Compensation talks? We dun need no stinkin’ compensation talks

Apparently compensation talks between the provincial government and AbitibiBowater have broken off.

When they broke off no one knows since natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale didn’t say and apparently no one asked. Talk about freedom from information.

But were they ever on in the first place?

According to AbitibiBowater chairman David Paterson, the only “talks” involved Abitibi and the provincial government’s energy company, NALCO.

Still, he said, the process is very one-sided. "[It] basically consists of Newfoundland telling us what they are going to do and we have to comply."

He said the expropriation legislation does not give the company any right to a judicial hearing. As a result, the determination of value "is at their whim."

Read the comments on the CBC story linked above though and you’ll see a bunch of people who don’t appear to have thought all this through.  Telling Abitibi to take nothing doesn’t real solve anything, especially if the company winds up in bankruptcy protection or  - worst of all – goes under entirely.  There are a bunch of pensioners in Newfoundland and Labrador with a financial interest in this. Then there are the loggers who have been looking for some sort of severance package even though their union contract didn’t provide anything of the sort.

These sorts of details make the last sentence of the CBC story a bit odd:

While AbitibiBowater has no legal obligation to pay any severance at all, the government has been pressuring the company to pay it anyway as it did when it closed its mill in Stephenville.

Since the company doesn’t have any interest left in the province and the provincial government seized all the company’s assets, exactly what sort of leverage the provincial government might have over AbitibiBowater is a bit hard to see. maybe the only people who will wind up with “nuddin” - to quote one person who commented on the CBC story – will be the mill’s former workers.

Environmental trade-offs update:  Just for those who haven’t been following along closely, the provincial government had intended from the outset to bargain based on a trade off between the environmental clean-up at the mill site and the hydro assets.  The Telegram version of the story makes reference to this without giving that bit of background:

She also said the discussions included severance packages for loggers and the companies environmental liability of its operation.

Basically, the idea is that the money paid by the provincial government would be reduced by any amounts forked over for clean-up and severance.  Now aside from the fact the provincial government has no leverage over AbitibiBowater on the severance, it surely must strike someone as odd the provincial government would tie these things together in this way.

After all, the company is liable for the clean-up any way.  They could also be pressed on a moral obligation to provide some severance package to loggers even if their union hadn’t been able to secure that benefit.

But linking those payments to compensation basically seems to make the provincial government out as the source of the cash.  The company won’t be paying any money for clean-up or severance under this scheme.  The cash will come out of public funds.

And if the company goes bankrupt, as some seem to wish for, the provincial government will essentially be left holding the entire bag.

So what exactly was this expropriation all about, again?

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Freedom from Information: Nat Res Two-fer Thursday

The province’s natural resources department had rough day Thursday when it came to answering straight questions with straight answers.

As Dunderdale herself might say, the openness “piece” was missing, “big time.”

First, there was the bizarro refusal by a department spokesperson to discuss anything to do with the expropriation compensation process because there was an expropriation compensation process.

Then the Telegram had more on the recent trip by natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale to Ottawa.  Readers will recall the minister – also the deputy minister – turned up in the gallery of the House of Commons this week.  She got a courtesy acknowledgement from the Speaker.

There’d been no public release that she would be in Ottawa so her sudden appearance raised a few eyebrows.

Dunderdale was attending a meeting of federal and provincial ministers responsible for agriculture. She ducked out of the obligatory team photo at the end claiming she had other meetings.

She did manage to find time to scoot to the Commons though.

Other than that, all her department spokesperson would say is that she “took the opportunity to meet with a number of federal ministers who were available while she was there on issues pertaining to Newfoundland and Labrador and that is the extent of it. She is not commenting further."

No further comment.

It’s becoming the departmental mantra.

Turns out – according to the Telegram’s Rob Antle – that Dunderdale met with federal natural resources minister Lisa Raitt and the province’s representative in the federal cabinet, Peter Mackay.

MacKay's communications director, Dan Dugas, confirmed that MacKay and Dunderdale discussed a variety of issues, including unemployment in central Newfoundland. The AbitibiBowater paper mill in Grand Falls-Windsor is expected to shutter within days, throwing hundreds out of work.

That “shuttering” turned out to be today, incidentally.

As the Telegram notes, Dunderdale’s mission to Ottawa comes shortly after the Premier’s latest Equalization tirade. Maybe they kept her trip quiet in order  to maintain the appearance that things are still tense between the feds and the province.  Maybe they kept their lips zipped at natural resources to avoid building up any expectations that Dunderdale might find some way to ease the tensions or even come up with the missing $400 million from the federal budget Dunderdale’s boss had been banking on.

All in all, the whole thing is a wee bit odd.

At least Dunderdale and her handlers learned a lesson.  When in Ottawa don’t take the minister to hang out in the visitor’s gallery of the Commons. 

Leave that job to the Premier’s personal emissary, a.k.a. Our Man in a Blue Line cab.

-srbp-

Your world. Your choice. Your future.

Memorial University granted an honorary degree on Friday to Edsel Bonnell.

As the official news release put it:

“In essence a man with two careers, Mr. Bonnell has excelled at both.

Fifty years ago, Edsel Bonnell was the first person in Newfoundland to become a professional public relations consultant, winning numerous national awards, becoming in 2002 an honorary fellow of the Canadian Public Relations Society and, in 2005, a life member of the same organization.

From 1989-96 he took these skills into government where he served as chief of staff and senior policy advisor to Premier Clyde Wells, chairing both the Economic and the Social Strategic Planning Groups.

In musical circles he is best known for his role as founder and leader of the Gower Youth Band. This began in 1973 with the support of Gower Street United Church but it was intended to be — and has remained — non-denominational.

Educated at Memorial University, Mr. Bonnell has been recognized for his community service work in being named St. John's Citizen of the Year (1984), a Member of the Order of Canada (2001) and was inducted into the Hall of Honour at the St. John's Kiwanis Music Festival (2004).”

Edsel got the rare honour of a standing ovation from the graduates and their guests on Friday.

The reason is his address. 

At turns entertaining, frank and provocative, it was fundamentally a message of hope and a wellspring of optimism.

The speech was essentially what Edsel is.

In Edsel’s honour and to give you all a fine start to your week, here is Edsel’s convocation address, in its entirety.  It is exactly as he wrote it except in a couple of places where the paragraphing is changed to ease online reading.

 

Address to Convocation

May 27, 2011

Dr. Edsel J. Bonnell

The thing you often notice about people who receive honours and accolades, whether in Hollywood or Holyrood, is their apparent discomfort. The comments you hear are “I don’t really deserve this”, and “there are so many others who deserve this more than I do.” Every now and then, of course, you get a more pragmatic approach, like when Jack Benny said in an acceptance speech: “I don’t deserve this award. But I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that, either!”

When somebody wins an Olympic medal or writes a best-selling book or is elected to a high office, he or she has attained a definable goal for all to see, and deserves whatever praise is due. But when you’re engaged in community service and you are honoured for it, you cannot help but think about the people who have influenced you or who work with you, and all the unsung heroes you have met who have given lifetimes of service without recognition of any kind. So, discomfort seen year after year on occasions such as this is not false modesty, but more likely a reality check of one’s own limitations, and an uneasy feeling about being honoured for doing something that makes one feel so good while doing it!

In my own case, I am very aware of people and organizations who share this honour with me today, and I sincerely thank the Senate on their behalf as well as my own. They are legion, from my parents and wonderful “big sister” who set shining examples in their own remarkable achievements, through teachers (especially a music teacher who instilled in students the passion that is music), co-workers and treasured friends, to our sons and their life-partners, and grandchildren, all of whom inspire and instruct me daily.

The announcement from Memorial referred to my work in two “careers”. The one which enabled us to buy groceries every week was public relations, and I would be remiss if I did not pay tribute to my colleagues for more than half a century in the Canadian Public Relations Society who worked with dedication to create and maintain a dynamic profession with a strict code of ethics, a robust five-year accreditation process, and respected post-secondary education programs In Canada.

My other “career” has been involved with music, specifically the Gower Band Program, embodied in the enriching musical and collegial experience of the intergenerational Gower Community Band. I share this honour today with the people of Gower Street United Church who caught the vision 38 years (and more than 900 performances!) ago of establishing a non-denominational community band program which would provide music education and instruments, scholarship support, and opportunities for community service to anyone with a commitment to the love of music and the joy of service --- a truly remarkable gift to community by a church and its supporters and benefactors; and of course the more than 400 musicians who have participated in this program over the years and who continue to touch countless lives with music and community service at home and abroad.

And then, most importantly, there’s my wife Anthea, who has been my life-force for 55 years through both of my “careers”, and without whose hard work and tireless dedication so much of the foregoing would never have happened.

So I don‘t stand here alone. If all the people who have influenced me, given me opportunities, and worked with me could be here, there would be no room for anyone else in this hall. And I am not unique in this respect, because all graduates here today had many people walking across this stage with them in spirit, and I know they acknowledge the support, and often the sacrifice, of parents, family members, and friends in achieving their goals. Truly, “no one is an island, no one stands alone”; we are indeed all “part of the main”.

As an unabashedly proud parent myself, I can assure the Graduates that your parents share your joy and your pride on this special day. But they, like me, come from different generations. Many parents may be from the so-called “Generation X”; others may qualify for what is now known as “Zoomers”. The question is: What kind of world have we of previous generations given to these graduates here today? And the answer is intimidating. It has prompted me to suggest that we are not following “Generation X” with “Generation Y”, but rather with “GENERATION EXPONENTIAL”!

Last month a man died in the southern United States at the remarkable age of 114. He was thought to be the oldest man in the world at the time, having lived in three centuries. Just think for a moment what his life-span witnessed:

We went from “horseless carriages” to space vehicles that send us pictures and information about new planets in the universe beyond our own solar system; from bolt-action rifles and bayonets to nuclear weapons which can destroy life on earth as we know it; from the three little clicks for the Morse code letter “S” that Marconi heard on Signal Hill to Skype; and from silent movies to “tweets” from around the world on the wondrous machines that we now carry around in our pockets.... all in the span of one man’s life.

It was unprecedented. No other human life-time in the history of the world has ever experienced so much change, so much challenge, and so much stress as the past century or so. But the more startling reality is that the speed of all this change has been, and is, exponential. It has grown faster and faster each decade, and indeed each year, until now it is almost incomprehensible. It’s easy to forget that until 30 years ago, there were no personal computers; and five years ago many of us still thought that Blackberries were edible. The old discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin has gone out the window (no pun intended!) because now they can put the contents of the U.S. Library of Congress on the head of a pin. All the wisdom of the world is available to any child who can access a computer. The whole process of education may soon become unrecognizable to those in my generation.

Science fiction has become reality. It is no longer considered futuristic to talk about the age of Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity, when machine intelligence merges with or exceeds human intelligence. Earlier this year, IBM’s “Watson” defeated two brilliant Jeopardy champions. That was truly history in the making!

The questions that arise, of course, are critical. Can we use our technology so as not to be abused by it? Can we master it so as not to be mastered by it? Can we lead so as not to be led?

This is the legacy we have given to you in your “Generation Exponential”.

Scary?

Sure.

Challenging?

Of course.

Exciting?

You bet!

For centuries, generations have talked about passing the torch from one to another with the usual proverb that the new breeds hold in their hands the keys to the future and the fate of the world. Now, however, it has a more urgent ring to it. Graduates, your generation can literally kill or cure the world; you have the tools to do either one, and the choice is yours. And in the case of most graduates here today, you are called not only to use the tools wisely, but to teach coming generations to do the same. It is an awesome but heroic undertaking.

We are already well into the Communications Revolution. It is changing the world order as we speak. Events in Egypt this year have shown dramatically what could be accomplished by people communicating electronically as an alternative to armed rebellion. Throughout history, tyranny has thrived on secrecy and ignorance and fear. But these curses are being eradicated by the little I-phones and other machines we hold in the palms of our hands, where the people of the world can talk as friends instead of fearing each other as enemies. They find that there is more to unite us than to divide us, if we can only respect each other`s way of life.

For those of us in the communications field, it is a dream come true. But dreams can also be nightmares, and progress has brought with it invasion of privacy, hackers, scams, spam, terrorism, slanderous blogs, and a variety of e-crimes unknown in previous history.

As we work and live in constant communication through social media, we diminish our physical human contact. We text a lot, but actually talk very little. We see on Skype, but don’t feel the touch of a hand. Business and professional life is filled with virtual meetings, webinars, and the like, and traditional gathering places such as churches and service clubs and youth organizations may be required to create virtual entities with interactive e-worship services and web-meetings and surrogate activities in order to carry out their missions. Volunteerism is in numerical decline, with fewer people doing more than their share. This new generation will be challenged to preserve the critical element of Community, not as an option, but as an imperative, if we are to maintain our humanity.

In this commitment to community, every individual has a responsibility. No one can move a mountain, but anyone can move a stone. And when enough people move enough stones together, the mountain will be moved. When we live in community, we experience the joy of fellowship and the peace of common purpose. When we engage in service, we share love with others and see the light of understanding. And when we combine the two -- Community Service – we become participants in the hope of the world.

In 2008, Lanier Phillips stood where I am standing now and captivated the Convocation with his eloquent tribute to the people of this Province. Dr. Phillips was the only African American among the 46 survivors of the tragic sinking of the USS Truxton off St. Lawrence during World War II. He had no idea where they had run ashore, and he had suffered so much abuse, hatred, and racism in his young life that he lay down to die on the beach thinking that he would probably be lynched because of the color of his skin. Instead, a kindly voice spoke and strong arms got him to his feet and then up over the cliffs of Chambers Cove. He found love from the good people of St. Lawrence. And even though the abuse and hatred continued in his naval service throughout the war and back home in the United States, he kept the St. Lawrence experience in his heart as a beacon of love and humanity and tolerance, and vowed that he would spend his life telling people all over the world that there is a place where respect and justice and love can heal the wounds of the soul.

Graduates, you are in that place, and you are of that place, whether you were born here or chose to come here. You are in Canada, a bastion of freedom, democracy, and human rights; where we are so modest that we feel a little embarrassed by saying that it`s the best place in the world to live… but it is! Where citizenship and social justice are treasured. Where we don`t make war, but we keep peace in the world, often at a dear price of brave young lives who win respect for Canada’s red maple leaf in every part of the world.

And within this great nation, you are in this province of Newfoundland and Labrador with its noble heritage, its generosity of spirit, its sense of community, its incredible wealth of talent and human resources vastly disproportionate to the size of its population, and its fierce dedication to fair play and justice. You are in this awesome place of courage and courtesy, survival and success, wit and wisdom through half a millennium of continuous settlement.

But you are also in and of this great university, a university which cares about community and shares with community, to which I can attest from the musical community’s symbiotic relationship with our remarkable School of Music for more than three decades. Today you have become alumni of Memorial, the latest generation of a proud tradition of academic excellence which has sent its graduates to teach others, to provide leadership, and to serve humanity around the world as well as here at home.

That`s why I know that you all have what it takes to tackle the challenges that will flow exponentially around you in the coming months and years. You have already achieved much, and you will achieve much more. You are from the best of stock, nationally, provincially, and academically, and it is both a profound honor and a humbling experience for me to be included in your ceremony today.

So by all means, celebrate today with family and friends. You deserve it.

And then, follow Memorial’s time-honored motto: “Launch forth into the deep”.

Use the knowledge and tools which are at your disposal, turn your challenges into opportunities, and save the world.

Because the world is truly yours, with all the blunders and blessings that you inherit.

Your world. Your choice. Your future.

Enjoy the voyage!

- srbp -

Undisclosed Risk: the cost of freedom is loss

You won’t hear the provincial Conservatives talking too much about an April 2009 deal to sell surplus power from Churchill falls to Emera in New York.

They talked about it a lot when they cut the deal. 

Back then, Danny Williams said the five year contract proved that Labrador hydro power wasn’t isolated any more.  Nalcor wheels Churchill falls power through Quebec to markets in the Untied States.  Nalcor pays Hydro-Quebec a fee for wheeling the power.

And Danny Williams was absolutely right.  Labrador hydro power isn’t isolated.  if Nalcor had customers for Labrador hydro, they could send the power through Quebec tomorrow.

The reason Nalcor isn’t developing the Lower Churchill and shipping the power through Quebec is because there is no market for the power.  Everything else you’ve may have heard from provincial Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador and from the local media about a big Quebec conspiracy to block Nalcor is – in a word – crap.

You can see that the Conservatives wouldn’t want to talk about the Wheeling Deal.  it proves that their more recent line, the one that supposedly justifies the Muskrat falls project is – in a word – crap.

Turns out there may be another reason why they aren’t talking about it.

Danny Dumaresque, a former director of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, issued a news release on Wednesday claiming that Nalcor is losing money on the Wheeler Deal. The story got decent media coverage across Newfoundland and Labrador and even made it onto the Radio Canada website. There’s also a short story about 20 minutes into the CBC’s Here and Now broadcast on January 5, 2010 and on NTV News from the same date.

Dumaresque looked at the Nalcor annual report and calculated that the company lost money on the deal compared to the previous deal to sell the power to Hydro-Quebec:

Over the past 18 months I have been told various figures of costs and revenue but because these figures were much different than the previous contract with Hydro Quebec, I was reluctant to cite them. However, today I can confirm that this province has lost $15 million in the last 9 months of 2009 under this ‘historic arrangement’ than we would have received from the contract with Hydro Quebec, a reduction of 40 percent.

My information is that results have not been any better in 2010 and up to $20 million will be lost. Therefore, in less than two short years we have lost $35 million of precious taxpayer’s money and the potential to lose up to $100 million over the life of a 5 year agreement which we had with Hydro Quebec!

In addition to this loss of revenue to the province I am also able to confirm that NALCOR has paid nearly $34 million to the Government of Quebec since this deal was done and $7 million to Emera Energy of Nova Scotia. [bold in original]

In the media interviews, natural resources minister Shawn Skinner doesn’t dispute the losses.  In fact he admits that under the deal, Nalcor would lose money when electricity prices are low but it could make them back if prices are high.  Even he uses the line with CBC to the effect that losing money is the price of freedom.  When a politician has to use complete bullshit like that you know he’s been caught out.

There are three things to note from this.

First of all, this is pretty much what you might expect from the deal.  It was clear at the time Nalcor inked the deal that – based on the numbers they released – the deal would only deliver about the same price per kilowatt hour to Nalcor that they were getting under the old fixed-price deal with Hydro-Quebec.  Sure electricity retails for 20-odd cents per kilowatt hour in New York city.  But by the time you take off the wheeling charges to Hydro-Quebec and all the other middlemen, and allow for Emera’s cut, the net for Nalcor was 3.5 to 4.0 cents per kilowatt hour.

As it turned out, electricity prices dropped in the United States what with the 2008 recession and all. They are so low that American producers can sell electricity produced by natural gas from the United States across the border into New Brunswick.  And as it stands right now, prices are going to stay down for the duration of this first contract. 

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro considered wheeling the power in 1998 but figured out exactly what has happened.  They opted for selling power for the best return as opposed to going the Danny Williams route and losing money.  Pure business genius at work there signing a deal that only works if prices stay high or keep going up.

Second of all, you have to appreciate that this is exactly the same sort of financial wizardry that underpins the Muskrat Falls deal. 

In order for Danny’s retirement plan to work and for the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador not to take it in the derriere, oil prices have to double from their current level within the next decade and keep going from there.

If anything else happens, then the taxpayers get jammed up badly.  The reason is simple:  Nalcor is building the whole project based on the only guaranteed sale being for power inside Newfoundland.  They can sell power to other provinces or to the United States and if the prices fall far short of the cost of production, then the taxpayers of this province will cover the loss through their electricity rates.  That’s exactly what provincial laws – amended since 2006 – require.

Notice that none of the other players involved lose anything.  Emera gets cash no matter what.  For $1.2 billion they get 35 years of essentially free power to sell to Nova Scotia.  They can sell other power for less than the cost of production and even at the end of the 35 years they will pay less for the power than it cost to produce it in 2017 when the first power is supposed to flow.

It’s the same as the Wheeler Deal.  Hydro-Quebec gets its fees for carrying the juice to the border.  Emera gets its fees and commissions.  The only people who come up short on the deal are the taxpayers of this province who – one way or another – have to cover Nalcor’s losses.

Not bad, eh?

Now the thing is that nobody mentioned this at the time Danny Williams announced the deal in April 2009. Danny never said taxpayers could lose money at all. He never even vaguely hinted at it.  In fact, while he acknowledged prices at the time were low, Nalcor boss Ed Martin said that

[b]ased on current electricity prices, Newfoundland and Labrador could earn about $40 million to $80 million in profits annually….

That’s the third thing and it is the biggest thing of all:  it’s called undisclosed risk. And in business circles, failure to disclose significant risk to investors -  or the de facto owners in this case - is a pretty big deal.  It goes straight to the trust that the ordinary people of Newfoundland and Labrador have placed in these politicians who are now acknowledging, in effect, that there are very important things about these deals that they haven’t bothered to tell people about.

It makes you wonder what other little secrets, what other little time bombs there are ticking away.

What other undisclosed risks are the people of the province facing that they didn’t face before 2003?

- srbp -

Freedom from Information: another missing report by Bill Marshall

Coincidence of coincidences.

Your humble e-scribbler mentions Bill Marshall in jest in a post that connects back to the whole Ed Byrne Tory-gate spending scandal.

As it turns out, on the very same day that Danny Williams decided to tell the world about the auditor general’s investigation of Ed Byrne back in June 2006  justice minister Tom Marshall released government’s response to the Lamer commission report into wrongful convictions.  Williams had known of the AG investigation since the middle of the day before he made it public, apparently, but that’s another story.

Anyway…

June 21, 2006.

Gee.

And right there in the middle of the release is an announcement that former cabinet minister and retired supreme court judge Bill Marshall would be running a review of the Crown prosecutor’s office, as Antonio Lamer recommended:

Establishing an independent review of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions is one of the recommendations Minister [Tom] Marshall [no relation to Bill] said government will implement immediately.  Commissioner Lamer recommends that an independent review be called to ensure that steps have been taken or will be taken to eliminate the "Crown culture" that contributed to the wrongful conviction of Gregory Parsons, and was also evident in the prosecution of Randy Druken. 

"This is an important recommendation on which government must act immediately and we are pleased that retired Court of Appeal Justice, William Marshall, will immediately head up the review," said Minister Marshall. "The review will be very thorough, independent and at arms length; it will examine resources, training, morale and the systemic issues identified in the report." [bold and italics added]

Immediately head up the review but not immediately finish the thing, as it turns out.

Just  a few weeks shy of three years after Bill Marshall immediately headed up the review into Lamer’s recommendation 18, there’s no apparent sign the work of the government’s favourite Grand Inquisitor is anywhere near done. [the link in the picture is dead]
 
Perhaps the former Supreme Court Justice and Tory cabinet minister has been too busy with another review, this one of inland fisheries. 

The second one was a sort of star chamber, since the whole thing was never announced. 
Indeed, government has never revealed either the scope of inland fisheries probe or when Marshall started work on it.  Opposition House leader Kelvin Parsons asked a question in the House about an access to information request that wanted to find out some basic stuff about the judge’s inquest – like how much it had cost so far – but the minister answered with a mere two sentences:

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the review being undertaken by retired Judge William Marshall, I believe the review is not completed to this point. Obviously, the information could not be disclosed until we have the results of the review.

That, dear friends, is all we know of that one.

So now we have it:

Two investigations.

Same guy, running both.

Zero results.

Unknown costs.

And it’s not like Bill Marshall isn’t popular when it comes to the current administration. 

Way back in October 2003, the guy who started campaigning for the premier’s job in the now infamous St. Barbe by-election appointed Bill Marshall as sort of a watchdog:

Bill Marshall, a recently retired Appeal Court judge and former PC cabinet minister, will act as the liaison between Williams and departing premier Roger Grimes. 

Liberals warned against new contracts 

Williams says the outgoing Liberal government should not make any plans for spending announcements. 

"I don't expect them to do that, "he says. "That would be irresponsible for an outgoing government that, no longer has a mandate to take those kind of actions. So, I'm trusting that Mr. Grimes and his government will do the honourable thing, and I expect them to do that."

The whole thing was just another of the nasty, mean-spirited, petty, small-minded, miserable  little insinuations about others that Danny Williams likes to make, as we have come to learn.

As it also turns out, the guy who started his latest political life as the Premier’s watchdog has, in his retirement, become a sort of Tory Torquemada – if you will plant your tongue firmly in cheek – ready, nay eager, to take on any investigation, inquiry or inquisition that needs to be done.

Too bad he apparently can’t finish them.

-srbp-

The word is "curious" #nlpoli

B'y, it is really hard to call the changes announced on Wednesday as a "shake-up" of the public service or any kind of major change to anything really.

Aside from chucking a very small number of people out the door,  this change to the structure of government didn't do much of anything but leave you wondering what the point was.

There have been rumblings of these changes going back months.  Folks looking for some sort of massive shake-up in the fall might be disappointed to discover this was it.  Most likely the next big news we will get is in the budget next spring.

But let's run through Wednesday's head-shaker-upper-whatever.

The 2013 Q1 Churn Appointments #nlpoli

One of the great things about having orders in council readily available is that people can find information.

That’s exactly why the current administration has kept them as secret as possible since 2003 and continue to censor them, even though orders in council are entirely public documents.

But at least in the wake of the Bill 29 Freedom From Information measures,  the Conservatives seem to have been shamed into opening the vault on their secrets a bit even if they still censor public documents.

One of the things we can now readily see, though,  is the number of appointments made by cabinet in the first quarter of 2013 to deputy minister and assistant deputy minister jobs.

Freedom from information: a symptom of ponocchiosis

That would be an inability to recognise realise that what one is saying is humourous because it contradicts the claim:

Oram said verbal briefings aren't an attempt to avoid putting anything in writing.

He said he can't remember if he was supplied with written briefing documents when he took over the business department in 2007.

But of course, not having any written briefing notes is exactly intended to avoid having anything in writing.  That way, there is nothing to contradict cabinet minister Paul Oram’s faulty memory.  In this instance, Oram cannot remember what he did less than two years ago in taking on the single most important job of his working life.  His mind is a complete blank slate.

Yet…

He would have us believe  - despite having an evidently sieve-like memory - he can successfully administer $2.6 billion in public money and account for his actions when needed.

Paul Oram is not alone.  Joan Burke and likely most of their cabinet colleagues  - update:  the Aural Majority - have adopted the paperless office approach.  The tendency to a paperless ministry is nothing new nor is it confined to Newfoundland and Labrador.  Donald Savoie, among others, has documented the trend and they have also firmly fixed the reason: avoiding accountability.

In itself, that’s a pretty dramatic development for a government that sought office in 2003 on a platform that included accountability and transparency as a cornerstone.   It would also pretty much make a mockery of former deputy minister Doug House’s claim in 2005 that the “Williams government is exceptional in the extent to which its electoral platform, Our Blueprint for the Future (commonly referred to as "the Blue Book") is actually being adhered to in implementing government policies.”

Now, one of the possibilities unexplored by either CBC or The Telegram – both have covered this same issue based on separate open records requests – is that the response from government is actually not completely in accord with the facts.  One of the other tendencies noted over the past couple of years is for government officials to respond to certain access to information requests in a way which is false.

For example, the now infamous case of the purple files, every knows that purple files exist.  The person requesting them saw them.  Both premier and an official of his office have confirmed they exist.  Yet, the official written response was that there were no such records. 

In other instances, officials have invented a category of documents simply to avoid releasing them.

Now at this point, no reasonable person in the province should need convincing that a problem exists and that it needs a solution.  We don’t need to see another story of another cabinet who claims to have a decent memory but who mysteriously can’t recall anything when asked about it.

The only real question is what, if anything, the current administration will do to correct the situation.

They started out with a platform that would have put this province in the forefront of public accountability, openness and government accessibility.  Where they’ve wound up is significantly less accountable, less open and far less accessible to voters than the government they attacked in 2003 with their pledge of 23 positive actions.

The only question right now is:  will they do what they promised six years ago?

-srbp-

Freedom from Information: the “how Irish are we” version

From the 2008 annual report of the Ireland Newfoundland Partnership:

Irish Legacy Project at The Rooms

The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, INP and IBP are supporting the establishment of the Irish Legacy Project at The Rooms Provincial Museum, Art Gallery and Archives (www.therooms.ca). 

The Irish Legacy Project will be a focal point for telling both the historical and contemporary stories of the Irish in Newfoundland. It comprises the development of a permanent exhibit for the museum, and the creation of an ancestral research workspace for the archives. It is expected that the museum exhibit will open to the public in September 2009.

There’s also a pretty good description of the project in the INP strategic plan for 2008-2010:

In 2007, INP became a partner in a major initiative titled the Irish Legacy
Project, which will establish a permanent exhibit at The Rooms Provincial Museum, Art Gallery and Archives in St. John’s. The exhibit will incorporate film, artefacts, maps, and text to describe the historical and present day relationship between Ireland and Newfoundland. It is envisaged that the establishment of this legacy project at The Rooms, will provide a focal point
for future culture and heritage projects and will assist the long-term sustainability of the Ireland Newfoundland connection. The core of the Irish Legacy Project will be a permanent exhibit in the provincial museum. To complement this exhibit, INP should continue to encourage art exchanges between the provincial art gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, building upon a previous exchange in 2005.

You also won’t find anything over at the provincial version of the Ireland partnership.  There’s been no annual report from the Ireland Business Partnership since 2006-07 likely because the local website hasn’t been updated for the most part since late 2008. Even the “What’s New” section doesn’t mention the permanent exhibit, even though that page was updated in June 2009.

So what about The Rooms?

Funny thing is, you won’t find any reference to this exhibit on The Rooms’ website, even though the project has been underway since 2007  - at least  - and is apparently slated to open in September 2009.
This is really strange since in the museum world a permanent exhibit is a pretty big deal.  It’s basically the core of what the museum is supposed to represent.

You can see that by looking at two of the three permanent museum exhibits at The Rooms right now.  One is on the province’s natural history.  A second one focuses on aboriginal people in the province.  That pretty much follows on from the old Newfoundland Museum which combined a natural history museum and a human history museum in one pile.

A permanent exhibit that focused on one of the groups of European settler populations wouldn’t necessarily be the logical next step. Given the limited permanent space in the building, one might expect the next permanent exhibit to have a broader look at European history in the province with sections devoted to various aspects of that history.  The Irish would be there, along with the English – as the largest group – and the Norse, French, Basques and others.

An approach that emphasises diversity and the complexity of our history would also be in keeping with the provincial government’s own stated image of the province:

My Government will affirm Newfoundland and Labrador’s status as a distinct people, not uniform in lineage but multi-cultural, one nation inclusive of many nations living in harmony together.

Focusing in one one specific ethnic group - even one with as significant a role in Newfoundland and Labrador history as the Irish  - would be a pretty powerful political statement for one thing. 

Such a narrow exhibit would also run the risk of  providing a potentially distorted view of the history of Europeans in Newfoundland and Labrador complete with the stamp of museum authority.  That’s no small issue given the absence of a required history course in the provincial high school curriculum, for example,  and what appears to be a popular tendency to imagine or fantasize our history.

Then there’s that ancestral archives thing.  The provincial archives already get a huge chunk of business from people doing research into their own family tree.  Putting in some sort of dedicated genealogy workspace is a significant undertaking.  If the new workspace had an ethnic overlay to it, like say a special emphasis on the Irish alone, we’d be looking at a major alteration of the archives’ philosophy.

So with such a big thing in the works, it’s a bit peculiar that there has been so little public mention of it by the people behind the “legacy” project.

Let’s look a little deeper.

There is a reference to the project in The Rooms strategic plan (undated, but covering the period 2008-2011) tabled in the legislature in 2008.  It refers to completion of an undefined “Irish Legacy Project” by 2011, as one example of how the museum division will “have increased opportunities for the public to interact in a meaningful way with the history and visual arts of the province.”  Planning would be done by 2009.  The strategic plan doesn’t saying anything about this being a permanent exhibit.

There’s also a reference to the project in The Rooms 2007-08 annual report (tabled in February 2009 (!)):

…working with the Irish Business Partnerships and the Irish Newfoundland Partnership, and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the Museum initiated the Irish Legacy Project. The project, scheduled to open in March, 2009, will result in an exhibition focusing on the historical and contemporary connections between Newfoundland and Ireland.

Again, there’s no definition of the project nor a reference to a permanent exhibit but we do have a new date:  March 2009.  Now that’s not a date for planning to finish, that’s a date for the thing to open even though a different timeline was given in the strategic plan.

Let’s go back to digging and see if there’s more somewhere else.

Forget the provincial government website.  There’s nothing there on it at all in the way of a news release or ministerial statement. 

Over at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s website you’ll find this bit:

The Archives of the R.C. Archdiocese will have a number of archival documents on exhibit in Talamh an Éisc – The Fishing Ground , an exhibition that introduces the Irish peoples who have been in Newfoundland and Labrador since the late 1600s, the exhibit explores the communities they built and celebrates the contributions they made to life here in Newfoundland and Labrador. The permanent exhibit will open in The Rooms on March 18, 2009. [Bold in original]

They even have a specific date, but no exhibit opened in March 2009, though.

But there’s that word “permanent” again.

This is all very peculiar.  Neither The Rooms’ strategic plan nor annual report are documents people are going to leaf through impatiently trying to find out what is coming up.  Even if you did, the language is so vague as to be impenetrable. 

Sure, the documents are publicly available but if no one from The Rooms or the provincial government highlighted the project, mentioning it in the annual report or strategic plan is as good as saying nothing about it at all.

And if the crowd at The Rooms were hopped up on this major project, you’d think they’d be mentioning it, letting us now how important it is, how much work it will involve, and generally trying to build up a bit of attention for it.  After all, a new permanent exhibit on the Irish in Newfoundland is no small venture.

And since both the archdiocese and the Irish government think this is going to be a permanent feature of The Rooms, it seems very strange there’s been not so much as the peep of a pipe or the lilt of a lyre about it.

This is all very interesting and very peculiar.

And it makes you wonder what is really going on over in the box the Basilica came in.

-srbp-

Freedom From Information: who paid for the junket?

The Premier and natural resources minister took a trip to Qatar and London, England last June.

They held meetings in London with an international energy consultant before heading off to Qatar for a graduation ceremony at the College of the North Atlantic’s campus there. 

While in the Middle East, they also shilled for a failing refinery project:

“Part of what we are doing over here,” natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale told The Telegram, “ is looking for new investments and we'll be promoting the refinery in terms of attracting a partner, so hopefully this project's going to continue”.

They held meetings the very same day the refinery proponents sought bankruptcy protection.

The Qatar portion of the trip lasted three days. The news release still carries the browser banner for Sport Newfoundland and Labrador six months after the event.

So how much did the trip cost the taxpayers?  Not as much as you might expect.

According to the claims reports released December 22 by the provincial government, natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale got all the way to Qatar via London and back for a mere $17.70 in travel costs.  She billed $1,106.34 in accommodations and $327.02 in meals.

The Premier must have used the same magic carpet, since the transportation cost for his portion of the junket was a mere $210.02.  He must have travelled in the first class portion of the carpet. His accommodations cost $1,129.66 and his meal charges were $148.45.

Now without even knowing for sure, it’s a safe bet that two adults can’t get all the way from St. John’s to the Middle East and back for less than 300 bucks, as these claims would suggest.

And lest you think something is moved around in the claims and the travel bill is buried in the room charges, consider that Qatari hotel rooms don’t appear to come so cheap that a few nights in Doha and maybe one in London would come in at around $1,200 bucks unless one was living extremely frugally.

Now maybe the minister and the premier were guests of the College of the North Atlantic and had access to some sort of VIP guest suites in Doha.  Maybe they were the guests of the local government. Still, even with that, the travel costs should be higher if the provincial government picked up the portion that involved the meetings in London.

Clearly, the actual costs of the trip and the expense claims don’t add up; and if the minister and premier had their bills paid by a third party, the public has a right to know who footed the bill.

So how much did this junket really cost and who paid for it?

-srbp-

Freedom from Information: Right to Know Week 2009

labradore lays waste once more to the annual event called Right to Know Week.

At least this year the thing is pushed by the guy who actually cares about your right to know.

Last years’ release was from a guy more inclined to be concerned about frustrating your right to know.

-srbp-

Freedom from information: Talk about low-balling

Oil production in the first four months of fiscal 2009 is down about 23.5%  - on average - compared to the same period in 2008.

But Hibernia payout and current oil prices mean that the offshore oil patch is on track to deliver about the same revenue to the provincial coffers in 2009 as it did last year.

That’s $2.5 billion for those who are keeping score.

Compare that to the $1.2 billion in oil revenues forecast in Budget 2009.

That also means the provincial budget will be on balance overall.

Of course,  that also means the provincial government still has a couple of billion sitting in the bank doing nothing but collecting modest interest.

So why exactly is the provincial government still opposed to a setting up a sovereign wealth fund  - like Norway or Alberta - to ensure the people of the province get the maximum benefit from their resources?

When you think about it, that makes it hysterically funny  to see the federal Dippers trying to buy votes in the province by talking about “fairer” Equalization.  Are they promising Alberta Equalization hand-outs too?

-srbp-

Great Gambols with Public Money: Sprung Cukes 4

Cuke caper: Greenhouse fiasco rocks Newfoundland

The Ottawa Citizen, Sunday January 15, 1989

by: Michael Harris

Brian Peckford is Canada's first lame-cuke premier.

Peckford's Newfoundland government invested more than $18 million of  public  money into a futuristic cucumber operation. Three weeks ago, he announced that the province's adventure in high-tech farming had been laid low. The entire crop in its gigantic hydroponic greenhouse complex had mysteriously died.

Hydroponics is a process that grows plants without soil. The eight-acre complex into which Peckford poured Newfoundlanders' money was supposed to give them cheap, fresh vegetables year-round and create jobs and a profitable export market. So far, the province has got much bigger bills than it counted on, thousands of malnourished and deformed cucumbers, the prospect of an agricultural white elephant and loads of embarrassment.

The premier hinted darkly at foul play when he announced the crop failure. Hours later, the province's partner in the venture, Calgary businessman Philip Sprung, called in the RCMP. Claiming his project had been sabotaged, Sprung released a wild west-style Wanted Poster. He offered a $10,000 reward for the ''capture'' of a shadowy figure who was quickly dubbed ''The Cucumber Killer.''

Sprung brought in Richard Bonanno, an American horticultural academic who concluded in less than a day that sabotage was the likely cause of the crop failure. According to Bonanno, an associate professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in weeds, a triazine commonly known as Velpar was the culprit that triggered the total shutdown of the giant greenhouse complex.

''Dick Banana'' quickly became the darling of talk show callers as the Sprung controversy boiled over. Bonanno's speedy assessment was at first challenged and then dismissed by other experts. Scientists from Memorial University in St. John's said Velpar didn't have the ability to bring about the massive zinc shortages they found in leaf samples taken from cucumber plants in the Sprung greenhouse.

Last week, National Research Council scientists in Halifax flatly eliminated triazines such as Velpar as the cause of the massive crop failure. In ruling out Velpar, Roger Foxall, director of the NRC's Atlantic Laboratory, said that scientists may never know what caused the cucumbers to die on the vine.

Less than a week after the massive crop failure, Peckford gave the floundering project another $1,335,000 to tide Sprung over until a new crop could be planted. The money was immediately spent to cover Sprung's operating costs, leaving the province with the unpleasant prospect of forking over at least $2 million more to the greenhouse before the end of January. Faces around the premier's cabinet were turning as red as Sprung's bottom line.

Informed sources told the press that provincial finance minister Neil Windsor and others had argued in cabinet to close the project. Last Monday minister of agriculture Charlie Power, the man who for the last year has been line minister responsible for the high-tech greenhouse, resigned after 10 years in cabinet.

Power said he lacked ministerial authority to deal with the ''financial fiasco'' of the project. He said he had been treated like ''a Soviet spy'' by Philip Sprung whenever he tried to get information from the government's partner about what was going on at the greenhouse. Power said that the last straw for him was that even though nothing was growing at the greenhouse, the lights had been left on to melt snow off the roof.

''The average daily light bill for December was over $7,000,'' Power said. ''That is a rather expensive way to melt snow.''

When asked if he thought Sprung's sabotage theory was a red herring, the ex-minister offered a barnyard metaphor: ''There is a better description for it. It comes out of a certain end of an agricultural animal.''

Power's criticisms also touched the premier.

''For me to make statements to the press and then realize that the premier's office is fully aware of an entirely different set of circumstances has been both embarrassing and frustrating.''

He added: ''When I look back over the process, I really wonder how a government which recognized our history of Newfoundland getting taken by people from the outside... how we could have got ourselves into it.''

Power complained that he never once presented a cabinet paper on Sprung, that he was misinformed about the financial requirements of the project by the premier's office and that Finance Minister Windsor signed all the loan guarantees on behalf of the province.

''To be briefed after the fact is not, at least in my estimation, the way that the cabinet process or a minister's responsibilities should be done,'' he told reporters after his resignation.

Peckford called Power's resignation ''discourteous and painful.'' He accused his long-time cabinet minister of angling for the leadership of the PC party  - Peckford's job, but hotly rumored to soon be up for grabs. But Peckford has vowed that he intends to lead the party into the next election, so his accusation against Power was puzzling. [Peckford resigned in early 1989, shortly after this article appeared. ]

Power's resignation and the shut-down of the cucumber facility are the most dramatic setbacks in a continuing saga of woe. The Sprung project has been controversial since it was unveiled in May 1987.

Peckford announced that the province was going to be equal partners with Sprung in an $18.4-million hydroponic complex to be built on 25 acres owned by the province. Anxious to make Newfoundland the cucumber capital of North America, Peckford put the public's money where his mouth was and purchased Sprung's used hydroponic structure.

The province threw in a $1-million piece of land, a $7-million loan guarantee, $900,000 in sales tax exemptions and $2.5 million in cash up front. And if the project failed, the government would pick up the tab, while Sprung could walk away for $1.

Peckford said Sprung's revolutionary system would be a money-maker within a year. It was to catapult Newfoundland to the forefront of hydroponics. It was also supposed to provide year-round fresh vegetables at low prices to Newfoundlanders, long used to a limited selection of high-priced imports most of the year.

When the project ran into a seemingly endless string of troubles, the government coughed up $6 million more. Sprung continued to contribute his expertise rather than his money. So far, not a penny of the government's investment in Sprung has been spent with the approval of the legislature. (Total costs for the greenhouse have since ballooned to $25 million, $18 million of which has been picked up by the government.)

Philip Sprung had claimed from the start that he could grow seven million pounds of produce a year at the greenhouse while creating 150 full-time jobs. Other growers scoffed at his claims. Critics called the project ''Grow By Chance,'' a not-so-comic reference to Newfoundland's biggest bankruptcy - the Come By Chance oil refinery.  [Actually Canada’s biggest – ed.]

Oblivious to his critics, Sprung just kept on making claims for his hydroponic system.

''There really isn't anything we can't grow, from marijuana and hashish,'' he once joked to reporters. ''Actually we've never tried, but I'm sure we could do it.''

Sprung was less anxious to talk about the $18-million loss he ran up with the same hydroponic facility in Calgary, where he never produced the quantity of vegetables he claimed he could. When his plants began to die after nearly a year of operation in Calgary, Sprung cited gas emissions from the site of a defunct oil refinery as the cause and sued Imperial Oil and the city for $50 million.

Not long after Peckford's bubbly announcement, the troubles that dogged Sprung in Alberta began to show up in Newfoundland. Five days after the deal with the province was signed, Sprung had a dispute with the project's chief technical director of hydroponics, British Girocrop Ltd.

Girocrop's managing director, Michael Anselm, was replaced by Phil Sprung's daughter, Dawn.

Anselm said one reason he left was that Phil Sprung was more interested in selling hydroponic greenhouses than in the commercial production of vegetables. Dawn Sprung responded that Girocrop's technology had become ''antiquated.'' The irony was withering.

On the day the project was announced, Peckford described the same technology as being on ''the leading edge of a new and highly innovative technology.''

Vexed by questions about the failure of the project in Calgary, Peckford blew up at reporters during a 1987 press conference. He urged them to check out the facts about hydroponics before they criticized the greenhouse. He directed the media to a variety of sources he said would confirm his contention that Sprung's technology was proven and viable and that his deal was a good one.

But a canvass of the premier's sources cast further doubt on the controversial project. John Wiebe of the Alberta Department of Agriculture's Plant Industries Division, told the St. John's Sunday Express that he simply didn't believe Sprung's yield-claims were achievable and that they had never been independently verified.

''It's possible that Mr. Sprung is trying to sell units, not grow crops. There's a lot of hype attached to that operation... I ask people who are potential investors to personally and directly audit the yields. Don't take his word.''

Wiebe's reservations were echoed by Mirza Mohyduddin, a specialist in greenhouse crops with the Alberta government's Tree Nursery and Horticultural Centre.

''Genes are involved. Plants have a genetic limit and you cannot push a plant beyond its genetic limit,'' he said, pointing out that Sprung's yield claims in sunlight-starved Newfoundland were two times greater than growing results in Saudia Arabia, where there is 12 hours of sunlight year-round.

When questioned about the reservations of nearly two dozen scientists, government representatives, growers and marketing people, Peckford insisted that the province had documented proof that Sprung's yield claims were achievable and that markets were in place to make the project economically viable. The premier promised to make the studies public once the legal agreement between the government of Newfoundland and Sprung was executed. He later changed his mind, telling reporters that the information would give other cucumber producers a competitive advantage.

In fact, the only government study of the Sprung operation was carried out by a team of Newfoundland public servants, which visited the Calgary operation in January 1987.

The officials reported to government that Sprung could achieve a top yield of 2.7 million pounds of produce a year, less than half of what he was claiming. They expressed doubt that the marketplace would be willing to pay the $1.08 a pound that Sprung expected to get. The Sunday Express's [sic] freedom of information request for the report was denied, but the paper later published a leaked copy.

Faced with mounting criticism, Peckford put a news blackout on the greenhouse project in May 1988.

''We decided that we will make no further comment on day-to-day operational and marketing decisions of the greenhouse.''

But the bad news kept coming. Although Newfoundlanders had been promised cheaper vegetables from Sprung, it was revealed in June 1988 that local wholesalers were paying 75 cents for the same pound of  produce that was being sold in Boston for just 25 cents.

Public anger deepened when the greenhouse began giving truckloads of deformed and unmarketable cucumbers to local farmers as feed. The government arranged to have Prince Edward visit the greenhouse last June, hoping for some good publicity. Sprung billed the government $10,000 for the cost of white nylon jumpsuits and sneakers for the prince and his entourage.

Then came the accusation from other growers that Sprung was the greenhouse that stole Christmas: the perpetually-lit facility was ruining their poinsettias. The traditional Christmas flowers need a certain amount of darkness to develop their distinctive red coloring.

The Sprung complex's bright lights not only affected plant growth in neighboring areas, residents complained they could play cards or read in their yards at midnight.

Faced with a call from the political opposition for a judicial inquiry into the Sprung fiasco and demands for even more funding from the troubled facility on the short term, Peckford's 10-year-hold on Newfoundland politics has come down to a single decision: should he pour more public money into Sprung or close it and take the heat for a mega-blunder.

It's a problem that won't go away.

This is a white elephant that glows.

-srbp-

Welcome to the Echo Chamber #nlpoli #nlvotes

Pretty simple idea, really.

Opinions, beliefs and ideas move around among like minded people in what is an essentially closed space. 

The effect can be amazingly powerful just as it can be amazingly deceptive and distorting.

President Barack Obama talked about the echo chamber in American political coverage in early 2010 during a meeting with Senate Democrats:

"Do you know what I think would actually make a difference.... If everybody here — excuse all the members of the press who are here — if everybody turned off your CNN, your Fox, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics. The topic is politics."

In the United States, the problem Obama is pointing out is not just the idea of people from different political perspectives focusing on politics exclusively all the time. 

This isn’t the Permanent Campaign* as all-consuming.

It’s about political polarization in the 100 channel universe. People chose what they want to pay attention to and, increasingly, that seems to be a matter of picking only the information  - websites, radio stations and television news programs  - that reinforce their existing beliefs.

Princeton University professor Cass Sunstein describes it this way in the 2001 digital book Echo Chambers:  Bush v Gore, Impeachment and Beyond,

Many of these vices involve the risk of fragmentation, as the increased power of individual choice allows people to sort themselves into innumerable homogeneous groups, which often results in amplifying their pre[-]existing views. Although millions of people are using the Internet to expand their horizons, many people are doing the opposite, creating a Daily Me that is specifically tailored to their own interests and prejudices. Whatever the exact numbers, it is important to realize that a well-functioning democracy—a republic—depends not just on freedom from censorship, but also on a set of common experiences and on unsought, unanticipated, and even unwanted exposures to diverse topics, people, and ideas. A system of “gated communities” is as unhealthy for cyberspace as it is for the real world.

Slightly north of the great republic, and in a much smaller place, there’s another kind of echo chamber.  The way it works may be slightly different but the concept is still the same.

The provincial government makes the noise.  Other provincial opinion leaders – other politicians, key interest groups and news media – reflect the noise back. 

The political parties themselves are semi-closed organizations dominated by self-selecting elites. The rules on who can get into the elites and how aren’t written down.  Sure both the Conservative and Liberal parties have constitutions that set out rules about how they are supposed to work.

But as first the Conservatives and the Liberals showed in 2011, their constitutions are fictions.  First the Conservatives twisted and turned before finally rejecting as illegitimate a candidate for leader of the party who followed exactly the same rules the party bosses themselves used.  Then the Liberals switched leaders.  The party executive may have created the process that ended with Kevin Aylward as leader, but what happened in the five weeks before that – secret offers to this one and that one – could only take place in a group where the written rules and the real rules are two different things.

And lest anyone thing the NDP is different consider the special role given to unions in its constitution.  A party with the word “democratic” in its name was hardly democratic at all.

To see how all this works, consider a couple of examples.

Start with the fishery in the current election to see insiders talking among themselves.

Earlier this year, CBC released the results of an opinion poll they commissioned from Corporate Research Associates. CBC found that:

… 60 per cent of the province believes the fishery should be concentrated in fewer locations to be more efficient.

Only 23 per cent say it is well managed and doesn't need change.

The majority opinion is that a smaller leaner fishery would be more profitable.

That isn’t as surprising as it would have been even five years ago. Times have really changed in the industry. And such a poll result isn’t surprising given that the industry leaders themselves agreed that they have to reduce the number of people and plants in the province.

What is surprising is that – even though a clear majority of people in the province support downsizing and the industry representatives themselves seem to agree - both the provincial Conservatives and Liberals want to create a new version of the Fisheries Loan Board in order to get more people into the industry. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives mentioned that this idea came from the union that represents plant workers and fishermen, incidentally.

Amazing, though, this fisheries policy might be, Muskrat Falls remains the finest example of the echo chamber of local politics and the interconnections among the groups inside the chamber that help to reinforce the messages.

Over the past 18 months, poll after poll done for the provincial government showed that only three or four percent of respondents thought it was the most urgent issue for the province.

Health care was at the top of peoples’ list of major issues, across the province hands down.  The economy and jobs came in second.

Nonetheless, Muskrat Falls has dominated provincial politics since Danny Williams announced his retirement deal in November 2010.

Muskrat Falls is the centre piece of the Conservatives’ re-election campaign.

The Liberals have a section of their platform devoted to hydro-electric development issues.

The New Democrats include it as well, although their comments are much more vague that the other two parties’ commitments.

A St. John’s Board of Trade panel selected the Lower Churchill overwhelmingly as the major issue for the election.

And lastly, a poll released last week shows that Muskrat Falls was a major issue for 13% of respondents.

But hang on a second.

As it turns out, the poll came from the firm that polls for the provincial government’s energy corporation. 

And that Board of Trade thingy.  Well, the panel had only four people on it.  While the BOT didn’t release the names of the panel members, M5 was so proud that Craig Tucker had made the cut, they tweeted about his work on the Board’s panel that put together some comments for the election.

Yes, gang, that Craig Tucker.  Co-chair of the 2003 Tory election campaign, former Tory-appointed director of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro after 2003 and now the guy whose advertising firm is the agency of record for Nalcor.

Meanwhile, the CBC uses Nalcor’s lobbyist as an election commentator alongside their own provincial affairs reporter, as if the two were the same sort of independent political observers.  They didn’t even bother mention that the guy is Nalcor’s lobbyist in Ottawa.

What’s most amazing about CBC and those who reported the poll last week without noticing the Nalcor connections is that they didn’t feel the need to notice the Nalcor connections.

For people inside the echo chamber, that sort of detail might be so well known they didn’t feel like it was an issue.

But outside the circle of au courante types, out among the audience?

Not so much information that they’d readily have those details or even that they’d feel the need to go check. They trust the news media to give their all the relevant information, after all.

More than two decades ago, political scientist Susan McCorquodale wrote about the relationship between the media and politicians in this province.  She described it as '”symbiotic”, a close and long-term relationship that works to the benefit of both.

“News originates with the press release, the press conference or the daily sitting of the House of Assembly,” she wrote.  These days she might have added twitter, e-mail or the Blackberry message from a political source feeding tidbits to reporters.

McCorquodale noted the lack of investigative reporting, something else that remains little change these days.   And she also noted the “tendency of reporters to end up in comfortable PR jobs with government.”

What she could not have foreseen was the day when the president of the major commercial radio broadcasting firm would sit as a political appointee on the board of one of the provincial government’s energy companies.

Nor could McCorquodale have expected that this same fellow, so tight with the pols the could receive a patronage appointment, would call his own station to complain about media coverage of his patron’s health problems.

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador occurs inside a large echo chamber.  While in the United States, there are separate political echo chambers for people with differing political views, in newfoundland and Labrador, the echo chamber tends to separates the opinion elites from the majority of society.

To see it work, you only have to look at the general election campaign.

 

- srbp -

• Permanent Campaign: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

The question of democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador #cdnpoli #nlpoli

“A democracy only works really well,” according to Kathy Dunderdale, “when people are asking questions.”

Opposition Leader Dwight Ball told a Western Star interviewer that “my job is to ask questions with substance…”.

Not to be outdone in the spate of year-end interviews, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael tied the health of democracy to asking questions:

If our natural resources standing committee ... were operating like a House of Commons committee or like the committees in Nova Scotia, we’d have a fully open discussion on Muskrat Falls.

Not surprisingly, all three party leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador agree on what constitutes democracy in the province.  They lead parties that agree on everything but the fine details. 

Not surprisingly, the three leaders discuss democracy solely in terms of what happens in the provincial legislature.  The only disagreement they have, such as it is, centres on the questions the opposition parties ask.  The NDP want more time to ask questions.  The Liberals want to ask better questions and the Conservatives claim variously that there is enough time for questions as things stand or that the quality of them is low anyway so more time wouldn’t make things better.

In one sense, democracy is about questions.

It is about people who want power – like Kathy Dunderdale, Lorraine Michael and Dwight Ball – asking the rest of us in the community to support them at election time.  We support them with the one thing that we all have in common:  our individual vote. Everyone in the community has exactly the same kind of vote. And it is our individual vote that is the foundation of everything else that happens in our democracy.

In between elections, democracy is about those people who get enough support to form a government asking “May I” when they want to do something. That’s essentially what they do in the House of Assembly.

They pose the question to the other members of the House, whether from their own party or the other parties and individuals who won enough votes to sit in the legislature. 

You’ll find that quite literally in the procedure.  The Speaker will “put the question” on a motion, a resolution or a bill to the House and ask the members to vote.

Ask a question. 

Vote on an answer.

Decision made.

All starting from the fundamental question put to individual voters at an election to chose individuals who will represent those voters in the legislature.

Things weren’t always that way.  But starting almost 800 years ago, in those countries that follow the British parliamentary tradition, people started to place limits on what the government could do without the agreement of the people ruled by the government.

The 1689 Bill of Rights brought together many of the features of our modern democracy that we often assume have always been around and that people have always accepted.  Freedom of speech,  freedom to stand for and to vote in elections to the legislature and the need for the legislature to meet regularly are all contained in the 1689 Bill of Rights. They survive today: some changed, some the same.

At the core of the whole thing is choice.  People chose their representatives to sit in the legislature.  We select those representatives to stand in for each of us every day between elections.

We do not elect a government.  We elect people to the legislature, to the House of Assembly.  Out of those people, we get a group to run the government.  And those people running the government must come back to our direct representatives for approval for what they want to do, especially when it comes to spending public money.

There are two other ideas that go along with choice and who gets to chose.  One of these is that choices must be based on information.  The legislature’s day-to-day business is built around debate and the exchange of information. 

The other idea is that the information and choice must be in public.  The legislature has space for people to sit and watch what happens.  News media and others can report on what happens.  The legislature keeps an official record – Hansard – that people can read.

Seen from that perspective, those political comments about questions and the legislature don’t look all that good or convincing.  Looking at some recent history, one can find a host of examples  – from the spending scandal to the Abitibi expropriation fiasco  - that show the bad things that happen when politicians operate in secret. 

You can also see that the Premier’s excuses for keeping the legislature closed simply don’t make sense.  If she feels that her current job is a “rare privilege”, then Kathy Dunderdale needn’t remind herself of that fact every day, in secret, in her office. 

She can show up in the legislature and demonstrate that she gets the point:  if you want power in this province, the you have to stand up in the legislature and ask “May I?”

The purpose of the House is to subject those with power to public examination and to the test of debate, discussion and disclosure.  The Premier and her colleagues should want the legislature to be open as much as possible.  They should want to tell us about their plans, present their case and convince us all that they have good ideas.

How very odd it is, then, that the Premier admitted at the end of last year that she and her colleagues don’t have any thing ready to present to the House.  This is the case despite the fact they’ve been in office since 2003 and the Premier herself has held her job for more than a year.

At other times, Dunderdale has said that she kept the legislature closed because the House was dysfunctional.  The opposition parties were weak. Who will hold them accountable for what they say, she wondered. 

The answer is simple:  the ordinary people of Newfoundland and Labrador will.  If the opposition political parties are as weak as Dunderdale claims, then they won’t be able to hide away from public scrutiny either.  Exposing yourself to examination works both for those with power and those who want it.

The fact that the Premier and her colleagues avoid the House as they do and denigrate the legislature as the Premier does, she demonstrates nothing less than contempt for the people of the province.

To be fair, though, none of the parties in the House can really escape blame on this point.  All parties have  helped to create the current climate. Dunderdale controls how often the House sits.  But the other parties went along unquestioningly with the special ballot laws that undermine the right of individuals to stand for election.  Some even openly suggested making this a one party state.  Perhaps that explains why they slipped things through the House with a nod and a wink and stood idly by as their colleagues abused the fundamental rights we have enjoyed. Now they may not see it that way. They may believe that what they have done is absolutely right in every respect.

But they were not right.

It is not okay.

The attitude and actions of politicians in the province in recent decades are why the state of democracy in our province is, itself, in question.

- srbp -

Bill 29 didn't go far enough: public sector unions #nlpoli

The teachers' union doesn't want the public to know the names of public servants in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The news late on Thursday is that NAPE - the province's largest public sector union  - and the nurses' union are thinking about joining the fight against the public's right to know who works for the public service and what they earn.

The teachers' union is going to court to try and block disclosure of the names of public servants in response to a request from the Telegram's James McLeod for a list of public service positions in which the person holding the job makes more than $100,000 a year.

McLeod is compiling the list because both the former administration and the current one have committed to publishing one but haven't done so yet.  Several other provinces publish similar lists of public employees who make more than $100,000 a year.

The teachers' union says it's okay to have the position title and income but we can't have the name of the person holding the job, even though that information is readily available under access laws in every province and the federal government and it's been legal to obtain in this province for 35 years. Neither the teachers' union nor any other public sector union has raised this as an issue in the 35 years since the first provincial freedom of information law passed the House of Assembly in 1981.

Doesn't make sense, right?

Of course, it doesn't.  At least, it makes no sense if you look at it from the public interest.

It only makes some sense if you understand that these folks complaining about public disclosure aren't concerned about the public interest at all on any level.  They are concerned only about their own interest.   Unions who have members who will turn up on the lists are defending positions every bit as as private and self-interested, in other words, as the people the unions have been quick to attack for running public-private partnerships.  The hypocrisy is staggering but, sadly, not surprising.

None of the folks criticising the public disclosure have offered a solid reason why the information shouldn't be public.  Most of what they've claimed are undifferentiated fears of what unnamed people might theoretically do with the information.  They might... you know... gossip.  or worse,  the complainers have just offered the view that adding the names is unnecessary or serves no "journalistic" purpose.

What's most striking about these complainers is not the fact they offer no substantive argument, nor even that they don't feel the need to offer an mature, coherent, intelligent reason for their position.  It's the intensity of their feelings, of their unfounded fear.

Many of the people making big money are professionals:  teachers, lawyers, judges, university professors, nurses and doctors. We all know they make higher salaries than the average. They went to school for a long while to learn their business and they work pretty hard.

In other instances, like say a lineman working for Nalcor,  their pay reflects the hard nature of the work they do.  Master mariners make good money.  The job they do takes skill and carries a lot of responsibility.  As for the rest, presumably they are well qualified for the jobs they have, too. teachers, for example, are paid based on their educational qualifications, responsibilities, and years of service.  There's a correlation between their merits and their compensation. For all these folks, the pay and other benefits they get were set by government, not them, and should be enough to compensate them for the work they do on behalf of the public.

Yet they act like they are ashamed of something or like they should be ashamed of something.  If these folks and their unions are indeed feeling a wee bit guilty then maybe we ought to do more than just publish a sunshine list. Maybe there is a bigger problem here yet to be discovered.

The last time someone tried to turn back the clock on the public's right to know we got Bill 29.  As it stands right now,  the province's public sector unions want to take us back to the time before the first freedom of information law.   Since they haven't offered a single good reason for their agitation, you really have to wonder what's driving their anxiety.

-srbp-

The constitutional background to the current situation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE            

November 28, 2008

Eugene Forsey on Dissolutions, Coalitions and Minority Government

Ompah, Ontario – “If Eugene Forsey were alive today, the democratic options open to Parliamentarians in the upcoming confidence vote would be much clearer,” says Helen Forsey, daughter of the late Senator and constitutional expert.

“My father would be telling politicians and media alike that there is no need for a fresh election, and no need either for any formal coalition of opposition parties to replace the Conservative government if it is defeated in the House.”

She cites the straightforward explanation of the process given in her father’s popular reference book, “How Canadians Govern Themselves”, published by the Library of Parliament and now in its 6^th edition.

“If a Cabinet is defeated in the House of Commons on a motion of censure or want of confidence, the Cabinet must either resign (the Governor General will then ask the leader of the Opposition to form a new Cabinet) or ask for a dissolution of Parliament and a fresh election... If a minority government is defeated on a motion of want of confidence very early in the first session of a new Parliament, and there is a reasonable possibility that a government of another party can be formed and get the support of the House of Commons, then the Governor General could refuse a dissolution."  

Forsey is concerned that a lack of understanding of the constitutional options could lead to costly and undemocratic decisions that would seriously undermine Canadian democracy. “There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation in the public discussions around the expected vote on the ‘financial update’ package,” she says. “If we assume that a defeat in the House will automatically trigger an election, that gives the government a great big stick with which to beat the opposition and the electorate into submission. That’s what happened last time, and we mustn’t let it happen again.”

Even knowing that the Governor General can refuse to dissolve the new Parliament and ask the Leader of the Opposition to form a government, there is still a mistaken belief that this would require a formal coalition, she says. “Canadians must not allow this democratic opportunity for an alternative government to slip away just because no coalition emerges. Ordinary minority governments can work perfectly well if they respect the spirit of cooperation and openness Canadians want and need in these challenging times.”

For more information, please see attached backgrounders, and contact: 

Helen Forsey, Ompah, Ontario (613) 479-2453 (home office); hforsey@magma.ca (until December 15^th,2008),         hlforsey@sympatico.ca (after December 15^th, 2008)

John Whyte, Law Foundation of Saskatchewan Professor, College of Law, University of      Saskatchewan, Regina, (306) 966-5606; (home 306-757-9775), john.whyte@usask.ca

Donald Wright, Dept. of Political Science, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, (506) 458-7494, wrightd@unb.ca

Backgrounders

A.  Minority government – no need for a coalition!

There is suddenly much talk of a possible coalition of opposition parties, and the impression being given is that without such a coalition, a defeat of the Harper government would “force an election”. As the late Senator and constitutional expert Eugene Forsey and the entire history of Parliamentary Cabinet government make clear, this is simply not true, and it is vitally important to get rid of that mistaken assumption. Canadians must not allow our current opportunity for a change of government to slip away because no coalition emerges.

1. We don't need a coalition; regular minority government represents a simple and totally viable alternative. Common or garden minority government could work just fine, as it has lots of times in the past. The largest opposition party would form a cabinet, and introduce legislation deliberately designed to gain the necessary support from the House. This would involve consultation, discussion, co-operation, on each bill or policy, but it would not require any formal agreement among the parties. Whenever the parties holding the balance of power wanted changes to the proposals, they would negotiate with the (new, more co-operative) governing party so as to get something they could all at least live with. One example is the way the NDP won important concessions from the Paul Martin minority government on a number of issues.

2. Regular minority government could happen immediately; a coalition would take time. We almost certainly don't have the time right now to achieve the kind of formal agreement a coalition represents. Coalitions involve complex negotiations and delicate balancing which can be very challenging and time-consuming. They can also be internally divisive, at least temporarily, within the parties themselves. With a potential confidence motion coming before the House immediately, it is not realistic to ask three very different parties to slap something together in just three days. 

3. A formal coalition among the three parties currently in opposition in our Parliament would have serious structural drawbacks. The differences among the parties on some issues are enormous, and each party is apt (quite rightly) to be vigilant about not compromising its basic principles and identity.  Moreover, a coalition usually involves a cabinet that includes members of two or more parties, and the issues around who gets which positions could easily scuttle the whole thing. Even if a formal coalition were agreed to initially, the price each party would have to pay might soon become too high for many of its MPs (eg. if the Bloc demanded to be put in charge of federal-provincial relations, this would certainly be too much for many federalists in the other parties.)

4. A formal coalition might well be less stable than a regular minority government. Under current conditions - given the particular parties involved and the issues we are facing - a coalition could easily fall apart, which would leave a very bad taste in people's mouths and make further co-operation considerably more difficult. (In a regular minority situation, the parties can fail to agree on a piece of non-essential legislation without incurring any serious repercussions at all.)

To sum up, a coalition might be great, but it would have its drawbacks as well. What we absolutely do need now is an alternative to the current regime, a more co-operative and democratic minority government which would consider the input of the other parties in developing legislation and policies that could win the support of a majority of MPs. No coalition is needed for this – it is simply the way minority governments have always tried to work, before bullying and bluffing became a shameful new norm.

B.  An election if necessary – But not necessarily an election! Eugene Forsey explains constitutional options

By Helen Forsey

After our costly and frustrating October 2008 trip to the polls, Canadians are once again being held hostage to the notion that a government can never be defeated in the House of Commons without triggering an election. If Eugene Forsey were still alive, we would know that the weapon being held to our heads is only a toy gun.

The late Senator Forsey was widely recognized and respected as an expert on Canada’s constitution. Whenever political dilemmas loomed or processes needed clarifying, politicians, media and citizens alike sought his lively and learned counsel. Today, with our country again facing the uncertainties of a minority government, a multi-party opposition and difficult times ahead, his input is urgently needed.

The first thing he would point out in our current situation is that our Constitution provides safeguards against a series of unnecessary elections. One of those safeguards is the right of the Governor-General, in certain circumstances, to refuse a government’s advice to dissolve Parliament and instead to call on another party in the existing House of Commons to try governing.

If the Canadian public, the politicians and the media had understood this vital element of our Constitution and invoked it early in the last Parliament, things could have unfolded very differently from what they did. The opposition parties could have voted together against the government on one of its confidence motions and defeated it. At that point the Governor-General, rather than automatically granting a dissolution and plunging us into an early election, could have called on the Leader of the Opposition to form a cabinet and try to get the support of the House to govern. If the new government had then developed its legislative and budgetary measures in ways that would gain majority approval by our elected representatives, the 39^th Parliament could have got on with its work, and quite possibly worked very well.

But nobody, from the Governor-General to the opposition politicians to the media to the general public, seemed to realize that this was an option! Now, after all the hassle and expense of the recent election, we’re back in essentially the same place. And the minute the PM decides that this new Parliament also “isn’t working” as he wants it to, it could happen again - unless we start understanding and implementing the options our Constitution provides.

“If [a government] loses its majority support in the House of Commons, it must either make way for a government of the opposite party or call a fresh election,” states Eugene Forsey in “How Canadians Govern Themselves”, his now-classic popular reference book published by the Library of Parliament. “In Canada, the government and the House of Commons cannot be at odds for more than a few weeks at a time. If they differ on any matter of importance, then, promptly, there is either a new government of a new House of Commons.”

Contrast this clear either-or alternative with the false assumption that if the Commons doesn’t agree to the government’s program, there has to be a fresh election. “The Canadian Constitution very sensibly allows governments to appeal from Parliament to the people when the public interest so requires,” Forsey explained. “But it does not follow that it provides no means of protecting fundamental democratic rights against abuse of these powers. It does; and the means is the reserve power of the Crown as guardian of the Constitution.”

My father defended those “reserve powers” as a pillar of our democracy. His PhD thesis on the royal power of dissolution of Parliament documented the constitutional precedents and the logic behind them, and demolished the popular but mistaken theory “that the Crown is just a rubber stamp for Cabinet, or that if it isn’t, it ought to be.” In particular cases, he argued, the power of the Crown to refuse a dissolution may be all that stands in the way of a government “spanking the electorate into submission” by repeatedly forcing them back to the polls.

“Unquestionably, the [reserve] power exists,” he wrote, citing the instances of its use and the wide range of constitutional authorities and politicians who upheld its propriety. “Unquestionably also, it is a power to be exercised only in very special circumstances: ordinarily the Crown must follow the advice of the cabinet. But many people feel that there must be no exceptions whatsoever. Is this in fact a safe doctrine?”

One of the scenarios he used to make his case against the “rubber stamp” theory starts with a familiar situation. “Suppose the government gets a dissolution, and no one gets a clear majority,” he wrote. “The government retains office and meets the new Parliament - as it has a perfect right to do - hoping to pick up enough votes to keep it in power. But the new Parliament defeats it. It declines to resign; governments don’t automatically resign on defeat. Instead, it asks for a second dissolution, and upon a further defeat in the ensuing Parliament, a third, and so on, until the electors give in or revolt. Is the Governor-General bound to acquiesce in this game of constitutional ping-pong from electorate to Parliament, from Parliament to electorate again, back and forth interminably?”

In 1926, Mackenzie King accused Parliament of having “ceased to be in a position to make a satisfactory decision” about who should govern. In 2008, Stephen Harper blamed a “dysfunctional” Parliament that “wasn’t working”. Both meant the same thing: a Parliament which failed to do what they wanted it to do. And for both men, the prescription was also the same: get a willing Governor-General to dissolve the unsatisfactory Parliament and bring on another election.

Forsey called this “a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ theory of the Constitution. It bears not the faintest resemblance to parliamentary government,” he said. “Yet on the rubber stamp theory of the Crown’s powers there is no escape from it, no protection against the Cabinet dictatorship it would rivet upon the country.”

“It is the rubber stamp theory which is undemocratic,” he concluded. “It makes existing governments irremovable except by their own consent. Such a doctrine is a travesty of democracy. It delivers every Opposition gagged and bound into the hands of any jack-in-office. The jack-in-office may loosen the gag and the ropes - [perhaps] so much that we don’t realize they’re there. But he can tighten them again whenever he pleases, and as tight as he pleases. This is not democracy. It is despotism; more or less benevolent, perhaps, for the moment, but despotism none the less.”

The antidote is an understanding of the reserve power of the Crown to refuse a dissolution, and the political will to demand that it be used when necessary.

All this is not to say that it would be simple for the Crown to refuse her cabinet’s advice. As Eugene Forsey noted, a Governor-General would rightly be reluctant to do so without excellent reasons, and without a new cabinet willing to accept the responsibility. The reserve power on dissolution comes into play only in exceptional circumstances – when the latest election is still relatively recent, no great new issue of public policy has arisen in the interim, and the makeup of the new Parliament provides the practical possibility of an alternative government.

But the fact that the reserve power exists is one key to counteracting the paralyzing sense of helplessness that has turned so many Canadians off politics. It means we can choose to move from frustration and wishful thinking to the practical possibility of the opposition – a majority in this new Parliament as in the last - forming a government. The various parties would have to set partisan selfishness aside, but there would be no need for a formal coalition, just enough cooperation for each bill to pass. That, after all, is how responsible minority government works.

Democratic alternatives become real options when we understand and insist on the constitutional principles surrounding dissolution. Whether or not we like a particular government, having those options is essential to maintaining our democracy. We need not be hamstrung by the constant fear of another election. We must shake off our ignorance of the constitution and use the tools it offers to make our parliamentary system work for us.

Writer Helen Forsey is a daughter of the late Senator Eugene Forsey. She is currently working on a book about his legacy to Canadians.

Reference material:

Forsey, Eugene A., Freedom and Order, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1974. See especially: “The Crown and the Constitution” (pp. 34-50), “Mr. King and Parliamentary Government” (pp. 87-109), and “The Problem of Minority Government in Canada” (pp. 109-123.)

Forsey, Eugene A., How Canadians Govern Themselves, Library of Parliament, 6^th edition 2005. See especially pp. 28-29.

Forsey, Eugene A., A Life on the Fringe, Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1990. See especially pp. 102-108.

Evatt, H. V. and Eugene A. Forsey, Evatt and Forsey on the Reserve Powers, Legal Books, Sydney, 1990. This volume includes the entire text of Forsey’s The Royal Power of Dissolution of Parliament in the British Commonwealth, with his new Introduction, “The Present Position of the Reserve Powers of the Crown”.

We would most likely have been spared both this latest election and the continuing curse of a Harper government. Our current affliction is largely due to our collective political ignorance, exploited and manipulated by the Powers That Be to create the “learned helplessness” so evident now in our battered and bruised electorate.

The specifics will depend on how the situation unfolds, but the deciding factor will be the opposition’s collective willingness to

call Harper’s bluff early in the new session. Backed by informed public pressure, they should defeat him in the House as soon as he starts pushing his reactionary policies, and demand the chance to govern sensibly and co-operatively in his place.

If the opposition lacks the gumption to do this, or if the Governor-General simply knuckles under and grants Harper another dissolution, the public outcry should be so loud that Eugene Forsey will rise from his grave to join us.

Harper’s minority Conservatives spent their first term in office demonstrating their contempt for the people and their representatives. They systematically sabotaged the work of multi-party committees, used Orders-in-Council to avoid Commons debate and defy the law, and took the art of parliamentary bullying to new heights by declaring every government bill a matter of confidence, daring MPs to defeat it.

On the “rubber stamp” theory, any such defeat in the House would automatically trigger a new election, something opposition politicians are generally reluctant – for good reasons and bad – to provoke. Whether or not Harper knew that premise was false, he was certainly willing to bet it wouldn’t be challenged. Sadly, he was right. The opposition parties mouthed their platitudes but never mentioned any constitutional alternative. While they played dead, Harper was able to keep pushing through his appalling legislation and stay in office till the time of his choosing.

************************************

My father was writing in 1953, but more than half a century later Canadians are again being held hostage to the false notion that a government can never be defeated in the House of Commons without triggering an election.

After our recent futile trip to the polls, we are a country massively frustrated and disillusioned with our own politics. Our alienation is due to many elements – our continuing enslavement to the “first-past-the-post” electoral model, short-sighted partisan vote-grabbing among rival opposition parties, macho posturing and point-scoring that freezes out more collaborative approaches or dismisses them as “weak”.

Although he died in 1991, his writings continue to provide detailed analysis and guidance on how our sophisticated system of Parliamentary government works.

our vast ignorance of our own Constitution, particularly the sophisticated safeguards it offers against abuse. One of those safeguards is the right of the Governor-General, in certain circumstances, to refuse to dissolve Parliament and instead to call on another party in the existing House of Commons to try governing. If the public, the politicians and the media had understood this vital element of our Constitution and invoked it early in the last parliament, things would have unfolded very differently.

It is high time the politicians, the media, and the public at large were reminded that this is not the case.

that our Constitution provides options.

Harper’s bullying tactics depend on the continuing ignorance and docility of the opposition, the media and civil society – an ignorance regularly fertilized with forkfuls of bullshit from politicians and the media.

One example - out of many - was a recent statement by CBC Radio News that Harper’s technique of declaring every Commons vote a matter of confidence forces the opposition to either “support the government, force an election, or not vote at all.” It is precisely this widespread but false belief that reduces the opposition majority to a state of helpless frustration and allows the government to walk all over us.

“One of the biggest threats to parliamentary democracy in Canada,” he wrote, “is the dogma that any government, regardless of circumstances, always has a dissolution in its pocket; that an appeal to the people is always proper.”

    CBC news writers and announcers apparently share this mistaken assumption with the various politicians who believe themselves caught on the horns of a near-impossible dilemma.

The two recent examples below are both from radio, as I seldom watch television); any slight variance from the actual text would be because I simply grabbed a pencil and took hurried notes as I listened:

1) a reference to Mr. Harper's technique of declaring every Commons vote a matter of confidence, "forcing the Opposition to either support the government, force an election, or not vote at all" (The World at Six, October 15th, 2008) and

2) a report on Mr. Dion's reaction to the Speech from the Throne, in which he "said his party won't force an election over [a Throne Speech] too vague and too bland to be offensive" (The World at Six, November 19th, 2008)

    Please understand that I am not singling out the CBC in this matter; indeed, politicians and public officials, other media, academics and the general public are being contacted as well. The matter is urgent, since the new Parliament is already sitting, and crucial decisions over the coming months will depend on whether or not this error is corrected.

“Triggering elections” - Eugene Forsey says: “Hold on – that’s not necessary!”

C. Eugene Forsey on Dissolutions, Coalitions and Minority Government

Ompah, Ontario – “If Eugene Forsey were alive today, the democratic options open to Parliamentarians in the upcoming confidence vote would be much clearer,” says Helen Forsey, daughter of the late Senator and constitutional expert.

“My father would be telling politicians and media alike that there is no need for a fresh election, and no need either for any formal coalition of opposition parties to replace the Conservative government if it is defeated in the House.”

She cites the straightforward explanation of the process given in her father’s popular reference book, “How Canadians Govern Themselves”, published by the Library of Parliament and now in its 6^th edition.

“If a Cabinet is defeated in the House of Commons on a motion of censure or want of confidence, the Cabinet must either resign (the Governor General will then ask the leader of the Opposition to form a new Cabinet) or ask for a dissolution of Parliament and a fresh election... If a minority government is defeated on a motion of want of confidence very early in the first session of a new Parliament, and there is a reasonable possibility that a government of another party can be formed and get the support of the House of Commons, then the Governor General could refuse a dissolution."  

Forsey is concerned that a lack of understanding of the constitutional options could lead to costly and undemocratic decisions that would seriously undermine Canadian democracy. “There’s a lot of confusion and misinformation in the public discussions around the expected vote on the ‘financial update’ package,” she says. “If we assume that a defeat in the House will automatically trigger an election, that gives the government a great big stick with which to beat the opposition and the electorate into submission. That’s what happened last time, and we mustn’t let it happen again.”

Even knowing that the Governor General can refuse to dissolve the new Parliament and ask the Leader of the Opposition to form a government, there is still a mistaken belief that this would require a formal coalition, she says. “Canadians must not allow this democratic opportunity for an alternative government to slip away just because no coalition emerges. Ordinary minority governments can work perfectly well if they respect the spirit of cooperation and openness Canadians want and need in these challenging times.”

-srbp-