Steep Curves and Third Place #nlpoli

Liberal leader Dwight Ball told CBC’s David Cochrane this past weekend that his job as Opposition Leader came with a steep learning curve.

Indeed it does and on Monday, Ball proved just how steep the curve is.

Where was Fairity’s contract chopper? #nlpoli

In the wake of the tragic death last week of Joseph Riche, it shouldn’t be surprising that some people, including some politicians, are blaming the tragedy on the Department of National Defence.

That’s what politicians do in this province.  Blame Ottawa is a time-honoured political strategy even if it is usually a political lie.

As with the Burton Winters tragedy, these provincial politicians are aiming public concern in the wrong direction.

New telephone tax to pay for 911 service #nlpoli

The provincial Conservatives could haul in up to $7.7 million through a new tax on telephones to be introduced ostensibly to pay for province-wide 911 emergency service, municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien announced on Tuesday.

According to the official backgrounder, the provincial government will introduce a new tax of “less than one dollar per month” on every landline and cellular telephone in the province.  At a news conference, O’Brien and fire and emergency services boss Mike Samson estimated there were upwards of 650,000 phones in the province. 

Although the release describes the approach as a “cost-recovery” model, neither O’Brien nor Samson would estimate the annual cost of operating the system. 

Other provinces use the same approach.  PEI charges 70 cents per telephone or working line while Nova Scotia charges less than 50 cents. Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and New Brunswick also tax telephones to pay for 911 service.

-srbp-

Oh for God’s sake, just get a room #nlpoli

If you want to read a strongly worded condemnation of a provincial politician, take a gander at the Telegram’s editorial on Yvonne Jones from Tuesday’s paper.

Jones told the provincial government last week that her vote in the House of Assembly on Muskrat Falls was up for sale. Word got around the province pretty quickly.  And the Telegram dutifully pointed out that Jones’ pork-barrelling was from another time, a time perhaps best left behind.

The editorial tuts the appropriate tuts at Jones’ style of retail politics, but there are a few other points the Telegram didn’t make about the episode that are worth laying out.

Your Future is in Their Hands: Political Definition #nlpoli

Voters in Newfoundland and Labrador have a new political definition:

to crummell:  to have one's opinion completely reversed in a nanosecond by the whim of another.

There may well be others that will turn up in the wake of Tory Dan Crummell’s 180 degree reversal on Peter Penashue on Friday.

But no matter what witticisms crop up, Dan Crummell defined himself rather neatly, if unflatteringly, last week.

The Challenge of Perspective #nlpoli

From Kathy Dunderdale’s unscripted speech to Conservative party delegates at the 2012 annual meeting:

Only the people who love us very much will be around when we finish this job because it takes over your life. I remember being in a Treasury Board meeting and somebody saying, you know, you can’t do that. You can’t expect somebody to drive a hundred miles a day and work for minimum wage, and somebody said, well sure, you ask Ross Wiseman to do it every day.

Fairity O’Brien: Political Genius #nlpoli

On a day when the government’s pollster releases shitty news for his party, municipal affairs czar Fairity O’Brien decides it is a good idea to remind people of the miserable job his government did responding to Hurricane Igor.

Or as it is apparently known in some circles, Hurricane Ego.

For those who may not be familiar with the colourful cabinet minister, Fairity O’Brien is the guy who:

• doesn’t know what electoral district Snantny is in, and
• loves to commute between his home in Gander and his office in Sin Jawns, at taxpayer expense.

-srbp-

Up her nose, sideways #nlpoli

For some reason, Kathy Dunderdale wants to know who is criticising her pet project.

Now she doesn’t come flat out and say that, but you can tell someone got her goat pretty good during the public utilities board hearings into Muskrat Falls.

You can tell because Kathy said so in the House of Assembly on May 29.

More oil, less democracy #nlpoli

“Oil and democracy do not easily mix,” wrote political scientist Michael Ross in The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations, his 2012 study of the impact that income from oil development has on governments around the world.

Regular readers will recall this idea from an earlier post.

Countries that are rich in petroleum generally have lower economic growth and less democracy that countries that don’t have oil revenues. Ross puts this down, in part, to a relationship that citizens see between government revenue and government spending. 

Citizens in oil-producing countries, though, cannot directly observe how much their government collects in oil revenues.  They must rely on the government and the media for their information.  If they live in a democracy, the information is probably available. 

Probably available.

That assumes, of course, that the media in those democracies can find out the information and publish it.

The Secrets Policeman’s Bollocks #nlpoli

CBC demolished the false claims a couple of Conservative cabinet ministers made in order to justify their efforts to destroy the public’s access to government information.

Justice minister Felix Collins claimed that they had to cut down the number of information requests, which he said numbered in the thousands each year.  Service NL minister Paul Davis said in the House of Assembly: “"You know, they make countless and countless requests for information…”.

All’s Not Fairity in Love and War #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale should appoint municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien to handle intergovernmental affairs.

While Dunderdale is busily lobbing hand grenades at the federal government, Fairity is taking a very different attitude:

The Dunderdale-O’Brien Confusion #nlpoli

In a scrum on Wednesday, May 23, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said:

“What we are talking about, in fact, is a two hour window here.”

In the House of Assembly on Thursday, May 24, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said:

I have asked Minister MacKay for an explanation of the gap that occurred on January 30 in the search when there was a five-hour period that they were not engaged in the search. The answers are not satisfactory; the protocols need to be changed.

There is no five-hour period in the Burton Winters search that matches whatever Kathy Dunderdale is talking about in that exchange in the House of Assembly.  In fact, it’s pretty hard for anyone with even a sketchy knowledge of the events in Makkovik in late January and early February to figure out what Kathy Dunderdale is getting on with.

The Fairity of Regurgitation #nlpoli

Municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien stood in the House of Assembly on Wednesday “to highlight the continued progress in implementing the Provincial Waste Management Strategy in our province.”

Wonderful stuff it could have been.

The only problem is Fairity really didn’t provide an update.

The Zen of Political Disasters: Becoming A Hole #nlpoli

As SRBP noted in an earlier post, the first step in getting yourself out of a hard political spot is to recognise that you are in a hole.

What often happens – as seen in the provincial Conservatives and the Burton Winters tragedy up to now – is that they cannot see that they are in a hole in the first place.

On Monday, the local Connies took it a step further.

The Nanny State #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale refused to meet with Burton Winters’ family to talk about the boy’s tragic death last winter.

The explanation offered by both the Winters family and the Premier herself is that the family wanted to talk about details of the search effort.  As such, the Premier would not meet with the family.  She referred them, instead, to municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien who is also the minister responsible for fire and emergency services.

The Premier’s lingering political problem just got worse.

The Fairity Equation #nlpoli

It doesn’t matter if you are a Telegram editorial writer, a local blogger or even municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien on CBC’s St. John’s Morning Show (not online).  You can still get the details of O’Brien’s travel expenses  - things like purpose and amounts – just dead wrong.

So let’s just make sure we are all on the same page to start with.

The Public Cost of Kevin O’Brien

On Tuesday and Wednesday, CBC reported on the amount of money O’Brien’s department set aside to cover his travel and other expenses for the coming fiscal year.  Last year, the transportation and communications budget was set at $44,900 but the final spending was $92,900.  The 2012 budget is $44,900. 

In 2010, the budget was set at $44,900 and the final spending came in at $61,000. In 2008 and 2009 O’Brien wasn’t the minister.  The travel budget was $44,900 and the final tally was $44,100 and $35, 000.

You can see why people wondered what Kevin was doing.  O’Brien blamed the 2011 cost over-run on Air Canada, the friggers, and their evil mainland-conspiracy airfares.

Yeah, well, no.

The Cause of the Cost

As your humble e-scribbler pointed out on Thursday, O’Brien’s department spent about half its travel budget to cover the cost of shipping their minister from his house in Gander to the office in St. John’s. 

That’s the reason the travel bill was so high:  government expense rules allow ministers to live somewhere other than near the place their job is located.  Taxpayers foot the bill for the extra cost and that includes, among other things, these regular trips back and forth from his home to his main office to attend cabinet meetings and such.  To distinguish it from travel for departmental business, your humble e-scribbler called it commuting costs.  That’s what it is:  commuting to work.

The Comparison

O’Brien isn’t the only one who does this.  SRBP compared O’Brien’s expenses with those of Joan Burke, Tom Marshall, Patty Pottle and John Hickey for the period from December 2010 to November 2011.  In terms of total dollars, O’Brien’s commuting cost was the second largest amount  ($36,000) after Patty Pottle ($40,400).

As a percentage of total travel, Fairity was in the middle of the pack.  Pottle’s commuting was 63% of her ministerial travel expenses.  At 46%, Fairity was slightly below Burke (51%) and a dozen percentage points behind Marshall (58%)

But the key point is that none of that matters.  They all cost taxpayers more than ministers who lived near their workplace, as ministers have done for decades.

And then there’s the House of Assembly travel costs

In addition to the travel costs these politicians cost taxpayers out of their ministerial travel budgets, each of them also ran up travel and living expenses under the House of Assembly accounts.

Minister	01 Apr – 30 Sep 11	FY 2010
Joan Burke	$6,058	$18,309
John Hickey	7,384	15,788
Tom Marshall	7,221	14,017
Kevin O’Brien	9,742	16,695
Patty Pottle	14,012	25,559

Totalling the departmental commuting costs and the House travel bills are possible but it would take a bit of work.  The departmental accounts are reported out of sync with the government’s fiscal year.  The House of Assembly ones come at half way through the fiscal year and then with the whole year.

It would be even tougher to figure out how the two sets of travel claims relate to one another. The House lists huge amounts of detail, including specifically when the flights happened.  The departmental expenses have two dates only on each item.  it isn’t clear whether the first date is the date someone submitted the claim or the date they incurred the expense.

The Bottom Line

But even allowing for all that, you can see that Fairity’s annual cost to taxpayers for commuting would be something on the order of about $53,000  (36K +17K).  And to give a direct comparison for Fairity with a minister from central Newfoundland, look at what Susan Sullivan cost taxpayers.  Her departmental travel costs for the December 2010 to November 2011 time period was $26,068.  Her House travel cost for Fiscal Year 2010 was $14,200.  

In all these cases, the expenses don’t cover the costs of traveling to a meeting with a town council about a municipal grant or something directly related to the minister’s job.

Nope.

This is money that gets Kevin  and some of his colleagues from their homes to their jobs.  No other people on the public payroll get such a benefit.  Historically, ministers haven’t been able to get taxpayers to cover their commuting costs either.  This is a more recent invention, tied to the 2007 Green report and the way the Chief Justice structured House of Assembly allowances.

The cost to taxpayers is a good reason to review the whole thing and put it back on a basis that isn’t tied to where a politician lives.  In the system established in the early 1990s, the House travel budgets tied the amount available to the likely cost of travelling to and from the district.  That was never the problem in the House:  the problem was a scheme that let members use travel money for vote buying.  As such,  there was no reason to change it in 2007. 

Going back to a more practical system of setting House of Assembly travel budgets would disconnect ministerial travel from where a member of the House claimed a permanent residence. Since cabinet ministers’ jobs are at the government headquarters, they should live near by or cover the costs of getting to work themselves, like everyone else.

These costs wouldn’t matter if the provincial government had an unlimited supply of cash.  As we all know, the taxpayers don’t have an unlimited supply of cash.  If we have to cut back on expenses, then one of the logical places to start would be these sorts of discretionary – and entirely unnecessary costs. 

- srbp -

A fresh smear of lipstick #nlpoli

CBC’s online version got the story right from the most recent episode of On Point with David Cochrane:

Natural Resources Minister Jerome Kennedy says the Newfoundland and Labrador government is not back-pedaling in how it is handling the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project, even though the governing Tories are already planning measures they had ruled out.

And Kennedy is being absolutely straight with people:  the provincial government is not changing its direction.

Most emphatically and absolutely no change.  It’s Muskrat Falls or bust.

The ruling Conservatives are just changing the tone.

They are changing the appearance of things as they try and recover from the very serious blow delivered recently by the public utilities board

Look at what Jerome told David Cochrane.  two phrases in particular leap out:

“You have to show as a politician that you are flexible and open to listening to what the people are saying … what we are trying to do is assure the people of the province that everything is being considered…”

Show.

Not be.  Not do.

Show.

Open to listening.

Not actually listening. Or listening and then changing.

Just listening.

And that’s what this latest development is really all about: the appearance of change without actually changing.

Odds are very good that the government’s polling – done by Nalcor’s advertising agency – is showing that the government’s intransigence is undermining their credibility even further. Their strategy isn’t working.  People aren’t willing to just put blind faith in Jerome and Kathy and Fairity O’Brien.

That polling would very likely lead to advice for Nalcor and the government to change how things look.  Image, after all,  is everything for some people.

You wouldn’t need to poll, though, to hear people wonder aloud why the government is proceeding with this project at break-neck speed and despite the thoughtful criticism from a bunch of very smart people with tons of credibility.

You could also tell earlier on that the critics’ comments about Muskrat Falls did serious damage to the government case for Muskrat Falls.  Jerome Kennedy attacking them personally.

So now there will be a debate in the legislature.  As Jerome noted for On Point, the government has to introduce a piece of Muskrat Falls legislation this session anyway so they will now just have a bigger form of that debate.

Hang on a second.

What piece of Muskrat Falls legislation?  They’ve never mentioned that before.  Maybe we’ll find out what the legislation is about but notice that for all the promises Jerome made about assuring everyone that the government will put information in front of people, he hadn’t mentioned that important piece of information before.

The problem is not image.  It’s credibility.  They say one thing and do something else.

This new piece of legislation for Muskrat Falls will come before project sanction.  Logically, friends, that pretty much wipes away any suggestion in Kennedy’s comments later on with David Cochrane that Muskrat Falls might not happen.

Not surprising that Jerome didn’t mention it before now. Makes it kinda hard to assure people you could walk away from Muskrat Falls without batting an eyelid if you are planning to change the laws to pave the way for it before you’ve supposedly decided to get on with it.

So anyway, once again Jerome Kennedy wants to reassure people in the province that they will have all the information the public utilities board couldn’t get plus reports on wind and natural gas in order to assure the people of the province that Nalcor has considered all options before picking Muskrat Falls.

He mentions reports on wind and natural gas that some companies will complete for Nalcor. 

Just remember what Nalcor and the provincial government have always said.  You can find it in a blog post by Nalcor boss Ed Martin over at Nalcor’s “leadership” blog, posted April 5:

Nalcor examined a broad selection of generation supply options to meet the island’s growing and long-term electricity needs including: nuclear, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, coal, continued oil-fired generation at Holyrood, simple and combined cycle combustion turbines, wind, biomass, solar, wave and tidal, hydroelectric developments on the island and Labrador and electricity imports.

They looked at it all before picking MF.  You name it: they studied it.

Supposedly.

So what’s with the new studies?

Good question. 

If the MFers had really had looked in detail at everything before picking Muskrat Falls, then they would  - Number One – already have those studies and would not need to produce “reports”, and  - Number Two – they’d have already released them to show that the alternatives just don’t work.

Yes friends, you are already getting the distinct aroma in your nostrils of the spore from rattus politicus pinocchiosa.  That is one honking big rat turd you smell, too.

You see, we know what these reports will say.  We know because Jerome told us.

March 6 in the House of Assembly:

MR. KENNEDY: … We have looked at natural gas, Mr. Speaker, extensively. In fact, I can say to the Leader of the Opposition, I met with Ziff Energy out of Calgary on the weekend while in Toronto on another matter. They concluded, clearly, that the importation of gas from the United States is not economically feasible. Mr. Speaker, we know, clearly, that the building of a pipeline from the Grand Banks is not feasible. If the Leader of the Opposition has other options, I would like to know what they are.

March 7:

MR. KENNEDY: … I have met with different consultants in this area, most notably Wood MacKenzie out of New York and PIRA out of New York. We have discussed the issue of the pricing of natural gas and the effect of shale gas on markets and electricity markets.

This past weekend, Mr. Speaker, I met with a company called Ziff Energy out of Calgary. I met with them in Toronto. We outlined to them the proposals that had been put forward by various critics of the project and the conclusion reached, Mr. Speaker, by all of these consultants, experts, not self-professed experts, Mr. Speaker, the conclusion reached is the importation of natural gas is not economically feasible, nor is the building of a pipeline from the Grand Banks.

Remember Jerome’s penchant for slagging the critics”  “Not self-professed experts”.  You can tell that all those critics, none of whom are self-professed anything, are causing Jerome and his mates lots of trouble.

And if that doesn’t jog your memory, here’s Jerome from March 13:

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Ed Martin, the President of Nalcor, outlined in great detail the steps that they had taken in terms of looking at the options for Muskrat Falls, Holyrood refurbished. They indicated that at the Decision Gate 2 process, liquefied natural gas was screened out. Mr. Speaker, as Mr. Martin indicated, it was a fairly easy decision at that point because the viability of building a 350 to 650 kilometre pipeline from the Grand Banks just did not work. I am not aware of any LNG study.

Mr. Speaker, I have indicated on several occasions, I have met with experts, notably Wood MacKenzie in New York, PIRA in New York, and Ziff Energy of Calgary and discussed natural gas. I have indicated that the opinions given to us unanimously are that natural gas is not going to work. There are no studies or reports that I am aware of. If there are, they are in the eight boxes and I suggest that the Opposition go through them.

To paraphrase Jerome’s line until now:  We looked at it all.  We’ve talked to the experts.  They tell us we were right the first time.

Nothing changed at all in his discussion with David Cochrane over the weekend, except the cosmetic shift in tone we’ve already noted.  Any claims or suggestions to the contrary are simply unfounded.  you won’t need an expert study to see why.  To borrow a phrase the lawyers like:  the thing speaks for themselves.  Res ipso loquitur.

And even with a make-over, Muskrat Falls is still in trouble and the strategy the government is following is still Arnold Ziffel with a new smear of lipstick.  They are ploughing ahead with Muskrat Falls and all the sound advice in the world won’t persuade them to change their course.

We know that because finance minister Tom Marshall said it on province-wide radio this week, before Jerome tried to change the tone of government’s MF message track:

The opposition will get its say, then the government will get its way.  That’s how democracy works.

That isn’t how democracy ought to work. It is, however, how Jerome and his friends know it does work around these parts.  They just get shy when people realise it.

- srbp -

All they want is fairity #nlpoli

The people who run the province’s town and cites are looking to get a new financial arrangement from the provincial government.

Last week, the municipalities federation held an emergency meeting to discuss recent developments:

“What we’re asking government for today is very clear,” said Rogers. “Short-term help in this 2012 budget and a commitment to participation in the development of a long-term, strategic plan for the municipal sector.”

Sounds reasonable enough. 

Odds are they won’t get anything in the near term. Give a listen to what municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien said at the outset of an interview with On Point with David Cochrane this past weekend. O’Brien quickly started into a recitation of how much money the provincial government has spent since 2008 on municipal infrastructure and things like fire trucks. he finishes off with the warning that any new financial arrangement has to be sustainable for taxpayers.

Coming from a guy who has helped boost provincial government spending to irresponsible, unsustainable heights without a toss about such ideas, those words sound a bit like a lead bell.  

O’Brien is using coded language.

What he really was telling municipalities president Churence Rogers is a simple “f*ck off”.  No one should be surprised if Rogers has heard something along those lines over the past few weeks, perhaps even from O’Brien himself.  Maybe no one used the “f” word exactly, but language likely would have had the finger buried in it.

You see it all comes down to money, power and control.

Right now the provincial government has all of it.

And they will not give up any of it.

The provincial government isn’t interested in changing municipal funding at all.  Any change to funding would have to transfer some of the provincial cash or the ability to raise cash over to the towns and cities. 

If the province doesn’t have that cash, then it no longer has the power to control what goes on in the province.  Fairity O’Brien may not have deliberately mentioned infrastructure and fire trucks, but there’s no coincidence that he did.  That money and those items are part of the old pattern of politics in this province: patronage. 

And that’s the money, power and control we are talking about.

None of that has anything to do with the very serious problem in many towns and cities in the province but frankly provincial politicians like O’Brien don’t give a rat’s backside about that. 

Many parts of the province aren’t really doing all that well, despite the reports you may have heard.  They don’t have the municipal tax base to come up with the sort of cash of their own they need to put into road work, water and sewer projects and other infrastructure.

Problems in the fishery, the loss of paper mills have all taken their toll.  People may be working in Alberta and still living in Stephenville and Grand Falls-Windsor but it’s local companies that pay the taxes that help to keep the street lights on, quite literally.

What’s more, way too many of the towns on the island are full of retirees and not much else.  People on fixed incomes don’t have the ability to tax up the tax slack.  Those towns also have problems finding people to volunteer for municipal services like firefighting.

There’s a bit of a false impression of a boom in some places.  People in Grand Falls-Windsor thinks everything is smurfy.  Ditto Gander.  But in both these towns the major economic engine is the provincial government and a level of spending that we know is unsustainable. 

What’s more, the provincial government doesn’t pay taxes to municipalities.  They do – however – collect taxes on every municipal purchase through the harmonised sales tax (HST).  The effect is to claw back a portion of the money the province grants in the first place.  Until the fictitious oil royalty claw back, though, this one actually reduces the amount of money the towns and cities in the province have available to actually spend on services to residents.

And then when towns and cities go looking for cash, politicians like Kevin O’Brien start coming up with all sorts of excuses for why things must remain as they are.  The miserable, dark joke in all that shouldn’t be lost.  Towns and cities in the province are looking for a fair shake on provincial funding.  Kevin O’Brien is the guy who told us all that the province just wanted “fairity in the nation.”

David Cochrane exposed the fundamental bullshit of government’s position.  Cochrane asked why it was that O’Brien was talking about the impossibility of making commitments of funds for a few millions in the short term to towns and cities while government was prepared to forecast the price of oil for 55 years in order to justify Muskrat Falls.  All O’Brien had was talking points.

O’Brien also couldn’t explain or justify the four years that it has taken for O’Brien to start getting around to talking about a new financial arrangement for towns and cities.  Municipal leaders have asked for predictable funding.  All O’Brien has said is that he and his colleagues in government are willing to talk.

The real bottom line is that people like O’Brien who have politicized the purchase of bed pans and fire trucks simply want complete control over spending in the province for their own, pork-barrel, patronage reasons.

All municipal leaders want is fairity.

They aren’t going to get it from Kevin O’Brien.

- srbp -

. 

And this surprises you because…? #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador is about what the social scientists – like political scientists, for example -  would call clientelism.

You may have heard it called patronage.  Regardless of the word you use, the purpose is the same:

That isn’t just about giving party workers government jobs.  It’s basically one element of a system in which citizens trade their status as citizens for that of being the client of a particular patron.  The patron gets political power and the ability to dispense benefits of some kind.  In exchange, the client gives the patron support.

In healthy democracies, the people govern themselves.  They vote to elect some of their number to oversee the government.  The citizens expect those representatives to deliver public works and services fairly to all on the basis of need. There is no question that the representatives work for the citizens and must be accountable to them.

For people who don’t live in healthy democratic societies, elections are a game in which they can “lose their vote”.  What that means is that they could bet on the loser and as such not have any right to anything. People in those societies do not expect to see schools and hospitals built or roads paved in their area because it is their right to receive them.  They expect them only because they voted for the party that won the election.

And, implicitly, they expect to be punished when they lose their vote.

There are no ideological or philosophical differences between political parties.

Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat.

Red, Blue, Orange.

All the same.

Elections become little more than a case of auctioneering votes.  Danny Williams himself raised the sale of votes to a new level in his now infamous begging letters to Ottawa. And what he was doing, in a sense, would hardly have shocked politicians from the Quebec of old that Williams was so fond of bashing. It’s doubtful he ever got the joke in that.

Patronage is how things have been in this province for a very long time.  The only difference since 2003 is that the patronage is as unrelenting as the general indifference to it.

Road paving?  Decided by a political staffer in the Premier’s office, an approach termed “normal” by the Premier of the day.  The money was allocated in arbitrary amounts according to what way the electoral district had voted. Blue districts got one amount.  Red ones got less.

The Premier of the day loses a by-election and bitches because people were not grateful for all the pork he’d delivered to them.

Whether we are talking about fire trucks or backbenchers handing out cheques from government programs, it’s all part of the same political thinking that in its most naked form delivered us the House of Assembly pork barrel funding scheme. Tories, Grits and Dippers all swam in the trough.  Some of the newer ones elected after 2003 went at it worse than the crowd who’d been there a while. And they were unapologetic.

These sorts of societies thrive on the myth of the strong leader.  They cannot govern themselves, so the story goes and as a result, they need some strong man  - or woman – to do their thinking for them.

So prevalent is this sort of thinking in Newfoundland and Labrador that people don’t see it as odd at all. The news media seldom raise an editorial eyebrow.

So safely entrenched is this approach to politics that cabinet ministers these days can be pretty brazen about it.  Here’s how Fairity O’Brien put it before the last provincial election, defending the government against accusations of patronage spending:

okay, so the question here in my district is, and I am only speaking for myself, do you want four more years of what you’ve just experienced in the last eight, or do you want to sit in the Opposition, or whatever it may be…

Or if that wasn’t enough for you, here’s Darin King, as reported by the Great Oracle in the Valley:

A cabinet minister is unapologetic for the rash of pre-election spending announcements coming from the government. The MHA for Grand Bank, Darin King, announced some money for health care recently. There has been a steady stream of news releases, most announcing money that had already been allocated in the budget, over the past several months.

On VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms, King said he is dedicated to bringing in as much money as he can to his district.

No one should be surprised, therefore, if the patrons decide to slap a vassal that is getting a bit uppity. The provincial government secured the silence of many the “advocacy” group these past few years with dollops of public cash for this program or that one.  The FFAW was no exception.

Now that things have gotten a little tense in some circles and the FFAW and the NDP are playing rough, Darin King the fisheries minister has decided to stop the FFAW’s funding, as CBC reports.

And what’s more, Darin is pretty clear about why:

“It’s very, very tough to build a working relationship with a group that continues to criticize,” King said.

Now on one level this is just political sookiness from a gang of politicians who’ve never had to govern through a really tough period in their lives. Not that you’d know that, of course, for all the whining, moaning, bitching and complaining they and their Old Leader used to get on with.

But fundamentally, what King is displaying here is all the arrogant sense of entitlement to power, position and patronage that he and his colleagues have had since Day One. King is displaying the customary attitude of his party since 2003 to free speech.

They don’t like it.

The Telegram’s Russell Wangersky had a timely column, as it turned out, in the Tuesday edition of what was once the People’s Paper. He reproduces a relatively innocuous comment from a reader who wanted the letter published but only without a name attached to it.  The writer feared he would face some sort of payback.  As Wangersky put it:

The perception the letter-writer has, though, is clearly that reasoned debate is not without clearly perceived consequences in this province. Would there be retribution? I honestly don’t know. But there clearly should be a discussion about the fact that such a fear exists, if nothing else.

The provincial government admittedly has a long reach here: many are employed by it or have family members employed by it. Many businesses depend on the provincial government for some or even most of their business.

The fear of retribution is not new: whether it’s a reality or not is hard to know for sure. I know businessmen I’ve talked to in the province — and I’ve said this before — who are willing to talk a lot about Muskrat Falls in private, but who will never speak publicly.

Eight years of quisling hunts and savage personal attacks on “traitors” take their toll.  Don’t be surprised if some members of the legislature may well be finding that groups that once welcomed them to meetings and events are now routinely disinviting them.  They represent the wrong party.

So Darin King cut off the FFAW’s government funding because they’ve been too critical publicly.

If this surprises you then you are either a hypocrite or a very recent immigrant to the province.  This is old news.

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Truth in small things #nlpoli

If the truth may be found in the smallest of things, then the shifts and changes in Kathy Dunderdale’s second cabinet reveal a great deal.

“It is very important to me that our government operates as efficiently as possible, while providing quality programs and services that meet the needs of the people of our province,” said Premier Dunderdale. “Re-aligning departments and adjusting ministries to ensure they are best positioned to take on the challenges and opportunities before us is very important.”

Here’s how the official news release laid out the re-aligning and adjusting:

• Combine the old Human Resources, Labour and Employment department with the post-secondary education section of the Education department to create the  Department of Advanced Education and Skills.  The new department will “focus on supplying highly educated graduates and skilled workers for a fast-growing economy.”
• Merge the aboriginal affairs department with the Intergovernmental Affairs department to create the Department of Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs.
• Put the Business department with Innovation, Trade and Rural Development to create Innovation, Business and Rural Development.

This release puts the big information at the back end.  Eliminating the business department ends an eight year fiasco. In effect, the Conservatives created the “business” department in 2003 by breaking off some sections of the industry, trade and rural development department.  Now they’ve just put it all back the way it was, complete with the Beaton Tulk-era Rural Secretariat

After eight years of accomplishing nothing, the Conservatives have just put the economic development resources of government back to where they were in 2003. Danny Williams created the department to give a vehicle for his personal business acumen to create thousands of jobs and single-handedly produce a economic miracle in the province.  Williams did nothing while he was minister of his own department, often going weeks without meeting his deputy minister. He handed it off to a succession of second and third tier ministers like Fairity O’Brien or Paul Oram.  Even someone like Ross Wiseman couldn’t do anything except make speeches and hand out gobs of free cash to private companies.

The result of those eight years is a very fragile economy is is more heavily dependent than ever on government spending. The new minister – Keith Hutchings – has exactly zilch in the experience department when it comes to economic development:

Mr. Hutchings graduated from Memorial University with a Bachelor of Arts, Majoring in Political Science and obtained a Certificate in Public Administration from Memorial, as well as an Occupational Health and Safety Program from Ryerson University in Toronto.

Mr. Hutchings’ professional career has included 11 years with the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission. He also served as Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant to then Leader of the Official Opposition in the Provincial House of Assembly (1996 -1998) and successfully ran his own consulting business.

The Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs department basically recreates what used to exist 20 years and more ago as the Intergovernmental Affairs secretariat, and adds Labrador Affairs and the non-profit and voluntary secretariat for good measure. The first two are relatively small, functionally oriented sections that could easily be rolled inside the Executive Council where they once lived.  The latter two sections are meaningless political sops that serve only to increase bureaucracy without enhancing service delivery. Dunderdale could have eliminated them entirely while likely improving the overall efficiency of government.

The ministry went to newbie Keith McGrath in order to make sure there was a cabinet minister from Labrador. This reorganization is a minor administrative change.

The new Advanced Education department actually combines the pre-2003 post-secondary education ministry with the department that handled job training programs.  That’s it. 

The organization makes sense if it was aimed solely at ensuring that the provincial job-training resources lined up to meet – belatedly – the labour crunch in the province. 

Adding Memorial University to the mix could severely hinder the university’s development by burying it inside a department aimed at something other than what it does.  Memorial doesn’t exist in order to be a glorified trade school.

This is Joan Burke’s big reward for backing Dunderdale, nothing more, nothing less.

What’s more interesting about the labour market focus of the department is that it won’t include any of the labour relations elements.  They are all part of the provincial government’s traditional function of regulating industry and ensuring a healthy and productive labour relations climate.

But under the most recent re-organization, the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission reports to the government services department and the labour relations agency reports to the environment department. Such a re-alignment ensures that the “silos” the new minister claims the re-organization would cure remain in place.

In  every other respect and distinct from these three adjustments, the departmental organization stays the same. 

When it comes to who got a new job and who didn’t, those seemingly small points also tell a larger story.

Besides Joan Burke, Susan Sullivan got a big reward for her political loyalty to the Premier. She takes over the health portfolio.  Sullivan may not feel quite so lucky in a few weeks or months – health is a difficult portfolio – but it is the largest department and the one that typically goes to those the Premier holds in high regard. If she does well, Sullivan could become a contender to replace Dunderdale when the Premier leaves before 2015.

Jerome Kennedy’s new gig at natural resources gives him a well-deserved respite from the health minister’s job. Kennedy took over that job at a hard time and navigated the department though some tough times.  he got out of it with both his health and his reputation intact.  That’s a rare achievement.

At natural resources, Kennedy faces the challenge of mounting problems with the Muskrat Falls project.  Kennedy can be a forceful proponent for an argument like Muskrat Falls.  He can also be a diligent house-cleaner when problems occur. if Dunderdale had to kill off Muskrat, Kennedy could handle that effectively too.

In the next four years, Kennedy will also have to deal with the border issue in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the future of a string of law suits related to the Lower Churchill. 

Danny Williams appointed Kathy Dunderdale to natural resources safe in the knowledge that he was really looking after things.  He didn’t need a minister who understood much and Dunderdale fit the bill.  With Kennedy, Dunderdale has a minister who will – in all likelihood – lead this crucial department in more than name only and take the heightened public profile along with it.  Kennedy could be well set when Dunderdale leaves.

Kennedy’s appointment as Government House Leader is a clear sign the Conservatives are going to approach the legislature with a strong arm and an iron fist.

Darin King took the poisoned chalice of fisheries in the recent cabinet shuffle.  The provincial Conservatives haven’t been able to find a policy they can all agree on.  As a result, the fishery remains a festering political pustule that breaks from time to time, splattering the minister of the moment. King can kiss his leadership aspirations good-bye.

Derrick Dalley got the Conservatives’ community pork portfolio as minister of  tourism, culture and recreation.  He succeeds Terry French who got a quiet and relatively easy portfolio in what is usually the home of ministers on the way into cabinet or those on the way out.

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