Kremlinology 26: Magma Displacement

In the Hunt for Red October, a computer used by an American hunter-killer submarine to identify noises in the ocean mistakes a new type of Soviet propeller noise as a type of earthquake.

Magma displacement.

In politics, it is easy to hear a noise and think it is one thing when the cause is something else.

Take – for example – Danny Williams’ most recent petty, venomous attack on Sam Synyard, the mayor of Marystown.

Some people may think this is just Danny waging the sort of scurrilous personal attack that is his political stock-in-trade, his default setting.  And as sure as Danny Williams had nothing to do with recent oil windfalls in the provincial treasury, so too has he shown a marked preference for the political version of the hockey player’s cheap hit in the corner, the spear.

A few things about this most recent Williams smear point to another cause that produced the usual cross check. 

First, Williams noted in his remark after the cabinet shuffle that Sam Synyard complained during the early days of the Igor clean-up – according to Williams anyway -  that the provincial government had not done enough after another hurricane. That isn’t the way Synyard came across back in September. It’s also very strange that Williams had plenty of opportunity at the time to smack Synyard but didn’t. Why he brought the whole thing up three weeks later seems odd.

Second, Williams and Synyard are actually on the same wavelength.  As the Premier readily noted, the provincial government is ready to pour cash into yet another private sector company.

Third, you’ll find that not only did the Premier revisit the whole Synyard affair for a second day, Premier wannabe Darin King and his fellow cabinet minister Clyde Jackman, chimed in add their voices to the din.

These members of a Reform-based Conservative Party seem a tad sensitive. Just like the political sensitivity displayed during the Igor response.  Bridge news conferences when the news story was really somewhere else.  Cabinet ministers jumping on any signs of discontent.

And then on CBC on Thursday evening, more stories of discontent on the Burin Peninsula with the slowness of provincial financial aid for people devastated by Igor.

There’s only one more detail you need to add to get the whole picture.  Danny called Sam a Liberal.

There is the key to the whole thing. People on the Burin Peninsula aren’t happy with Danny Williams, Darin King and Clyde Jackman.  There are lots of unhappy people out there after a series of natural disasters since 2003.  That’s one of the reasons why the very first thing the provincial emergency response people made sure to tell everyone after Igor was to get their claims filed early.

You can really tell the political sensitivity because the filing claims is the thing Danny highlighted for people on the day of the storm.  He really played up the cash.  And then the day after the storm,  Danny and his merry band hopped helicopters to tour the Burin Peninsula.  That’s how they showed their concern. Even though the Bonavista Peninsula took a demonstrably harder hit, Danny showed up on the Burin. The fact that this political showboating only pissed people off more was just a bonus.

What evidently scares Danny, Clyde and Darin politically shitless is that any politician might do as Danny is wont to do and take political advantage of all that discontent.  They know, or at least they think, that this is the sort of issue that could motivate voters and turn around a couple of seats in the next election.  It only needs a politician smart enough to hit the sore point. 

Attacking Sam Synyard personally is Danny’s way of trying to drive a potentially dangerous political rival off a potentially devastating issue for the for the Conservatives. It’s that simple.

Unless you connect all the dots, though, you’d only see more of the same superficial Danny-noise.

But if you know what to look for, you’ll see the magma displacement that is causing trembling in the political earth in some places.  This is not unusual rumbling, mind you, but in the imaginary world created by Danny Williams – the world where all is perfect and he alone is master – any sign of problems, any opening for an opponent is like a hurricane, earthquake and tidal wave rolled into one.

Oh yes.  Some places, plural.

It’s not just the Burin or even the Great Northern.  Labrador West, sections of the northeast coast.  They are all places where the locals are unhappy with the current administration. To the Conservatives they are threats to life and limb.

And to the other parties they are potential opportunities.  That’s what has Danny, Clyde and Darin and all their friends so jumpy.

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Three things about Hurricane Igor #nlpoli

hard to believe but it has been five years since Hurricane Igor ripped through Placentia Bay and into Trinity Bay.

What stands out most about those events today is the same as it was at the time.

First, the devastation was astounding in every respect.

Second,  the resilience of the people affected by the disaster was amazing.

Third the capacity of senior government officials, politicians and bureaucrats alike, to polish their own knob without any justification remains as appalling in 2010 as it was at the time.

Igor emergency and donation info #igornl

Via Rick Martin, an up-to-date pile of information related to Hurricane Igor emergency response and donations.

If you need contact info or want to assist by donations, this is the place to visit first.

Rick Martin’s Igor* Info

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* Freudian slip correction

Comprehensive #igornl coverage

@cbcnl’s website gives the most comprehensive collection of Hurricane Igor coverage out there.

You’ll also find a decent site at The Telegram, @stjohnstelegram on Twitter. Some stunning photos on their story pages.  Hopefully they’ll collect them together in a special space.  The shots and the shooters deserve that recognition.

• Read further, Twillick Update:  There are three photo slide shows on the Telly site.  Just scroll down to find them.
• There is also a great collection of photos on the Packet website.  That’s the weekly in Clarenville.
• The Southern Gazette is the weekly on the Burin peninsula, another area severely affected by Igor.

NTV News doesn’t have a separate Igor space but their website contains all their broadcast stories. Ditto VOCM, the largest private radio broadcaster in the province.

 

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Hurricane #IGORNL Emergency Response: TASFU

One thing is becoming clear a couple of days after Hurricane Igor swept through eastern Newfoundland:  for all the weather and other emergencies in the province over the past decade, the province’s emergency response system – municipal and provincial – remains woefully ill-prepared and poorly organized.

All the same, it is nice to know that the province’s major daily newspaper and the provincial agency responsible for emergency response have their priorities in order.  As ordinary citizens in Clarenville arrange boatloads of supplies to help people in isolated communities on nearby Random Island, the Telegram and Fire and Emergency Services – Newfoundland and Labrador want to make sure people get their paperwork in order so that those claims for federal assistance or insurance coverage will flow easier.

It’s taken FES two whole days to post a web link to any Igor information and, chronologically,  the first release is the one linked:  document everything so you can file claims.  There’s not very much solid and up-to-date information road closures, power outages or what to do if there is a specific problem. That sort of thing, by the way, is being done in exemplary fashion by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police even though it isn’t their job. For the provincial government, it’s hard to find out any concrete information.

Like say you are in one of those isolated communities and need medical help.  Where do you go?  Well, apparently the best thing to do is call the local radio station.  The government’s ever-vigilant agents will pick up the call and get on the case to deliver a peachy response.

But what if you don’t have a phone?

Maybe you can flag down one of the government-chartered helicopters ferrying politicians hither and yon so these tourists can see for themselves the magnitude of the disaster. They talk to reporters about the sights, incidentally, as if they, themselves were either in it or doing anything substantive about it.  With rare exceptions, they aren’t.

In St. John’s, two days later, the city website has one thing about Igor issued after the storm hit. It’s an advisory on where to drop off tree bits. Never mind that people have been using those spots since they started cleaning up – 24 hours and more ago – and that this information is potentially the least important stuff of all the city is responsible to its citizens for. 

But still the average citizen cannot tell where the power in town is off and what traffic lights are functioning.  This is crucial safety information for those of us trying to get to work or get children to school.  None of that is available from the city but residents of the capital could hear a councilor this morning on radio talking up the great city emergency plan.

Then this politician issued the warning that because power is off at the bus depot, they can’t keep up with regular maintenance and might have to reduce service.  One wonders why they would take such a drastic measure if there are other city facilities with power and other spaces in the metro area where they might relocate bus maintenance temporarily.

Two mayors hit on the problem this morning while chatting on a local open line show.  One is the host of the show and the other called in to advise the world that his community is now officially out of gas at the local gas stations.  The only road is down and people are hoping the road will be fixed within 24 hours or so.  Other than that there is no plan – apparently – on how someone might get fuel for generators and such into the affected area.

The two mayors talked about lessons to be learned after things were all over.  They are absolutely right.  That’s the time to figure out what to do and what not to do next time based on experience in this event.

But then one of the mayor’s offered the view that maybe the emergency response  this time has not been as good as it should have been.

He’s absolutely right.

The provincial government spends more money today on emergency response than it ever did before.  There’s a whole division of government to handle central co-ordination where just a decade ago there only four people for the whole province.

And yet:  TASFU. 

Things are still fouled up.

The main reason is that for all the lessons readily evident from other emergencies, none have been learned.  People want you to believe that 9/11 was a success.  Provincially, it was a balls-up on many levels.  The official assessment doesn’t come close to noting that.  Ditto other, more recent, natural disasters.

Instead, the government system seems geared to the sort of knob polishing that infests sections of the Telegram. Frankly, the provincial municipal affairs minister today sounds much like his predecessor nine years ago.  Lots of kudos and vacuous verbiage but not much in the way of solid information that people need.  His hasty call to an open line show Thursday came with the breathless claim that he had to rush off to catch another sight-seeing helo-ride.  Big fat hairy deal.

Sure emergency response in the province works very well out where real people – road crews, police, fire, linemen, health care workers and so forth – do real jobs. Practicality and good will are the order of the day and that is what worked during 9/11.  If Newfoundland Power needs to get to a spot, they will sort it out with the local roads guys.  The result will be haphazard and uneven, but then again, that’s what happens when the entire provincial emergency “plan” relies in 2010, as it did in 2001, on people pulling it out of their ass on the day.

Meanwhile, back in the head-shed, in the place that is supposed to be co-ordinating the hockey bag of public and private agencies - assigning scarce resources to the places they will do the most good -  heads are just buried deep in the hockey bag.  Not much in the way of light is getting through. How else would one explain a political news conference the day of the storm called for exactly the same time as a technical report from Environment Canada and an official of the province’s emergency response division?

You can hear the same old excuses already bubbling up.  This was an unprecedented disaster, they are already saying.  Yes,  it was.  And so was the one before that and the one before that and the one before that.  We’ve heard it as an excuse for failures every time.

No one should doubt the sincerity of politicians in wanting to relieve the suffering of their fellow citizens.  But the time for their intervention is not now.  The time for that was last month, last year and five years ago when they should have been making sure the emergency response system worked.

They’ll get another chance to fix things when this current disaster is over, as two mayors suggested already. This time, though, everyone needs to face the things that didn’t work – yet again – and fix them.

Otherwise, when the next hurricane barrels through, we’ll just face the same old fumbled responses and the same “never saw this before” excuses.

The people of the province deserve better.

Let’s put an end to the emergency response TASFU.

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Day-ja vue Update:  Nothing like a bit of perspective.

Via nottawa, a reminder that this same bullshit – send us your receipts and get your forms properly filled out – came around the last time Mother Nature roared through town on a bender. 

Back then of course, the local Reform-based Conservative Party  - as the Old man now likes to think of it - wasn’t speaking kindly of the federal Reform-based Conservative Party.  So it was Stock Day telling the Old Man to make sure his paperwork was done properly.

And yes, there was also the effort to turn disaster relief into some sort of infrastructure funding program, as if then or now the provincial government didn’t have the cash to fund improvements to roads, bridges and drainage systems. If Marystown mayor Sam Synyard, for example, wants to install bigger culverts on the local roads, then Sam could be and should be looking to the tourists in the helicopter for some cash.

Nottawa’s also got some other pithy observations on emergency response.

This week has 22 e-mails

The controversy over the provincial government’s bungling of the emergency response to Hurricane Igor got a bit more curious on Monday when labradore released a series of e-mails he obtained from the provincial government under access to information laws.

The e-mails document a part of the record of how Danny Williams wound up recording a segment of This Hour has 22 Minutes the same week as the disaster.  Coupled with documents released to the Packet in April, they undermine the provincial government’s contention that they needed three or four days to figure out how bad things were before they asked the federal government for assistance.

CBC was originally scheduled to record the Williams’ appearance on September 21.  They put that off until later in the week, but here’s where things get really interesting. 

At 11: 00 AM the day of the storm, Danny Williams’ publicist sent an e-mail to an unidentified person at 22 minutes  that included the following comments:

We've cleared his schedule as we will be going around the province visiting sites. Destruction is widespread already and the storm hasn't even hit full force yet.

At that point they knew things were very bad.  They also knew they’d be “visiting sites”.  They obviously didn’t need to assess the situation since the provincial government’s emergency response organization had all sorts of sources of accurate information on roads, hospitals, schools and anything else going on in the province.  Williams and his crew were planning the standard politicians’ sight-seeing tours of disaster areas.  

Now the official explanation for the four day delay in calling in federal assistance is that the provincial government needed to figure out how bad things were and what they needed to do.    Williams’ successor Kathy Dunderdale, Tom Hedderson,  the municipal affairs minister at the time and the current municipal affairs minister, Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien all have tried on variations of that same argument.

But before noon on the day the storm hit, the Premier’s Office already knew that “Destruction” was widespread.

Later on the same day,  Williams’ publicist wrote this:

State of emergency being declared in a few places already. Major damage and flooding. The place is a mess.

But what really stands out is what you get when you cross reference the comments by Williams’ publicist with situation reporters released to the Packet by the federal government about its response to Igor. For some reason they are on the CBC’s website and not available from either the packet or its daily big-brother, the Telegram.

In an e-mail giving the situation as of 13:15 PM September 21, a federal situation report contained this note:

Highway infrastructure is profoundly impacted. Of all events, Fire and Emergency Services NL (FESNL) has stated that this is by far the worst disaster that they are facing.

The note refers to a death that happened.

But bear in mind this information came to the federal emergency co-ordination team from the provincial government’s team at FESNL.  Public Safety Canada and the National Defence both had liaison officers at the FESNL emergency operations centre to make co-ordination easier.

So if the provincial government had such a handle on the scope of the problem, why did they hesitate to call in extra resources?

Good question.

So far there hasn’t been a good answer.

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Traffic patterns: September 2010

If you weren’t one of the 14,412 people generating 17,698 pageviews at Bond Papers in September, here’s what they were reading:

1. Jane Taber – Twit (the Globe’s gossip columnist)
2. Court docket now online  (the Provincial Court docket)
3. Cruise ends abruptly in St. John’s (Cruise ship problems)
4. Hurricane Igor Emergency Response: TASFU  (Enduring problems in provincial government’s emergency response)
5. Harper/Williams disconnect  (What the PM said DND sent to help with Hurricane Igor versus what the provgov announced)
6. Cruise ship sale and passengers “not even an issue”:  mayor (Doc O’Keefe puts his foot in his mouth…again.)
7. Katrina North:  the picture changes (Public complaints about the provincial government’s hurricane relief efforts)
8. Process stories, or real insiders don’t gab (The foolish election speculation in The Hill Times)
9. Bury my lede at Muskrat Falls (From August, the real news (not good by any means) buried in a recent media report on the Lower Churchill buried)
10. 24 French (The Premier and This hour has 22 minutes)

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Kremlinology 36: Thinking with your ass

We’d all like to think that political ideas come out of politicians’ heads after careful thought and lots of research.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, government ideas tend to spring from the ass.

A whole bunch of people in the province are not happy with federal plans to close a coast guard emergency call centre and shift the work to the Joint Regional Search and Rescue Centre in Halifax.  Those people think the federal Conservatives pulled that idea out of someone’s ass.

Organized labour in the province is screaming blue murder about the decision.  The opposition parties in the provincial legislature are raising a stink.    They wanted to have an emergency session of the legislature and pass a resolution condemning the action.  Kathy wouldn’t do it.

Meanwhile, Premier Kathy Dunderdale has been taking her time trying to figure out out to get in front of this issue politically while not pissing off the guy on whom she is dependant for a loan guarantee to help finance her mega-debt project slash election gimmick, better known as Muskrat Falls.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale told reporters last week that someone in her office was trying to get a telephone call through to the Prime Minister. 

And a week later, she had to stand in front of reporters and tell them she was still trying to speak with her pal Steve on the telephone.

Well, either that or arrange a meeting whichever came first.

But on that most 19th century of technologies?

Nada on the telephone hooking up thingy.

The message is getting through, though, Kathy assures us.

And pressure is being applied using that passively voice sentence.

How, exactly is it getting through asked the brazen fish broadcast host Brian Callahan of fish minister Clyde Jackman?  No call.  No meeting.  How is the word getting through from the provincial government to the federals?

Jackman didn’t know.

He just said we’d all know soon what the feds decided to do for sure on the call centre. 

Now just to put that in perspective for those unfamiliar with anything that happened in the world before say 1999, that isn’t the way these things work usually. 

Even in the darkest hours after the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord, Brian Mulroney would still answer the phone even if he knew Clyde Wells was on the other end. 

The day Igor ripped through the province, Stephen Harper called Danny Williams to offer up whatever help Dan-o wanted.  That’s right.  Dan didn’t even have to wait to get his call returned.  he got one free from Steve.  Now Dan might have reportedly said no thanks because he didn’t want Peter Mackay to horn in on the credit for saving Danny’s bacon, but at least he actually did get the Prime Minister himself on the horn.

So Kathy’s message obviously isn’t getting through to the federal government on anything.  Her loan guarantee is looking a bit more dodgy than before, she doesn’t really have anything to offer as a distraction and her poll results are still sucking worse than the St. John’s sewerage treatment plant on full reverse.

Not a good place to be in politically, especially for a party that used to thrive on issues just like this. 

So what to do?

Offer to take over some bits of search and rescue in the province from the federal government.

Never mind the constitution.

Never mind that for decades provincial premiers have been fighting to keep the feds from dumping their responsibilities into provincial laps free of federal charge.

Never mind the cost to the public purse.

Never mind the fact mismanagement by Kath and her predecessor have left the government in a rough financial spot despite unprecedented government revenues  such that the next decade could make everyone look longingly on the 1930s.

Never mind, even, that Kath and her mates buggered up the Igor thing that looked suspiciously like an emergency of the searching and rescuing type so that you’d wonder if they could actually find each other in the dark, in a closet with both hands and a flashlight.

No.

Faced with being outflanked politically by her local opponents, Kath opted to show how much she is different from every other politician in a long, sorry line of politicians in this province.

She decided to think with her ass.

In the past week, she could have fired off a strongly worded letter to Ottawa.

She could have sent a fax to Peter Penashue, the regional minister who is also the intergovernmental affairs minister.

She could have told reporters that she had made clear the views of her government that this was just not on.

When asked about it, she could have gone for the sophisticated answer and pointed out that the loan guarantee was another issue and that she would always look out for the best interests yada, yada, yada.

Instead, she opted for the ass-thought.

And to make matters worse, Kathy blathered on in public to reporters about her blatant political impotence by telling them that she has been a week trying to figure out how to get Steve to call her back but without success.

You don’t have to look at her possible motives for offering to take federal responsibilities off their hands and pay for them with provincial cash to boot.  Nor do you have to look very hard to find the considerable numbers of flaws in her political bungling of what should have been a relatively small political issue.

What you can see pretty clearly is that Kathy Dunderdale and her political staff came up with this idea on the fly in a desperate attempt to be seen to be doing something on the issue.  All they’ve really done in the process is show seasoned observers that they really don’t have a clue.

It is also pretty clear that they really don’t have any sense of direction, generally.  That’s not surprising, mind you, given that when Danny did a runner, Kathy was only supposed to keep the office warm for a few months until his permanent replacement showed up. They’ve been coasting for a while.

But you would think that when the governing Tories decided to keep Kathy on a bit longer than originally planned, they’d have given her a set of ideas and some people who could actually manage these sorts of issues for her. That’s what experienced, seasoned political parties should be able to do after only seven years in office.

Should be able to do, but can’t in this case.

And just other other governments that couldn’t manage the small stuff, they went to the usual repository of Newfoundland political brilliance:  the ass.

After a mere seven years in office.

Not a good sign.

Not a good sign at all.

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Traffic Drivers, September 20-24, 2010

1. Jane Taber – Twit
2. Hurricane Igor:  Emergency Response TASFU
3. Important Igor Emergency Information. Not Really.
4. Katrina North:  the picture changes
5. Economics as ideology or, The Other Dismal Science
6. Full of sound and fury
7. Ok Go’s latest video – White Knuckles
8. Labour force indicators raise questions about economic health and competitiveness
9. Court docket now online
10. A campaign of pork and entitlement (reprint)

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Charades

Igor: Sed-a...

Inga: Sed-a...

Igor: Dirty word! He said a dirty word!

 

The normally straightforward innovation minister looked a bit like a character out of Young Frankenstein this past week.

Dr. Fronkensteen, being strangled by his creation, tries to tell his assistants what to do to quiet the monster, but without actually saying the words.

He played charades.

Making odd gestures, tugging his ear and flashing various fingers in the air and on his forearm are about the only things Trevor Taylor didn't do this week to avoid answering a simple question.

Opposition House leader Kelvin Parsons asked Taylor for the names of three companies named recently in the Auditor General's annual report.  The companies were identified as Company A, Company B and Company C in the report.

Taylor refused to say the three names out loud.  Taylor said they weren't named by the Auditor General because "the Auditor General’s statements are usually masked somewhat in the terms of the name of the company because it would compromise their ability to raise capital or keep business."

Taylor offered to pass them on to Parsons privately, adding that public disclosure of the names and the consequences for the companies would then fall on Parsons' head.

The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, I just told him that if he wants to step up here, somewhere where I can talk to him in confidence and tell him what the companies names are – now, if he wants to be irresponsible and release those names publicly and potentially compromise the companies that we have, as he said, around $1 million in, if he wants to do that and he wants to live with that and see maybe one of those companies, as a result of that, lose a customer they are after right now or, Mr. Speaker, lose another $100,000 in financing from a private lender, a chartered bank or something like that, then he can go and do it. I am not going to be that irresponsible but if he wants to he can.

He tried to deflect, by stating - incorrectly - that the Auditor General had found nothing wrong in his audit of the programs.

Taylor claimed that he couldn't say the names publicly since that might jeopardize the financial health of the companies and their ability to secure private sector financing.

The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, I just told him that if he wants to step up here, somewhere where I can talk to him in confidence and tell him what the companies names are – now, if he wants to be irresponsible and release those names publicly and potentially compromise the companies that we have, as he said, around $1 million in, if he wants to do that and he wants to live with that and see maybe one of those companies, as a result of that, lose a customer they are after right now or, Mr. Speaker, lose another $100,000 in financing from a private lender, a chartered bank or something like that, then he can go and do it. I am not going to be that irresponsible but if he wants to he can.

The only problem for Taylor is that his arguments don't hold up.

For starters, the Auditor General didn't identify the companies since, for his purposes, the companies are irrelevant.  The AG was concerned with the government's administration of the program for handing out cash to private sector companies, to wit:

We are of the opinion that there is no explicit authority under the Financial Administration Act
for the Department to make direct investments in companies. During 2005-06, the Department made three such investments totalling $1,050,000 to three companies. Furthermore, there are no documented procedures for approving, disbursing and monitoring such unique investments and, as a result, these investments were not subject to the same due diligence required for investments under the SME Fund. As a result, there were deficiencies. For example:

- none of the three companies were required to repay the investment contingent on either income earned or a maximum seven year period;

- one company was not required to submit documentation to support specific expenditures;

- shareholders for one company (Knowledge-based IT Company A) who received $500,000 were not required to make new equity investments as part of their contribution to the project; instead,
previous investments were accepted;

- shareholders for one company (Knowledge-based IT Company B) who received $500,000 were not required to provide personal net worth statements; and

- Department officials were not entitled to attend any company meetings for one company (Knowledge-based IT Company B) even though the company was provided with funding totalling $500,000.

Then there's the issue of financial consequences. In answering questions about SAC manufacturing, earlier this year, Taylor that government expected 65% of the companies it invested in to go under.  He then released the names of nine other companies like SAC which his department had funded.

Apparently having the minister brand those companies as high risk investments  - such that even government expected to see two thirds go under - didn't bother him the slightest.

And if all that wasn't true, there's still the question of the names of the three companies.

If the Auditor General had concerns about damaging the financial viability of the companies, as Taylor claims, he went about hiding them in an odd way.  The Auditor General's report gives a general description of the companies, but then describes in precise detail the financial transactions, the number of shares and so forth such that any reasonably savvy person  - like say an investment officer or private investor - could match the report and the Public Accounts and come up with the names.

Nope.

There's some other reason why Taylor ducked and dodged wildly this past week about these three companies.  The reasons he offered were not so much the stuff of Fonkensteen's game-playing ability as Eyegor's abysmal success at guessing from clues. Maybe we'll get the reasons when the House opens again this week for a brief few days before closing down for Easter.

Perhaps we'll get more of the game:

Two words.

First word.

A little word.

A? The?  At?  In.

Second word.

Sounds like "bird".

Curd? Herd? Nerd?

Ahhhhh.

It's the acronym for the department.

Again.

The only real question would be: "Why?"

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24 French

Friday was a busy day for the province’s glorious leader.

Helicopter ride with Steve and Fabe out to visit places hit by Igor.

A bit of video fun somewhere in there.

For those who can’t read that, it says “vendredi, le 24 septembre 2010”.

Maybe if Mark Critch from This hour as 22 minutes knew about the helicopter ride long enough in advance, he could have had even more fun with the Premier’s French.

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OCI dumps troubled shrimp plant on taxpayers #nlpoli

Ocean Choice International is in better financial shape today, having successfully dumped a surplus shrimp processing facility on the people of Port Union.  The plant - seriously damaged in 2010 during Hurricane Igor still needs major renovations.

OCI put the plant on the market in 2012 but couldn't find buyers.  In 2012,  company president Blaine Sullivan said that even if the hurricane hadn't damaged the plant, OCI would have closed either Port Union or the company's other shrimp plant in Port aux Choix.  The company couldn't supply both profitably with declines in the shrimp quota.

A company with strong ties to the provincial and federal Conservatives, OCI picked up the Port Union plant and other assets after the former provincial Conservative administration hounded Fishery Products International into self-destruction.

Then-fisheries minister Tom Rideout  - right, precisely as illustrated,  - played a key role in the campaign to destroy FPI.

Neil King, the Liberal MHA for the district, posted on Facebook that he would "be working with the town to secure funding for renovations which will create jobs in the short term."  That money would come from taxpayers, of course, although King did say if he'd be looking to St. John's or Ottawa to help out.

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Related:  The Walking Dead

Blackmail and the Conservative dysfunction #nlpoli

Paul Davis and his cabinet were all smiles and chuckles last week at the election of a new administration in Ottawa.

Optimistic for the future.

Looking forward to a new relationship and all that.

Then came the issue if the tariff on ships of a certain size built outside Canada.  The Conservatives are holding it out as a test of Justin Trudeau and his fellow Liberals.  Forgiving the tariff would be a sign that things had changed in Ottawa.

Fairity O’Brien: Political Genius #nlpoli

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

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

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

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

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“Letter perfect”? Guess again.

Municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien thinks that his government’s response to last year’s Hurricane Igor disaster was absolutely correct in every respect.

In fact, he is so convinced of the rightness of what he and his colleagues did that 

“I would not change a thing and it's fine for you to say, like looking at an email — a paper trail — and say that somebody up in Ottawa or someone somewhere else was scratching their head," said an emotional O'Brien [in a CBC interview].

You can hear the full O’Brien interview here:  CBC Radio St. John’s Morning Show.

CBC left the final word of their piece with someone who was coping with the disaster while cabinet ministers flitted around on helicopters “assessing” things and talking to reporters:

Eric Squires, the Anglican minister in Catalina and the organizer of relief efforts when people were left without necessities, said the provincial government failed residents.

"[I'm] really disgusted because we were desperate out here for water and bread," said Rev. Squires.

"I called [provincial] fire and emergency services to ask if we could get a boat to go across the bay to get some bread and water and they said 'No, buy what you want and send us the bill.' And during the same time they turned down [federal] help for us."

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Minister Chickenshit

Municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien continues to defend bungled decision-making at the topmost levels of the province’s emergency response system by citing the work done by the hard-working men and women who actually did the heavy lifting during Hurricane Igor.

Geoff Meeker’s got a solid post on the whole controversy over O’Brien’s unfounded and despicable attack on the integrity of the reporter and editor at the Packet for printing a story based on fact.

Two things:

1.  Fairity can’t refute the evidence so he follows the pattern of his idol and launches into character assassination instead.  Pure chickenshit. 

2.  Like poultry poo, O’Brien’s comments stink to the high heavens.  Every time O’Brien launches into one of his diatribes, he only fuels public resentment aimed at government over the whole issue. 

Keep going Kevin.

It takes a rare type of political genius to think that making a bad situation worse is a good idea.

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Changing the direction. Changing the tone. #nlpoli

A month ago,  a CBC “analysis” by David Cochrane warned against a band of Liberals running the government with too much power.

Two weeks ago,  another CBC “analysis” by David Cochrane told us that Dwight Ball was an “unlikely” fellow to be Premier who now faced an enormous task of dealing with the government’s financial problems based on a campaign platform that was, supposedly, “greeted with enormous skepticism in the final week of the campaign.”

And now we have the latest Cochrane “analysis” that tells us that the public service is liking their new bosses.  The administration has been delivering on “Ball's campaign promises of evidence-based decision-making and to bring [sic] stability to cabinet by ending the practice of frequent shuffles, thereby leaving ministers in place long enough to build command of their portfolios.”

What changed?

Well, it certainly hasn’t been Dwight Ball and the Liberals he led to a substantive victory in the recent election.

Katrina North: the picture changes #igornl

Some four days after Hurricane Igor ripped through Newfoundland and Labrador, more and more people are calling local media to complain about the lack of provincial government action in the wake of the disaster.

On Friday afternoon, local media reports suggest that:

1. despite knowing they had a huge disaster on their hands from the beginning, the provincial government never called for federal government assistance; and,
2. for some reason the provincial government has still not requested federal assistance even as the Canadian Forces prepares to send elements of 4 Engineer Support Regiment from Gagetown, New Brunswick  and three ships from the Canadian navy to provide humanitarian assistance.

Make no mistake: responsibility for emergency response in the province sits squarely on the shoulders of the politicians who flitted around in helicopters for two days.  The federal government can only act once they get a request from the province. If the Canadian Forces aren’t in Newfoundland already it is simply because the provincial government didn’t ask for them.

In the days ahead, the provincial government may face some very difficult questions about its failure to seek help even when the magnitude of the disaster was well known.  Things were bad enough on the first day.  They were painfully obvious by the second.  By Friday – the fourth day – the scope was overwhelming.

Who knows why the provincial cabinet delayed asking for help as long as it did?  One thing is for sure, you can tell there are political consequences to the provincial government’s inaction.  Were it not so, the government’s political friends – like Bill Rowe – would not be trying so desperately to push responsibility for emergency response onto someone else’s shoulders.

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The Top Stories of 2010

So it’s time for the obligatory top stories posts. 

Danny quits?  Been there, done that, shoulda printed tee shirts in 2006 when he announced it.

The big story coming out of Williams’ hasty departure is the evident panic within the Conservative Party.  Ordinary Conservatives were obviously expecting Williams to carry on.  His abrupt exit left them decidedly uneasy. For its part, the party leadership seemed to be caught flat-footed and despite initial claims there would be a leadership contest early in the New Year, someone started to work behind the scenes to engineer a deal to keep Danny Williams’ hand-picked successor in place through to 2012.

But the deal as it is currently shaping up is a stop-gap, at best.

Dunderdale was planning to retire from politics. Like Tom Marshall – another supposed successor – Dunderdale is getting toward the end of her political career.  She isn’t likely to be the one to lead the party through two general elections. So sometime between 2011 and 2015, the provincial Conservatives would be back in the leader-finding business again.

If Dunderdale packs it in before October 2014, the province will be plunged into an election thanks to Danny Williams’ Elections Act fiddling in 2004.  If she hangs on for four years, the party will still have to spend the early part of 2015 running some sort of leadership contest.

And in the meantime – the second biggest story to flow from Williams’ escape -the policy doldrums that have beset the Tory party since 2006ish will continue.  Odds will remain decidedly against the provincial government launching any significant new programs unless it involves spending bags of money, that is. There’s also no chance the provincial government will reform its fiscal policy to cope with a massive public sector gross debt.

In the worst case scenario – the third biggest potential story to come out of Williams’ departure -  the Conservatives will forge ahead with Danny Williams’ Get-Outta-Dodge legacy plan and move the province into an even more precarious financial position.  Remember when the public sector debt and  and the size of the economy were the same number?  You will.

The there’s the fourth biggest story to come out of Williams’ departure:  who will replace him.  Bottom line is that we still don’t know.  Likely we won’t know for upwards of four years.

Ready for a fifth story tied to Williams’ surprise retirement?  Hurricane Igor.  Absolutely.  A huge story that affected thousands.  Revealed some serious problems inside the province’s emergency response organization.  And let’s not forget that natural disasters seem to be tied to the political future of certain types of political leaders.

Danny Williams’ political exit may wind up being the most commonly selected top political story for 20120 in Newfoundland and Labrador.  But it’s all the other bits related to his retirement that dwarf the event itself.

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Politics and Disasters

Even to people not desperately in need of help in the wake of last year’s Hurricane Igor, it was pretty obvious  - at the time - the provincial government was more geared to stoking and stroking political egos than anything else.

By the second or third day, media reports made it obvious that people desperately needed help, the provincial government couldn’t deliver help and that assistance from the federal government was a mere telephone call away.

Only a blind partisan or cockeyed optimist thought otherwise and  - given the most recent developments - only a complete fool would claim otherwise today.

Information released to the Clarenville Packet under federal access to information laws documents the extent of the bungling inside the highest levels of the provincial government.  we aren’t talking about the front line workers or contractors.  We are talking senior bureaucrats,  their political masters and their political masters’ legion of fart catchers.

An intra-agency meeting of the Regional Emergency Management Coordinating Committee (REMCC) was held the afternoon of Sept. 21. Representatives of Public Safety Canada, Environment and National Defense departments, and the provincial government noted resources were on standby.

Captain Michael Pretty of the Canadian Forces offered to have 180 staff deployed in six to 10 hours and the HMSC St. John’s and two helicopters mobilized.

The Canadian Coast Guard had 36 generators (125-700 watt) and 45 water removal pumps, with operators, available.

The province also had access to the national emergency stockpile of food.

The province declined all these offers.

And so it went day after day.

Evidence mounted that the provincial government simply was completely incapable of responding and at still the politicians refused to make a simple request for aid.

While the federal agencies standing by to assist initially thought the provincial government had a grip on things, by mid morning on September 23 they had changed their minds.  The Packet quotes a federal situation report that power was out in wide areas, food supplies were running short and citizens were having to take matters into their own hands to deal with shortages of everything including medical supplies.

By the time provincial officials realised they were in the middle of a mess, they could not even draft a simple letter to request aid.  The Canadian Forces liaison officer had to include a letter in an e-mail, asking the officials to print it off, sign it and send it back.

It still took the provincial government 24 hours more to respond and even then it very consciously and deliberately restricted the aid to the barest minimum.  As the Packet reports:

The official RFA [request for assistance] was sent by the province to the federal Department of Public Safety at 2:07 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 24.

It asked, specifically, for “Sea King helicopters and the ship-based naval support necessary to maintain operation of said helicopters.

“For greater certainty, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador is requesting no other assistance from the DND at this time," the province stated in its request.

Thankfully, the federal officials ignored that last direction.

As Canadian Forces ships aircraft and personnel streamed into the province, the Prime Minister and Premier took a helicopter tour of a part of the region.

Danny Williams’ staff, meanwhile, had been co-ordinating a television appearance for the Premier all through the hurricane aftermath. 

Williams left the Prime Minister later in the afternoon of Friday, September 24 and drove to a downtown St. John’s school where a crew from “This hour has 22 minutes” and a classroom full of elementary school students waited to record a sketch due to air the following week.  The sketch featured Williams spewing some characteristic invective.

Just to illustrate the extent to which the provincial government’s bungling and miss-placed priorities were apparent at the time, take a look at posts your humble e-scribbler made last September.  The first came on September 23. There’s another on September 24.

The second, a week later, highlighted the way in which the government’s public statements seemed designed to stroke political egos rather than provide concrete information to people affected by the disaster.  It turned out to be an apt metaphor for what was going on inside the disaster response headquarters.

As the Packet notes, the first provincial assistance request to the federal government focused entirely on cash to pay compensation for victims.  At a time when thousands were still stranded, lacking power and with dwindling food supplies, the provincial authorities were busily handing out claims packets and looking to Uncle Ottawa for cash.  Meanwhile, the politicians were flying around staging photo ops for the evening news programs.

Danny Williams’ successor had a chance on Thursday to address the rather blindingly obvious shortcomings of the provincial government’s response.  Kathy Dunderdale said everything had been handled very well.  Not satisfied with the completely foolish response alone, Dunderdale went farther.  The delay in asking for federal help was merely to ensure the provincial officials had proper plans.  After all, said Dunderdale, all those soldiers, sailors and air crew would merely be an added burden on local communities already reeling from the disaster.

Yes, friends,  in Kathy’s world, help is actually a hindrance. In the face of such comments, it doesn’t matter if Dunderdale is genuinely so stupid that she spouts such nonsense or merely thinks the rest of us are even more stupid such that we’d believe such a thing.

What matters is that her remarks are  - without doubt or debate – utterly wrong.

They are stupid in a way that gives the word a new meaning.

The Canadian Forces came to Newfoundland last September with clothing, food, and shelter not only for themselves but for others as well. That is precisely why they came in the first place.  They stood ready from the beginning to come from the moment the storm hit.

Had Danny Williams and his officials asked for them on the first day only to send them home shortly after, the whole affair would have cost them nothing.  Under federal law, a provincial request for aid means that the federal government picks up the whole tab. 

In other words, there was no legitimate reason for any delay in asking for help. 

Yvonne Jones is right:  Kathy Dunderdale owes the people of the Bonavista and Burin peninsulas an apology for the mess regardless of whether it was caused by political egos or old-fashioned incompetence.  If Dunderdale had half a wit about her, she’d have acknowledged the problems and as the new Premier committed to right the wrongs.

Instead she told a monstrous whopper of a tale.  You could call it a lie, but frankly, you cannot be sure that Dunderdale actually knows that what she said is drivel.  Dunderdale might just be so inept that she must rely on briefing notes written by another incompetent.

And that is makes Dunderdale’s response all the worse.  The public can loathe the showboat and all his puffing last September.  He’s gone and no longer matters. She could have distanced herself from him safely and cleanly with no cost.

But Dunderdale didn’t. 

She turnered up, yet again.

Last fall, your humble e-scribbler noted that natural catastrophes sometimes turn out to foreshadow political disasters.  Well, no one could have foreseen the political disaster that is Premier Kathy Dunderdale.

Put Kathy Dunderdale’s demonstrated incompetence on Thursday over Hurricane Igor together with a series of events during her leadership (including her disastrous poll results in May) and you can bet she is going to get quite a surprise come the fall.

That is, Dunderdale will get a surprise in the fall unless a few of her more capable caucus mates decide to get rid of her before then for the good of the party and the province.

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