Government Spending and the Economy – Again #nlpoli

A post last week offered a quick confirmation that, as finance minister Ross Wiseman said,  provincial government spending accounts for about 30% of the gross domestic product measured as spending.

A couple of people on Twitter took issue with that idea, apparently.  They also took issue, as it seems, with the contention around these parts that the situation Wiseman described was a matter of government policy as opposed to the random changes in the economy.

Let’s dig into this in more detail.  It really is quite important as the government has a very serious financial problem to deal with, what with the growing deficits and the weakening income. Wiseman mentioned the impact of government spending on the economy, incidentally, as a reason why he could not cut spending very much, if at all. 

No sense of irony at all #nlpoli

The smart guy they could have had – but frigged over twice -  told Canadian Press:

“The understanding of the [provincial political] climate isn’t as sophisticated as it should be for those who are working with Mr. Coleman on the strategic side.”

Without knowing what the smart guy said, one of the guys supporting Mr. Coleman said: 

“I don’t think anybody ever dreamed in a million years that Frank would take the heat that he has taken over the past few months since he decided to run…”.

The Budget-Spending Disconnection #nlpoli

The provincial government announced on Wednesday that they will spend $2.0 million to fund new child care spaces across the province.

Through Budget 2012, the Provincial Government remains committed to providing affordable, accessible and quality child care services throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. Today, the Honourable Charlene Johnson, Minister of Child, Youth and Family Services, announced $2 million for the second year of the Family Child Care Initiative, one of several key investments to be included in Budget 2012 to support child care.

Sounds like good news and it is.

But this announcement is peculiar.

For one thing, we won’t get Budget 2012 until next week. Traditionally. that’s when you get budget announcements like this one. You’d get it after the finance minister delivers the budget speech. Sometimes you get announcements before-hand but those used to be rare.

Now what makes this announcement a wee bit more peculiar is that this news release and news conference was really about spending commitments continued from 2011. It’s really cash you would anticipate they would spend so getting it this year wouldn’t be a big deal.  There’s no sign they plan to spend more than originally announced, so if you look at this big production, you are left wondering why they bothered.

Quotas of happy news, someone is yelling from the cheap seats.  That’s likely part of it.  If you look at the list of news releases for the week, they issued four on Monday and three on Tuesday.  On Wednesday, there were seven, not counting the two notes sent to editors that there would be two spending announcements later in the day. They made four spending announcements on Wednesday, incidentally.

There’s no polling that we know of. There’s no major controversy at the moment so yeah, quotas of happy news would seem to be a likely explanation.

Let’s look at something else, though.  One local reporter tweeted on Wednesday questioning the announcement of funding already announced, in effect, last year. If they funded it last year “of course” there’d be funding in 2012.

He garnered a comment from the Premier’s communications director:

There are no 'of courses' when it comes to budgeting. Multiple variables at play-affordability being a primary one.

Can’t take anything for granted, even government priorities.  Many things can change from year to year.

Now puhleeze.  These guys have had more cash than any previous government in the province’s history.  They have more in cash in the bank today than most governments ever had in any given year.  In fact, they might even have more than they did in 2003.

These guys have billions in cash earning interest while they wait to spend it on Muskrat Falls. A fraction of the interest on that $4.0 billion or so would cover way more than the chump change for this child care program. Affordability was never an issue in this case.  There were no variables at play at all.

As for the rest of it what the Premier’s comms director seems to be saying is simply unbelievable.  Not a good spot for a communications person to be in, mind you, but there it is.

But while she seemed to making a very general statement, those words  - the many variables – sounds rather like something else.  And there seems to be more to this release and others of its type than just quotas of happy news.  One of the bigger things we are seeing in this child care announcement is the growing disconnection between government communications and government operations.

It’s functionally the same as all those other announcements they make for projects that don’t actually happen until months or years later.  These days, the government budget speech is less about government’s spending program for the year than it is about the show for the news.

Not so very long ago, the budget itself was part of an annual process that had a great deal to do with keeping a very keen eye on spending.  By the early fall, departments were already talking to cabinet’s most powerful committee – Treasury Board – to find out the gross spending limits for the next year. 

As the weeks and months of the fall passed, Treasury Board would sharpen their focus line by line until you basically could get the budget done by February or so.  That allowed the government to put the budget in the House by March and get it approved before the new fiscal year started on April 1.

You could set your watch by it, the process was so well timed.  And you could map your year for spending and accomplishment by it.  Treasury Board could tell you within fractions of a percentage point how much cash they would have and how much they would spend.

Some time after 2003, that all went to crap.  At first, it looked like maybe Loyola Sullivan was just copying the Paul Martin formula for success: tell them the worst case predictions, no matter how implausible.  When things turn out better, you look like a genius.

The serial government always seemed to have trouble doing more than one thing at a time.  By early 2009, though, the “stimulus” announcements bundled the examples into a convenient pile for anyone interested in looking.  Later that year, Paul Oram started a huge political controversy by making budget announcements in run up to polling month.

No one announces budget cuts in August.

Period.

What the Oram-initiated debacle made plain was the extent to which things inside the upper reaches of government had grown increasingly nebulous as time went by.  Some time after 2003, the usual seasonal markers people inside government could use to keep things on track - start and end of the fiscal year, for example  – just disappeared.  Rather than forecasting actual government activity, the budget was just a general statement of intentions that might or might not turn out to be true.

There were no longer any “of courses” for government.

Just think about that.  The Premier’s communications director may have meant something else in her tweet but this alternative interpretation would explain an awful lot about a government that seems to have a chronic problem with getting stuff done on time and on budget.

-srbp-

The Root of the Problem #nlpoli

Mr. Speaker, if the members opposite think that the level of scrutiny that we do over a $3 billion expenditure in health care is to take every single health authority and work down line by line by line through every piece of that, I do not know what they are thinking over there.

Health and community services minister Susan Sullivan, House of Assembly, May 30, 2012

Let’s hope that health minister Susan Sullivan doesn’t sit on the treasury board. 

That’s a committee of cabinet created under the Financial Administration Act.  Passed by the House of Assembly in 1973,  the Financial Administration Act was one of several great reforms of public administration in the province introduced by the Conservatives after they defeated Joe Smallwood and the Liberals in the 1972 general election.

Every provincial government and the federal government has a treasury board.  It is typically the most important or one of the most important cabinet committee by virtue of its control over money and people within government. Treasury board is also the only cabinet committee whose existence is set down by law.

The treasury board’s main job is to oversee how the provincial government and its agencies spend public money. 

Backuppable Tom strikes again

labradore wades into the controversy which your humble e-scribbler has aroused over the House of Assembly's decision to implement Chief Justice Derek Green's Rules but not until after the next provincial election.

labradore systematically demolishes the logic - or is that illogic - in claims made by the provincial government's man of a thousand titles Tom Rideout, right in an immortal picture from cbc.ca/nl, and by Paul Oram, cabinet-minister-wannabe.

There are so many choice quotes from Rideout and Oram, both of whom appeared to be scrambling to cope with the unexpected issue, but the best of all was Rideout's comment to VOCM:

Look that's all poppycock nonsense and dribble from people who don't know what they're talking about. Members have to concur with the, with the ban on donations. Members have to concur with the fact that discretionary spending is gone. All of these matters that was in the rules as brought forward by Judge Green have been accepted and implemented. There's the matter of some mechanisms that can't be put in place overnight.

Given that "all of these matters that was in the rules as brought forward by" Chief Justice Green have been accepted but won't actually be implemented until October 9, Rideout's comments are about as accurate as Jim Flaherty claiming that the Atlantic Accords haven't been changed and that the era of federal-provincial bickering is now over.

Those "mechanisms" Rideout refers to in the last sentence are actually all the rules "as brought forward by" Chief Justice Green.

Like the one that says a member of the legislature is personally liable for overspending on his or her expense account.

or the one that says a member of the House of Assembly cannot make donations using public funds.

Not in force.

Until October 9.

Mark it on your calendar.

You can bet every sitting member of the legislature running for re-election has it red-circled.

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Williams: is he completely nuts?

It's not like people haven't called him nutty nutty nutbar before.

It's not like his behaviour hasn't grown somewhat erratic lately, (think John Hickey in and out of cabinet).

Forget his glee at demolishing the largest fishing company in Atlantic Canada. Is it really a "golden opportunity"?

Now Danny Williams claims that the fish processing sector will collapse within five years if we don't start importing labourers from other countries at high speed.

This is one bizarre claim, given that Williams knows full well the processing industry needs to shed workers at high speed to restore profitability. There are way too many workers chasing too few fish. Wages are dropping. Hours of work are dropping and in some plants work is going begging because it simply isn't worth people's while to drive to another community for the measly few hours work involved.

Don't just believe it because you read it in Bond Papers.

Believe the head of the hunter-gatherers union, Earl McCurdy, who has been busily working to get both the federal and provincial governments to pony up for an early retirement package.

Believe Danny Williams who only last year - that's right - last year was writing to the federal party leaders trying to get their support for yes, an early retirement package for workers. In fact, an early retirement package was the very first thing Williams went looking for from whoever became Uncle Ottawa.

So is he nuts?

No.

By Danny Williams' own account he was caught in a conversation with other premiers and a reporter about immigration. Other provinces are farther ahead in handling the immigration issue.

Around Bond Papers, it looks like he got jammed up in a scrum, felt the need to offer input and in the classic four Yorkshireman way, basically said we'd have to get our immigration act in gear because if we didn't: Armageddon.

Well instead, Danny winds up looking like all his bags were packed and he's ready to go, leaving on a jetplane to Looneyville.

And for those who think we will wind up importing Bulgarian fishwomen like they've done in the Martimes - just because they've done it in the Maritimes - think again.

They don't have the humongous surplus of capacity we do. The numbers vary but Bond Papers can find people who will tell you that we can actually produce a thriving industry with merely 10-20% of the 100+ fish processing plants dotted around the island portion of the province.

Fewer than 20 plants.

If the early retirement thing works, there will be negligible demand for labour beyond what can be supplied by the local labour market.

Now comes the tricky part.

If the provincial government would get out of the way, the fish processing sector could sort itself out and find new markets and new production ideas that require fewer workers. Unfortunately the current provincial fish minister [right] thinks he's still in the 1980s. He busily piles on regulations designed to frustrate the marketplace, drive up costs, and in the case of Fishery Products International keep the economic pressure on a company that would have righted itself long ago were it not for the provincial government's neglect or as one suspects, outright mischief.

No, Danny is not nuts.

Well, not drooling on himself, need a straight-jacket, barking like a dog, hearing voices, up his meds kinda nuts.

Danny Williams just has this habit of pulling things out of any available orifice when he feels the need. When Danny gets caught telling fibs... bullshitting bigtime... in a slight exaggeration he busily tries to explain away the apparent lunacy of his statements with a bunch of words.

Sadly, in this farce, the Premier has enablers: like Paul Oram, his current parliamentary assistant, who seems to have no function other than laud the Premier's magnificence in hopes that the Premier will elevate Oram to a cabinet stipend.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes, as in this instance, it doesn't. We are now in Day Two of Immi-gate and already we have the provincial fisheries department saying it has no studies on labour demands in the processing sector, even though Williams claimed to have read said studies.

And the story of the serious questions about the Premier's sanity comments is running nationally on CBC, hot on the heels of the recent trip out west by the Four Yorkshiremen.

Ooops.

The story likely won't last past today, however. There is always something else around these parts and tomorrow it will be the Auditor General's latest overall review of government spending.

Meanwhile, the fishery problems will slip back into the gloom, taking with it the thousands of men and women who continue to languish.

Breaking: Oram to commit hara kiri?

Embattled health minister Paul Oram is holding a newser in 15 minutes to discuss his political fate.

That’s usually code for announcing his resignation.

If he resigns quickly that would cause another by-election before Christmas but it would certainly be the second high profile cabinet minister to resign unexpectedly within the space of two weeks.

 

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Accountability and Transparency

Transparency and accountability are the building blocks of public confidence.

Chief Justice Derek Green

In his comprehensive report, Chief Justice Green made a simple observation that conceals a much more profound truth for the members of the House of Assembly.

The public must have confidence in its legislators, confidence that has been seriously eroded by the House of Assembly spending scandal after a year of revelations.

No one doubts the sincerity of the Premier and the other members in addressing the matter. We all may take them at their word.

However, at this point, intentions and words are not as important as actions in restoring that public confidence.

As Ronald Reagan used to say, "trust but verify".

The verification in this case is contained in the schedule to the Green bill passed by the House of Assembly on the last day of its session before the general election.

The schedule set down rules for reporting of spending in the legislature and for public disclosure of that spending. It also set down specific rules for spending constituency allowances, something many members said had been absent.

The action that would have given full and unquestionable proof of the members' intentions would have been the immediate adoption of the schedule to Green's bill. If there were concerns about specific sections - such as the transportation ones - those may have been set aside to be addressed later.

Fundamentally, however, transparency and accountability is the core of the current problem in the House of Assembly, as Chief Justice Green noted.

The core of transparency and accountability is telling the public what is being done and why.

In the case of the Green bill, the members of the House of Assembly didn't do that. In fact, they left the impression that the rules were in place already, not, as it turned out, that they would come into force after the next election. Take a look at Rob Antle's Telegram story and one sees just that impression.

At no point, did any member of the legislature tell the members of the public clearly what was being done and why. All members knew or ought to have known. Certainly the senior leaders - the House leaders from each party - knew what was going on. Yet, in the House they said nothing.

This was not a decision of the Williams administration alone and no one should direct an attack or criticism specifically at the premier's administration.

Rather the failing here is one to be borne collectively by all members of the House from all parties.

On their first step on the road to restoring public confidence, all members of the House of Assembly stumbled and stumbled badly. They will undoubtedly try and offer some excuses, as Paul Oram has attempted already.

Fundamentally, however, Mr. Oram's explanation simply calls into question the decision to postpone adoption of The Rules. If caucuses have already agreed to be bound by the rules, then they ought to have been given full force of law. Why pussyfoot around, especially since a clear and unequivocal action would have left no doubt as to members' intentions?

And for members attempting to deal with the issue individually, a clear set of rules would relieve them of the pressure from groups long used to receiving various donations from public money in a way Chief Justice Green unequivocally denounced. They do not have to set arbitrary rules about which donations to grant and which to reject or to face the potential questions when some of their colleagues might be found to have done something different from what they have done.

One set of rules would bind them all to the same standard. After all, the absence of rules is the excuse offered by so many members of the House and the creation of clear rules set by Chief Justice Green is what so many of those same members pined for.

Why then, did they postpone adopting The Rules?

Why then, didn't they tell the people of the province what they were doing and why?

Why, after a year of revelations and the repetition of the words "accountability" and "transparency" does it appear that all the members of the legislature don't seem to understand what those words actually mean?

-srbp-

Gone, baby, gone #nlpoli

In September 2008,  four cabinet ministers went to Harbour Grace to announce that the provincial government was giving the company $8.0 million in public money,  interest free.

The provincial government communications people circulated a picture of the four at the time - from left, Jerome Kennedy,  Danny Williams, Paul Oram, and Trevor Taylor – as they tried on some of the boots made at the plant.  Every one is smiling.  The $8.0  million in taxpayers’ cash was supposed to help the company add another 50 full-time jobs on top of the 170 at the plant.

It’s an interesting picture because within 12 months of the announcement,  the two on the right – Taylor and Oram – would be gone from politics.  Williams left in 2010,  the year the provincial government started a “review” of the loan after the company cut the work force to 100.  They never did add any jobs. Kennedy hung on the longest of the lot,  but five years after his trip to the boot factory, Jerome was gone from politics as well.

Identity Crisis #nlpoli

Newfoundland is changing, Michael Crummey writes in the Newfoundland nationalists’ newspaper, the Globe and Mail.  House prices are climbing in St. John’s.  There are plenty of expensive restaurants around and people to eat the food and drink the wine sold there.

“But,”  says Crummey,  “while oil execs tuck into their gourmet fish, much of rural Newfoundland is falling deeper into a crisis that began with the cod moratorium in 1992.”

The whole province – Newfoundland and Labrador – is changing.  There is a difference between the changes around the provincial capital and the rest of the province.  Crummey says that a “generation from now,  what it means to be a Newfoundlander will be something altogether different” from what he calls the traditional Newfoundland of “isolated, tightly knit communities that relied on the fishery and each other for survival.”

All true stuff.  The place and its people are changing.  The problem with Crummey’s commentary is that he gets his timescales wrong and misidentifies the root of the change and its implications.

Taking out Harper

While it will take a check of the transcript to be certain, it sure sounded like Paul Oram, Premier Danny Williams' parliamentary secretary, told listeners to vocm.com's Night Line that the Newfoundland and Labrador government is working to see Stephen harper's government defeated at the polls in the next federal election.

Does that get bumped up ahead of taking ExxonMobil out or will Harper have to wait until last April's Big Promise is fulfilled?

Can anyone keep track of these unfulfilled promises?

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Top 10 Stories of 2009

No need for elaborate commentaries for this one. 

Here are the 10 stories that  - in the not so humble opinion of your humble e-scribbler - had a huge impact on Newfoundland and Labrador in 2009 and/or which will continue to affect the province into the future.

Odds are this list will look like all the other locally generated lists of top news story for 2009, even if the ordering may be slightly different.

1. Cougar 491:  A tragedy that prompted a genuine outpouring of sorrow across the province and left a mark on psyche of many that just won’t go away any time soon. A public inquiry will examine offshore helicopter safety and make recommendations in 2010.
2. H1N1:  The health pandemic dominated the news in the front of the year and again in the fall. People changed their habits and many organizations changed the way they conduct their affairs:  for instance, shaking hands in greeting was out for a while in many churches. In the end, this province wound up ahead of the country in percentage of population inoculated.  That’s something everyone can be proud of.
3. The Recession:  It’s been walloping Newfoundland and Labrador much harder than many have acknowledged and the effects of the largest global economic downturn since the 1930s are being felt in everything from layoffs and temporary closures at mines to a continued increase in people from  returning to this province other parts of Canada because they can’t find work anywhere else.  Expect the recovery to take a while.
4. Hibernia South:  So many people lined up to criticise the Hibernia deal over the past 20 years and everyone one of them turned out to be full of crap.  From Ian Doig to Bill Callahan to Danny Williams, they were all dead wrong.  Danny Williams was so wrong about give-aways he used the Hibernia royalty regime as the basis for his deal to bring more oil into production. The royalty regime hashed out two decades ago and adjusted in 2000 will pour billions into the provincial treasury. The new deal added a couple of tweaks but all the heavy financial lifting is coming via the old deal. The new deal will bring new oil ashore, swell provincial coffers, produce more jobs and set a foundation for future developments around the Hibernia oil field.  The development deal didn’t need all the hype and bullshit the provincial spin machine laid on it:  it could stand up on its own merits and garner well-deserved credit for the administration that delivered the signed agreement.
5. Double political suicide:  First Trevor Taylor, then Paul Oram.  Two stalwart Tory politicians ended their political careers  - unexpectedly - in the space of a couple of weeks last fall and in the process sent shockwaves through the provincial Conservative party. When Tony the Tory has to write letters to the newspapers defending his team’s future viability, you know the province’s governing Tories were badly shaken. In the subsequent by-elections, the Tories swept one and lost one.  More political changes may well be on the way in the run-up to the 2011 general election.
6. AbitibiBowater:  A carry-over from 2008, the closure of the century old paper mill at Grand Falls in March shock the economic foundations of the central Newfoundland town. The reverberations are still being felt. Plenty of people never imagined the company was serious.  Surprise!  They weren’t bluffing.
7. Have Province:  The provincial economy finally generates enough revenue so the provincial government can deliver its constitutional obligations without hand-outs from Uncle Ottawa. Announced prematurely in November 2008, “Have” status arrived in 2009, much to the chagrin of some politicians. 
8. No Hydro Lines Through Gros Morne:  “The argument was made, quite rightly, by people that you don’t want to create an eyesore in…one of our best tourism attractions in the province.”  Amen to that. There were other political climb-downs in 2009, but this one stood out because it was the most unusual one for the provincial government to stand on its haunches about in the first place.
9. The ABC’s are over/The End of the Ig-man: The rapprochement between the revanchist provincial Conservatives and their federal cousins happened quietly but the fact it happened will wind up having a profound impact on politics in the province.  That’s especially true at the federal level where the sitting members of parliament have already been dismissed by the national media as DW’s bitches.   What will they do when the next federal writ drops?  What price might the provincial Tories have to pay to get back in Steve’s good books?  Will the whole thing fall apart? Only time will tell. The other half of this story is the Ignatieff implosion.  So much hype; so little delivery.  When their boring stuffy academic  - and an economist to boot – is more popular than yours, you can be assured there is a giant political crisis desperately needing attention.  The second half of the problem:  Bob Rae as the only apparent alternative.  Nice guy but an aging former premier is not likely to catch fire with the electorate.
10. Darlene Neville. As Russell Wangersky already noted, this is just the latest in a series of problems with people hired to fill important jobs reporting to the House of Assembly.  The problems aren’t confined to one office or to one government administration.  The offices are important ones, however, so there is a pressing need to sort out how they are filled.  Maybe one solution would be to get cabinet out of the game entirely and leave the running of House offices to a special committee of the legislature. 

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“Unsustainable” public spending: the fin min version

Former finance minister Tom Marshall said on Tuesday that he was once asked by an analysis for Moody’s bond rating service if he felt the growth in public sector spending was sustainable.  Marshall didn’t reveal his answer. 

The subject came up in a discussion with talk show host Randy Simms on VOCM.  Marshall noted that the province spends more per person than any other province in Canada. 

Simms suggested that high rate of spending was because of the geographical dispersion of the population.  He didn’t mention that costs in Newfoundland and Labrador are typically lower for many things, including wages.

At that point, Marshall noted that people not from here often don’t understand the issues and then mentioned in passing the comment from Moody’s.  He also referred to boosting spending based on oil revenues only to be faced with a problem when oil prices drop dramatically.

That matches recent comments by health minister Paul Oram that the provincial government’s spending levels were “unsustainable.” 

It doesn’t match claims by Marshall and other cabinet ministers up to now that the current administration was practicing sound financial management.

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Brent Price Comparisons

For those who have been following along with the discussion of oil prices and provincial government revenue, it’s interesting to compare the price of crude oil at comparable parts of the fiscal year.

On Monday, as you may recall, we took a look at production.  As the chart showed, offshore oil production in 2009 is well below production last.  It’s so far down in fact that the provincial finance department’s predictions for 2009 might prove to be as accurate as the work of some late-night television psychic.

Well, prices are not doing much better.

Here’s a rough look at daily spot prices for Brent crude for the period 01 April to 30 June in both 2008 (blue) and 2009 (red).

Basically prices in the first three months of 2009 were running about 50% below the same period in 2008.

So prices were down by something on the order of 40 to about 50% and production was down by 14% in April, 39% in May, and 18% in June.  That pretty much guarantees that revenues would be off as well compared to the previous year. 

Sure enough,  figures obtained from Natural Resources Canada confirm that. Figures for September confirmed the general pattern for the first half of the fiscal year. Oil revenues are running about 15% below the provincial government’s budget forecast.

Not 15% below the December fiscal update that talked about bringing in something like $1.8 billion in oil royalties but 15% below the budget forecast of $1.26 billion.

Provincial government oil royalties are a function of  production, the royalty formula and the exchange rate for the Canadian dollar.  In the front end of the fiscal year there was a bit of a premium for a cheap Canadian dollar.  But as the Canadian dollar has climbed against the American greenback during the past six months, any premium that resulted from selling oil in U.S. funds and then converting to Canadian dollars vanished. 

And if you look at the actual royalty figures it’s pretty clear that the improved royalty rate coming from Hibernia in payout couldn’t offset the drop in production, the drop in price and the shifting exchange rate.  That’s a clue to the magnitude of the change in oil revenues.  Even with all three fields in the optimum royalty condition, royalties are well down in 2009.

Just to keep close track of all this, your humble e-scribbler will have to go looking for the October and November royalty figures later this month  That way it will be much more clear if the trends established in the front end of the year are continuing. Odds are they have carried on, despite the claims from the finance department in December.

As a last point, consider that a forecast by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in 2009 showed offshore oil production declining in Newfoundland and Labrador over the next five to seven years.  There’s a bit of a peak close to 2020 and then things trail off again as some of the older fields dry up.

 

That’s the sort of information that should be guiding provincial government budgeting. Revenues aren’t going to be climbing ever higher.  Demands for essentially services will, however, and the costs associated with that will rapidly escalate. This is an old refrain around these parts as regular readers well know.

That doesn’t mean there have to be spending cuts;  it just means there has to be greater fiscal discipline, consistent and prudent planning and some serious attention paid to reducing the province’s debt load. In other words, the provincial government needs to be doing exactly the opposite of what it has been doing for the past three years.

There is hope.

Until last fall, you’d never have heard a cabinet minister admit what your humble e-scribbler and others have been saying for years.

But first Paul Oram and then others admitted the provincial government’s fiscal plan  is unsustainable.

Acknowledging there is a problem is the first step toward doing something about it.

Let’s see what happens.

-srbp-

Fantasy Island; Flags of Our Fathers version

A cabinet minister whose doesn’t know his historical arse from his current events elbow.

And now a bunch of guys who put up a flag to remind us, supposedly, of where we came from, of our past. That’s how one of the guys behind a giant pink, white and green flag described the project for CBC Radio’s Chris O’Neill-Yates.

Seems some yahoo unscrewed the flag base and demolished the thing a month or so after the boys put it back. Apparently it’s been vandalised every year since it was stuck up there a few years ago.

Ah yes, a glorious reminder of our past.

Our past as the pre-Confederation Newfoundland, it would seem:

As mentioned in my last post, we’re putting up the Republic of Newfoundland flag on the South Side hills, and everyone is invited to join in on the hike.

Those familiar with what actually happened will no doubt be scratching their heads and rightly so. Just stop before you cut through the skin.

The Republic of Newfoundland is fiction.

Never existed.

Never happened.

The “republic” is entirely the invention of a local guy looking to make a buck on a few tee-shirts. And he’s made it too what with the popularity of the shirts among the latter-day corner boys.

The flag – in all its pink, white and green gloriousness – belonged to a St. John’s crowd but over its whole history it never gained widespread popularity through what became the Dominion of Newfoundland.

It was certainly never adopted as the official flag of the country.

In other words, at the very best, the flag is a townie artefact but as the flag of a republic? You can’t be the flag of something that never existed anyways.

The crowd who demolished the flag are very likely not a bunch of historians on a rampage.

They are most likely just another bunch of locals who like to destroy what others have made, even if – in this case – what the flag represents is entirely a figment of someone’s imagination masquerading as reality.

Oh well.

If the boys with the flag are raising some money to fly their flag again, maybe they can get in touch with Paul Oram.

He seems like the poster child for their project.

Update November 21, 2009: New title to deconflict with another post. Both were originally titled "Fantasy Island"

-srbp-

Working stiffs and lazy ones #nlpoli

For some reason, TransCon papers carried a story on newly elected Liberal member of the House of Assembly Jim Bennett and his plan to carry on a law practice while he sits as an opposition member in the legislature.

The Telegram even put the thing in its Saturday paper.  Here’s a link the version carried by the Western Star.

What’s so striking about this is that it is a complete non-story.  As you’ll see part way down the page, the conflict of interest section of the House of Assembly Act quite rightly exempts ordinary members from the restrictions on carrying on with another job or outside business interests while serving in the legislature.

So why single Bennett out?

Good question.

The story turned out to be a bit of fodder for at least one of the local radio talk-shows.  But there again you have to wonder why they singled Bennett out for comment and, in some instances, for criticism. It’s not like others haven’t done the same sort of thing in the past or aren’t doing it now.

For example, Paul Oram carried on several businesses while he served as a backbencher in the Tory caucus.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Harris carried on an active law practice the whole time he sat in the legislature. Other backbench lawyers have done the same thing.

St. John’s South MHA Tom Osborne runs a music promotion business called 5th String Entertainment. On the right, you’ll find the online registration for the company with Service Newfoundland and Labrador.

Nothing odd about politicians and entertainment:  once upon a time, not so very long ago,  another Tory ran a popular downtown nightspot while he sat in the legislature.

Enterprising young fellow that he is, Steve Kent used to have a small consulting company. 

Since he’s been in the legislature, though, Steve’s been running a driver training business with his wife as partner.

Steve also serves as chair of the board president and chief commissioner of Scouts Canada.

There is nothing unusual about backbench members of the legislature carrying on with private businesses or a career while they are also in the legislature.

So why did some local media single out Jim Bennett?

Hopefully it was nothing more than laziness and sloppiness.

If they weren’t lazy and/or sloppy, they could have done a quick check and turned up all sorts of people.  And the list here contains only the ones your humble e-scribbler noted over the years. 

Undoubtedly ,someone going through the individual member’s disclosure statements could find other businesses or professional practices backbenchers are still carrying on.  The cabinet ministers will all have their stuff in blind trusts  But backbenchers can continue to work a second job.  There’s no legal or ethical reason for them to stop unless the second job interferes with their ability to do their elected job.

More to the point, though, there’s no reason why any of us should expect backbench members of the legislature to give up their other interests. That’s especially true for licensed professionals who would have to stay current in their profession in order to stay licensed.

It’s interesting to note that while Chief Justice Green spent a considerable part of his report discussing the idea that holding a seat in the legislature to become a full-time job in itself. Green discusses the issue at some length and makes the following observations:

If one can tease an underlying legislative policy from this subsection [27 of the House of Assembly Act] , and extrapolate into the broader arena, it is that the life of an MHA does contemplate other non-political activities; and where there is a conflict between those other activities and the Member’s duties, the test for determining whether the Member is properly fulfilling those duties is not a quantitative one (i.e., not defined by reference  to numbers of days or weeks, vacation entitlement, etc.) but a qualitative one (i.e., to use the words of ss. 27(4), “… so long as the member, notwithstanding the activity, is able to fulfil the member’s obligations …”).

The issue under discussion is not theoretical.  In the 1970s, a Member attended university full-time outside of Canada for the better part of a year.  In the 1980s a Member continued to act as a deputy mayor of a municipality.  More recently, since my appointment,
two issues have entered the public domain relating, respectively, to certain Members who were  allegedly “moonlighting” by carrying on the practice of law
and a Member who allegedly was unavailable to deal with a public issue in her district because she had been working outside the province as a nurse. [p. 9-28]

In the end of that section, Green recommended, among other things that:

To eliminate confusion on the point [full-time versus part-time] , the legislation should also state that a Member, qua Member, is not prohibited from carrying on a business or engaging in other employment or a profession, provided that the nature of the business, work or profession is such that it does not prevent him or her from attendance in the House when it is in session and from devoting time primarily to the discharge of his or
her duties as a Member when the House is not in session.

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Public money coming for Rolls-Royce

Paul Oram may be having trouble paying the health care bills but his predecessor, Ross Wiseman, apparently has cash for what appears to be an outright give-away to one of the great international symbols of luxury.

Yes, Ross will hand out taxpayer cash to Rolls-Royce.

“Contribution” is the word the provincial government likes to use when it hands over cash to a private sector company, not as a loan with interest.

Let’s see if that’s what it turns out.

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A long way from best in class #nlpoli

Cathy Bennett’s leadership launch event was organized as one would expect.  Her speech was scripted and, hand gestures and all, well rehearsed.

From the start there was the flush of jargon that one expects these days from business people getting into politics.  A “decision process’ had led her to this spot.  The province must be “best in class”.  Things must be “actioned”.  We must “start a conversation.”  Energy, passion and fire -  especially passion – occurred in the speech with  as much frequency as “strong voice” used to turn up with others.

She pledged to be “open and accountable” as well as honest and persuasive.”

Bennett didn’t offer much beyond stock phrases on anything, though,  except on three points:  increased immigration,  full-day kindergarten, and Muskrat Falls.

Kremlinology 44: the 2009 Rift in Cabinet #nlpoli

Trevor Taylor left politics in 2009 in an unseemly hurry.

One minute he was there. 

Next minute?  Gone from cabinet and the House of Assembly.

Very odd.

Then right on his heels went Paul Oram, who muttered something about unsound financial management by the Conservatives as he ran from the Confederation Building.

A very big clue to what was going on at the time turned up on Tuesday in Trevor Taylor’s column in the Telegram.

Friday the 13th Traffic Report

In a week of disruptions and hiccups at ye olde Bond Papers, let’s see what people were reading:

1. Fortis on Lower Churchill:  No thanks!
2. For the world is hollow…
3. How west coast Newfoundland could beat the Lower Churchill
4. Not a Mommy blogger…not that there’s anything wrong with that
5. Why columnists need editors
6. NB to seek offshore accord with feds
7. Court docket now online
8. Bell 206 crash – photo interpretation
9. Anyone seen John Hickey?
10. Paul Oram:  minister of revisionist history

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