, for random periods of time because it cannot supply enough electricity to meet demand, you have a crisis.
That’s what it feels like to the people in it. That’s what it is.
People never knew when their lights would be on or off, nor would they know for how long. The Newfoundland Power and the NL Hydro operations people who briefed the public were straightforward and factual. They did their jobs well.
The thing is that the public emergency system, including the politicians, didn’t clue in that randomly shutting off power to thousands of voters at a time over the course of several days might be a bit of a problem for the voters.
Government is about making decisions.
In trying to understand what is going on, how governments make decisions is sometimes more important than what decisions get made.
That’s why SRBP has highlighted things about the structure and organization of government. The past year was no exception.
