It was Greek to me #nlpoli

After days of intense talks,  the Europeans apparently have finally reached a final deal to help Greece out of its latest financial misery.

Greece is broke.  With a gross domestic product of about US$238 billion, the country had a government debt of about US$346 billion.  Some of the country’s banks have very low reserves of cash.  People have already made a rush and withdrawn their money from them.  This has forced the government to impose a tight limit on withdrawals in order to avoid a bank collapse of the type that hit Newfoundland in 1894.

Under the new deal,  the European Union will place officials in key parts of the Greek government in order to ensure that the Greeks actually implement reforms that are part of the bail-out deal.

It’s a tough response, but then again the Greeks are in a tough economic spot.  The third tough spot, since 2009. For all that, though, there are people around the world who believe the whole problem is imaginary.  They believe that something called “austerity” is the real culprit.  If you just got rid of it, so this way of thinking goes, the Greeks could go back to the way things used to be.

Cripple you say? #nlpoli

Unnamed Conservative “insiders” have been talking about the Ches Crosbie nomination fiasco as if it was a rejection of a new Tory Jesus or something.

The way they talk you’d think people are waiting breathlessly for the pictures on Jane Crosbie’s Twitter feed of young Ches taking his first steps across Virginia Lake, just as his father and grandfather did at his tender age without getting so much as a bunion moistened.

Some of these nameless Conservatives   - to use the words from the CBC story – .”believe Ches Crosbie could have raised at least $100,000 by now for his run in Avalon. Many of those donors will now sit on their wallets rather than give cash to another candidate.”

Now that’s an interesting claim.

Overcooked Ambition #nlpoli

Nameless Conservative Party insiders predict that without Ches Crosbie as a candidate, the federal Conservative party will be crippled in Newfoundland and Labrador in the next election.

Supposedly Ches could have raised $100,000 dollars already.  But without Ches, they won’t raise a penny. Volunteers will stay home, too.  

But here’s the thing: 

CBC’s  story on Thursday is essentially more of the same completely preposterous Ches-the-Saviour-of-the-Conservative-Nation fairy tale that John and Jane Crosbie have been shovelling since Canada Day.

The long summer campaign #nlpoli

Liberal leader Dwight Ball kicked off a 10 week campaign swing around the province this week.

It’s basically a tour of the local festivals coupled that the party leaders do every summer.  This one is a bit different.  Ball has a few planned speeches mixed in there somewhere and Ball will be driving a white car with a big picture of him on the side.

As the Telegram’s James McLeod reported on Tuesday, Ball told reporters that the tour will “be about the economy and jobs. It’ll be about health care. It’ll be about education and many other things.”  Those are the top three issues with the public as identified by public opinion polls.

Mostly, Ball said, the aim is to have a “grassroots” summer of meeting with people and talking about the issues that affect the province — and talking about how the current government is letting people down. [Telegram]

Mostly, the tour will be about real consultation.

Confidence Builder #nlpoli

The public utilities board asked Liberty Consulting to review Hydro’s decisions in 11 projects.

Hydro is looking for a rate increase.  The board wanted to make sure the increase was justified.

Of the 11 projects, the consultant found:

• “Liberty found Hydro’s decisions and actions imprudent in seven of the eleven specific projects or programs set for examination by the Board. Liberty identified adverse cost consequences associated with six of these seven projects or programs, laying a foundation for consideration of the propriety of their recovery from customers. Liberty found planning and execution of the seventh project imprudent, but concluded that Hydro would have borne essentially the same costs even in the absence of such imprudence. 
• Of the remaining four specific projects or programs, Liberty found that Hydro had acted prudently with respect to three. Liberty did observe significant weaknesses in the supply planning process related to one of these projects, the new combustion turbine, but not to a degree that would constitute imprudence. For the fourth, Liberty concluded that while Hydro acted prudently in making its decision, some of the costs incurred were influenced by imprudent prior actions.
• The twelfth area of Liberty’s review consisted of an identification of 2014 actual capital costs and operating expenses that could be attributed to imprudence. This identification lays a foundation for later efforts that seek to identify any such expenses that may form part of Hydro’s estimation of a 2014 Revenue Deficiency of $45.9 million.”

“Liberty found that the costs that Hydro could have avoided in the absence of the instances of imprudence found by Liberty were:

• Actual 2014 capital costs of $10.9 million (as reported by Hydro)
• Actual 2014 operating expenses of $13.4 million.
• Estimated 2015 operating expenses of $2.6 million.

With that sort of report, you just know that Nalcor has just gotten everything exactly right at Muskrat Falls.

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Canadian Forces recruiting centres and demographics #nlpoli

The Canadian Forces is planning to move its three full-time recruiting staff out of the office in Corner Brook and move them elsewhere.

From now on,  recruiting on the west coast will take place like it does pretty well everywhere else in Canada:  via the Internet.  The military recruiting system will send staff out to Corner Brook a few days a month.  They can always travel to high schools or job fairs to promote the Canadian Forces as they do now.

Documents leaked to David Pugliese at the Ottawa Citizen  last month said that the Corner Brook office has one of the lowest numbers of recruits in the Canadian Forces system.  The Corner Brook office, along with the one in Sydney Nova Scotia and Oshawa Ontario are affected by the changes.

Impotence and weakness #nlpoli

If you take John Crosbie’s version at face value,  the Conservative Party rejected his son Ches as a candidate for the party in Avalon because of the intervention of David Wells.

Wells,  the son of retired justice Robert Wells,  is a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador.  He is also an influential Conservative, the sort of fellow who normally goes about his business largely out of the public spotlight.  .

Thanks to Crosbie, Wells is in the public eye.  According to Crosbie, Wells didn’t  “want Ches to be elected as an MP in the district of Avalon or any federal district because he would be too independent-minded and [Wells] wouldn't be in control as he has been now for a couple of years of most of the transactions between Newfoundland and the federal government.”

What the venerable Conservative was doing with that accusation was telling us less about the specific events that led to Ches’ rejection and more about a bigger story behind the scenes in Conservative politics.

Way behind schedule #nlpoli

The reports you will likely read in the conventional media all peg the Muskrat Falls project as behind schedule.

That’s what the latest project update from the provincial government and Nalcor says.

The media reports are also citing an overall number that has the project modestly off schedule.

You need to look at the whole report.

Through a glass, darkly #nlpoli

Imagine that Newfoundland history is enclosed inside a gigantic room.  Inside the room everything is pitch black.

Every now and again,  someone opens the door and goes inside the room to take a look at an event somewhere in the past.  They don’t have much in the way of light to help them see.  When they get to whatever spot they are looking for, they take a picture and bring out with them to tell the rest of us the story of what they saw in the dark room.

If you had hundreds or even dozens of people going in and out of the room,  after a while you might build up a really clear picture of all the stuff inside.  Unfortunately,  only a few people have gone in.  Some of them have come out with nothing more than sketches.  Some of them brought cameras and a couple had the sense to get short movies.

For anyone who wants to understand what happened in our collective past, you can see what kind of a problem there is.  Not only have we only had a handful of people go in, a lot of them go to the same place over and over again.  In some cases,  people interested in the local history don’t even go into the room  any more. They just describe to us the sketches and out-of-focus snapshots taken by others.

John Crosbie and the Last Crusade #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Every story told thus far about Ches Crosbie and the riding in Avalon has the unmistakeable odour of bullshit about it.

The latest twist, namely that Senator David Wells was scuttling a potential rival as The Biggest Conservative in Newfoundland and Labrador, is a bit more in the realm of plausible but it still doesn’t quite ring true.

Jihad against people who dissed Harper?

The Great War and Newfoundland Political Memory #nlpoli

“It is sobering to think,”  historian Sean Cadigan wrote in the Telegram on Tuesday, “that the memory of the casualties of war has been used partially for later political purposes for almost a century.”

Cadigan was recounting the history of the ceremony on July 1 that started in 1917 to mark the anniversary of the battle in which hundreds of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians died in a few short minutes.

It is possible that, in the process of "remembering," we may be in danger of forgetting the real aspirations of the men of 1916 when we gather on Memorial Day tomorrow.

Sobering though it may have been,  Cadigan had no trouble using the corpses at Beaumont Hamel for his own purpose and that is where we begin. 

Forget-me-not #nlpoli

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Forget that Orange Wave Thing #nlpoli

Two-thirds of respondents to the most recent Abacus-VOCM News poll said they believed the Liberal Party will win the next provincial general election.

That’s an important question because recent American research suggests it is a good indication of the actual vote result than the traditional “which party will you vote for?” question.

There’s another reason why this question is important.  Look at the contrast between NDP and Conservative supporters.  More than half of New Democratic supporters think the Liberals will win. 

Only  28% of Dippers think their own party will win the next election.   A majority of provincial Conservatives think the Tories will win. But get this:  37% of Tories think the Grits will come out on top.

People who think there is some kind of NDP wave about sweep the universe can think again.

Rex, re-districting, and getting it right #nlpoli

Rex Hillier:  the first political victim of the bill that redrew the political map in Newfoundland.

Simple story.

Easy peasey.

And complete crap.

The not-so-rare leap: @abacusdata June 2015 #nlpoli

Two different polls from two different pollsters using two different polling methods have shown basically the same thing:  the New Democrats and Conservatives are duking it out for second place, both of whom remain well behind the Liberals who hold a massive lead in provincial politics.

Corporate Research Associates (May) showed the Conservatives still slightly ahead of the New Democrats.  Abacus Data’s most recent poll for VOCM shows the New Democrats slightly ahead.

Abacus’  David Coletto described the NDP  jump as “rare”, but that’s not really the case.

Porter makes history #nlpoli

Steve Porter made history on Thursday night.

He defeated an incumbent in the House of Assembly  - Rex Hillier  - in a party nomination fight.  This doesn’t happen very often, mostly because political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have seldom held nomination contests at the district level involving incumbents.

That isn’t a function of the lack of interest among prospective politicians. It’s just been the practice to grant incumbents a lock on the district once they win the nomination the first time. That’s one of the reasons why local politics can’t really be considered to be highly competitive.  The parties restrict the opportunities for challengers to enter the fray.

Porter tried for the nomination before and lost to Hillier in a squeaker.  He didn’t put together a strong get-out-the-vote operation the last time and wanted to give it another go. This time around Porter had some help from experienced campaigners.  It made a difference.

Aside from the specifics of this particular situation, contested nominations are an important way of refreshing a political party.  The competition keeps everyone on their toes.

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She's a class act all the way #nlpoli

The House of Assembly closed on Tuesday, likely for the last time before the next election.

Sure,  Premier Paul Davis said he may call the House back in the fall for a quick amendment to a law, but for most members, Tuesday was the last day of the session.

And for some members, like George Murphy, it was their last day in the House of Assembly, period, full stop, end of story.

They all got a few minutes to say a few words and get emotional.

And after all the formal proceedings were done,  the three party leaders got to speak.  It’s fascinating to see what they said about their colleagues, as recorded by Hansard

Purity Factories' advertising no treat at all #nlpoli

Venerable local food manufacturer Purity Factories has a new advertising campaign featuring its delicious cream crackers.

On a billboard in the east end of St. John’s,  the line in big letters opposite a shot of the product says “not gluten free.”

The tag below it right next to the company logo is “Treat yourself.”

If all you know about gluten is the current bullshit diet fad based on junk science, then you might think this is a clever ad.

But for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians with celiac disease,   there’s no treat in eating food with gluten.

George Murphy quits politics #nlpoli

Whenever anyone runs down politicians as a group,  remember George Murphy.

And then give the boor who ran down politicians a lash in the arse.

That’s basically all that sort of person is good for:  a target for your boot.

We need more people like George Murphy in public life,  not fewer. He is a fundamentally decent, generous, and thoughtful person. While there are plenty of people like George in public life, thankfully, and in life in general, we can never have enough.

Tree Politics #nlpoli

From your humble e-scribbler's yard,  the province's political parties as revealed by trees.


First, we have the Conservative Party.

Knows it's a tree

Lots of branches down below.   Up at the top, a few little shoots who some times look like they are on top.

The truth:  no matter what it looks like, there remains only  One True Leader.

Second, we have the Liberal Party.

Knows it's a tree.

Lots of branches down below.

But a bit of a mess up on top with a  bunch of different branches trying to be the leader.

Third, and last, is the New Democratic Party.

The same tree as the rest,  just a lot smaller, and a bit heavy on one side.

Thinks it's a rose bush.

-srbp-

No equity? No surprise. #nlpoli

It didn’t take long for Paul Davis to get the comparison he was looking for last week.

The Telegram - not surprisingly – offered it up in the editorial on June 17:

“Premier Paul Davis pulled a Danny Williams Tuesday,”  the editorialist wrote.

Davis told the annual NOIA oil and gas industry conference that a deal to develop Bay du Nord was mere weeks away.  Never mind the complexity of the project:  500 kilometres offshore,  in very deep water,  very deep under ground.  Never mind the complexities of international law not fully resolved yet.  Never mind the project economics – whether it can be developed profitably -  are still unknown.

Never mind anything.

The goal was the comparison.

What district is Earle in, again? #nlpoli

Since the bill to change provincial districts cleared the House last week,  the provincial New Democrats have been tweeting sanctimoniously about the harm done to rural districts by the bill.

All those rural seats lost,  they wail.

All very undemocratic,  they cry.

And all very much a load of shit, at least as far as the Dipper claim goes.

The politics of information #nlpoli

A couple of recent post are reminders of how important it is to take a look at issues in the province from another perspective.

On June 10,  you will find a post about crab fishermen from New Brunswick who want to sell their catch to a company near Corner Brook.  The problem is that federal regulations limit where the fishermen can sell their catch. The policy is rooted in the sort of local protectionism that lay behind opposition in some quarters to European free trade.

Thursday’s post (June 17) was about remarks by Quebec’s energy minister about offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  Pierre Arcand argued that Quebec had better sort out an agreement with the federal government over jurisdiction for the offshore resources.

Old Harry was sitting there waiting for development and Newfoundland and Labrador,  Arcand said,  was ahead of Quebec.  The result could be that Newfoundland and Labrador would  wind up reaping huge benefits from the Old Harry field.  Quebec, meanwhile, would be left behind. 

Newfoundland forcing Quebec's hand on Old Harry #nlpoli

The Bay du Nord field is far offshore and far from development, Paul Davis’ optimism notwithstanding.

It’s way the hell offshore (about 500 kilometres),  way the hell under water (more than two kilometres) and then way the heck under the sea bed  (about another two kilometres).  It’s not going to be easy and it sure as heck isn't going to happen in less than five years.

Premier Paul Davis likely talked up the prospect of an agreement  to develop Bay du Nord because he needed something to say at the annual offshore development conference this week.

What’s curious, though, is that he never mentioned a far more interesting project that is far easier to develop.

A troublesome and costly pattern #nlpoli

There are so many problems raised by Premier Paul Davis’ zeal to sign an agreement with Statoil for the Bay du Nord that it is difficult to know where to begin.

Perhaps the best place to start is with the deal announced the day before Davis’ oil news.  The provincial government gave $6.5 million in public money to an insurance company to establish a major corporate office in St. John’s. 

Newfoundland and Labrador got the company to move here by engaging in a bidding war with other provinces that were anxious for the business.  Newfoundland and Labrador essentially gave away the most.

That’s what happens when you bargain in a weak position.

The Moveable Fixed Election Date #nlpoli

Arguably, the greatest fairy tale the Conservatives spread after 2003 was that Danny Williams didn’t take a salary from the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

The truth was he collected every penny of his salary from the day he entered the House of Assembly until the day he left.

The second biggest fib they told was that there were fixed election dates.

Brad Wall's case for abolishing Premiers #cdnpoli #nlpoli

Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall thinks that making the senate an elected institution that better reflects Canadians is too hard.

Rather than reform the senate,  Wall wants to get rid of it altogether.

Wall thinks that the provincial Premiers should do the job currently done by the senate.

Here’s why no one should take senate abolition seriously.

Here’s why those proposing it don’t have the best interest of Canadians at heart.

Small things and big differences #nlpoli

The Auditor General delivered his annual report on some of the provincial government’s programs and services on Wednesday.

We learned, among other things that provincial government consulting contracts have gone horrendously beyond the amount originally budgeted.  The worst case was a contract – presumably related to the Corner Brook hospital  - that wound up  being 780% beyond the original budget. 

One of the big culprits in the escalating costs were change orders.  Those are, as the name suggests, changes to the original contract required because of changes made by the government. That was the case both in capital works contracts that involved changes to construction but in service contracts as well.

A tonic for NDP Amnesia #nlpoli

When he was a member of the House of Assembly in Newfoundland and Labrador,  NDP member of parliament Jack Harris  double-billed the legislature for more than $2,000 in expenses and made $27,066 in "donations" from money originally intended to operate a constituency office and inform voters about his activities.

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Related:  Jacks and the Auditor General

The cost of out-dated ideas #nlpoli

The Barry Group plant near Corner Brook pays a better price for crab than a competitor in New Brunswick.

New Brunswick fishermen can't steam across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and sell their product in Corner Brook because of restrictions on their license.

They are same sort of restrictions that apply to local fishermen and which lay at the heart of regressive measures like minimum processing requirements.  The result is that fish processors in this province lose out on product for their plants and fish plant workers can't get enough work.

Don't believe it?

Check out a recent story in l'Acadie Nouvelle. [translation by google and SRBP]

"They are interested. They saw the quality of .my crab and they asked me how they could do to access other crab like that. I replied that the best way would be to open a factory in the Acadian Peninsula. Sure, between showing interest and actually doing it, there still has work to do, but at least they can learn," he said.

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Deaths in Modern Conflict

The Fallen of World War II from Neil Halloran on Vimeo.

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The Politics of Menses #nlpoli

Until now, we had no idea how our governments valued menstruation.

Some of you might be surprised to think this was a question but now we have an answer.

Both the federal and provincial governments decided last month to remove the harmonised sales tax from tampons, napkins, and other feminine sanitary products.  In Newfoundland and Labrador, that added 13% on every purchase.

The government in Newfoundland and Labrador refused to put a value on the tax, but your humble e-scribbler is willing to take a shot at it.

A lot can change in three months #nlpoli

The Liberals and the Conservatives dropped in the most recent Corporate Research Associates poll and all that vote went to the New Democrats.

Let’s look at the party choice numbers without the skew of looking only at decideds.  Here’s a chart showing the CRA results since the last general election, including Monday’s numbers.

Red = Liberal

Orange = NDP

Blue  = Conservative

Thin blue/black = Undecided,  do not know,  won't answer.

Small ball, election dates, and other minutae #nlpoli

Later today, Premier Paul Davis will introduce a bill in the House of Assembly that, among other things,  sets the next provincial general election for the last week of November. The most likely day for voting is November 24, with the official campaign starting 21 days before that.


There’s no surprise in this. The Conservatives have been talking about November as an option since January when they introduced the plan to cut public representation in the legislature. Reporters asked Liberal leader Dwight Ball at the time if he thought the election should be delayed to November to avoid a clash with the federal election set for October 19. Ball said he didn’t have a problem with the delay.

For the past couple of weeks, Ball has been insisting that the Conservatives need to have the election done by the end of September. That’s the anniversary of Paul Davis’ election as Conservative leader. It’s also the third different position, incidentally, that Ball has taken within the past six months on the timing of the next election. At the end of last year, Ball told the CBC he thought people should go to the polls in February in order to let a new government deal with the provincial government’s financial problems. A couple of weeks later, Ball had no problem with a November. Now, he wants it all done by the end of September.

Q2 2015 Poll Speculation #nlpoli

Corporate Research Associates boss Don Mills has done a good job of teasing the results of his latest poll, due Monday.

"Significant" change in voter intentions, Mills tweeted on Friday and repeatedly over the weekend.

It's all fed a great deal of speculation.  Someone fed the self-styled Hydroqueen internal Liberal polling numbers and she has blogged them and tweeted about them repeatedly. Your humble e-scribbler jumped into another conversation based on the foggy early-morning memory and since that memory was so horribly wrong,  here's a review of the recent poll numbers based on more than memory.

So are those Hydroqueen numbers the sort of results CRA will release?

About how the predictions of further Liberal decline or of a Conservative rise?

Will CRA show any of that?

Probably not.

Politicians and other damn fools #nlpoli

On Wednesday, politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador condemned the federal minister of fisheries for making a decision about the fishery in a province based on politics instead of economics or science.

The politicians were so upset with Gail Shea that they passed a resolution demanding that she allocate a quota of fish to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians based on political rather than economic or scientific reasons.

There was no sense in their resolution that what was sauce Prince Edward Island goose was also sauce  for the Newfoundland gander, if that’s what you are thinking.  Nor was there any sense of hypocrisy or irony or whatever self-awareness it would be that makes one criticise someone else for doing what you then do.

The fact that some of the politicians explained their support for the resolution using false memory only sweetened the humour in the whole affair.

The Persistence of False Information: free electricity version #nlpoli

An exchange on Twitter reminded your humble e-scribbler on Wednesday evening of the power of false information to persist despite either being disproven or, in this case, being an obvious nonsense.

Not surprisingly, the discussion was about Nalcor, Emera,  the Maritime Link and a block of electricity that Nalcor gets under the Muskrat Falls deal.  There is a lot of false information about these subjects that just won’t die.  Let’s just deal with the free block of electricity.

Duff in the Hole #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Dwight Ball’s announcement last week about Liberal Party funding was a good example of how relatively simple mistakes can turn a good-news announcement into a major public relations problem.

Another aspect to the story is a good example of how false information can make the story worse.

Politics, CETA, and the fishery #nlpoli

The European trade deal came up in the House of Assembly on Monday.

Everyone kept to the same lines they've been kicking around for months.

Believe it if you want,  but if you want to find out what is really going on,  check out the interview your humble e-scribbler did with Jamie Baker of the Fisheries Broadcast last week.

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Related:

• Province increase CETA demands after crucial agreement (December 2014)
• Abbott and Costello meet the trade deal (January 2015)
• Conservatives abandon ridiculous position on European deal (May 2015)

For want of a nail... #nlpoli

Dwight Ball demonstrated last week how very simple things can turn into problems very quickly. He handed his political opponents a stick they can use to beat him with. The fact they really don;t have much more than innuendo and speculation doesn’t matter. He’s given them a weapon.

Ball confirmed on Friday that the Liberal Party could have released relevant information on the party’s debt repayment on Wednesday.

Ball named the three banks involved in the debt forgiveness deal and indicated the total amount involved.  On Wednesday he had balked, noting there was a non-disclosure agreement in place.

What Ball also confirmed in the process is that he and his team simply weren’t ready on Wednesday for the announcement.  That’s not the first time Ball and his team have made this kind of a simple cock-up.  The simplest way to fix it would be to re-organize the senior end of his office.  Ball needs to bring in some new people, especially ones with significant political experience.  to augment his existing team.

Parting Gifts #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Peter MacKay may have quit federal politics but that didn't stop him from porking up the federally-appointed courts before he left.

On Friday, MacKay appointed former provincial Conservative Party president Cillian Sheahan from Corner Brook to the Trial and Family Division of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador.

That was one of about a dozen appointments MacKay made on his last day in office.

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More delays in taking out the trash #nlpoli

On Monday,  municipal affairs minister Keith Hutchings announced that the provincial government was setting back the clock on the provincial waste management strategy.

Well, they sort of announced it. 

You see, the news release posted by the government uncommunication elves buried the news under a lot of self-congratulation.

And what they didn’t bury they just left out altogether.

Yesterday #nlpoli

The news should have been good.

Party leader Dwight Ball announced on Wednesday that the Liberals had rid themselves of the debt the party has carried around since the 2003 election. As Ball explained it, the party negotiated with the three banks involved and persuaded them to write off the interest and penalties. The party had then paid off the $500,000 that remained.

The Liberals’ opponents have used the debt as a rod to beat Grit backs. Can’t manage the province’s accounts if you can't handle your own, the Conservatives joked.

As it turns out, that joke was on us: the Conservatives couldn’t handle the public accounts themselves. They promised to pay down the debt and make everything right. Instead, and starting from Danny Williams, they racked up debt after debt. They spent every nickel the provincial coffers could suck in and borrowed more besides.

The party debt was a big cloud hanging over the Liberals’ heads. Getting rid of it was supposed to be great news.

And it would have been had Dwight not buggered up the announcement.

Conservatives abandon ridiculous position on European trade… again #nlpoli

In January, trade minister Darin King wrote a letter to his federal counterpart about the European trade deal.
King said the provincial government would:

1. withdraw from any trade talks OTHER than the one about the European trade deal, and,
2. should “the federal government fail to honour the terms of the June 2013 agreement to establish a fisheries fund, you will appreciate that the Province will reconsider its support for CETA.”

On Tuesday, King announced the provincial government would:

1. resume participation in all the ongoing trade talks, and,
2. accept the European trade deal, but not the bit on minimum processing requirements.

That last one will leave Canada open to a challenge by Europeans if - and only if - the provincial government ever invokes minimum processing requirements in dealing with a European company. There’s not much danger of that since the provincial government has been granting more and more exemptions from the out-dated policy.

Besides, the federal government is already working on a mechanism to pass the cost of any damages from a trade dispute on to the province that caused them. They started work on that little gem after the current Conservative administration in this province violated the North American free trade deal and seized hydro-electric assets belonging to three companies under an entirely false pretense.

When Darin King said the government would “let the chips fall where they may” he knew full well that the provincial government would take it in the neck if it ever used the minimum processing requirements provisions of current legislation.

What you have here is a climb down. The provincial government position was always a transparent pile of nonsense. As CBC’s access to information research confirmed last week, the provincial government has been granting more and more exemptions from the minimum processing regulations. In practical terms, that means they have already abandoned MPRs and won’t use them to trigger any CETA problems.

What local media still haven’t reported is that the heart of this dispute has been a political fraud by the provincial government. It tried to radically alter the deal in 2014. The federal government rebuffed the provincial government’s effort to rejig the deal. Faced with no prospect of success in its scam, the provincial government abandoned its ludicrous position.

Both the Liberal and NDP criticised the government for submitting to federal perfidy. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but the truth never stopped a politician in this province from opening his mouth before. Tuesday was no exception.

Incidentally, the letter from King to his federal counterpart as well as the news release that King issued on Tuesday are both pretty vague about what the provincial government is actually doing. King explained the details to reporters.

This is the second time the provincial Conservatives have abandoned a stupid position on the European trade talks. The first was Danny Williams’ refusal to take part in the talks in the first place Williams claimed he needed to protect the seal hunt.

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The party is over #nlpoli

There are times when you wonder why anyone pays attention to a crowd like the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council.

They showed up in St. John’s on Monday to tell us that the major projects that have been driving the economy are winding down.

And they charged $230 to anyone who wanted to show up for that insight or for the other one quoted in the CBC online story:  the “party had to end.”

APEC?

No.

Try PIFO.

Penetrating Insight into the F**king Obvious.

Everything will be fine. Or not. #nlpoli

This pretty picture shows a very ugly problem.

Look at the point (2008) where the red and blue lines separate.  The area in between represents the annual deficit the provincial government has been running. It is the difference between the amount government spent (the blue line) and the amount of income the government had from everything that wasn’t oil and minerals.

All that space in between those two lines is debt.  It is either borrowing from the banks and other lenders or it is borrowing from ourselves through spending all our one-time oil money. If the government spends as they indicated in the budget, about two thirds of that gap on the far right is borrowing from the banks.  One third is from oil money.

Just for a bit of fun,  let’s project ahead into the future a bit to see what might happen.  We’ll use the oil price projections the government used.  And we’ll use the most recent oil production figures from the offshore board. You might be surprised at the results.

A week of truth for the Conservatives #nlpoli

Not that we didn’t know the provincial government had already granted exemptions to its supposedly sacred minimum fish processing requirements, but CBC this week gave us an insight into just how often the government has waived the MPRs.

In 2010,  the provincial government approved 11t exemptions out of 19 requests.  In the last six months of 2014 alone,  it approved 27 out of 29 requests. 

That’s quite a jump.

The wild spurt of exemptions came at exactly the same time  - ironically enough - that Premier Paul Davis was insisting that MPRs were an essential part of the government’s efforts to keep fish processing jobs in the province.

They were so important that he and his colleagues would only give them up for a $280 million slush fund of federal cash controlled by the provincial government.

TBT: a cabinet divided #nlpoli

The latest case of the Premier and one of his ministers saying different things can’t be put down to brain farts.

You also cannot dismiss this because fisheries minister Vaughan Granter can’t speak in short spurts or whatever the heck that line was from last weekend’s On Point.

This one is a case of two cabinet ministers saying two different things.

Oil Royalty and Oil Price Forecasts (2015) #nlpoli

Don Mills says people in Newfoundland and Labrador have a false impression of the state of the provincial economy.

Wade Locke says Mills is full of it.

To bolster his argument, such as it is, Locke released a raft of pretty charts a couple of weeks ago.

One of them included a slide showing projected offshore oil production. (right)

Brain Farts #nlpoli

Some people have a hard time with the idea that a great many political decisions are not the product of deep thinking, extensive research, and agonizing debate.

They come from brain farts.

You can hear that pretty clearly in the most recent episode of On Point. The political panel talked about a couple of cock-ups by the Conservatives last week.

 In among the few nose-pullers the panel tossed out, the basic elements of the story were there.