The Premier and her glass house #nlpoli

One of Kathy Dunderdale’s more obnoxious qualities is her love of insulting other people.

She couldn’t let the House close without doing it a few times just for good measure.

There’s nothing witty in Dunderdale’s insults.  Nor is there anything that could pass for clever in her jabs.  That’s part of what makes her comments obnoxious:  they are just crude.

There’s another part to it that, like her predecessor who loved the same sort of crap-talk,  Kathy is the Premier of the province.  When she carries on like that she winds up setting an abysmally low standard of behaviour for public officials.

It’s undignified. It’s degrading to the province and to the people she should be honoured to represent. 

Freedom from Information: the sorry Connie legacy #nlpoli

“We will amend the Access to Information legislation to enhance the transparency of government actions and decisions.”

Danny Williams, Leader of the Opposition, February 2003

There truly is a greater fraud than a promise unkept.  That would be the promise that is consciously and deliberately broken.

In February 2003, the provincial Conservatives – then in opposition – pledged to increase public access to government information.  The latest round of changes to the provincial access to information law suggests they are continuing their practice of hiding as much information they can.

Here are some examples of the sorry provincial Connie legacy of Freedom from Information:

• Ignoring the Black Letter (2005) In 2005, the Tories ignored the black letter of the access law and tried to hide public opinion polls.
• Aural is moral:  (2009)  Paul Oram didn’t have briefing notes, then he had ones with someone else’s name on them and then it didn’t matter because he quit politics.
• Oil Royalties (2009) 
• The Secret Inland Fisheries Review (2009)
• We can’t talk about the process because there is a process. (2009)
• Thousands for public speeches (2009)
• Schrodinger’s Purple Cat: (2010)  files that existed and didn’t exist at the same time.
• Tories hide spending documents from Auditor General (2012)
• Update – Williams afraid of whistleblower law
• Update – Tories hide spending documents from Auditor General
• Update – Privacy commish sues Dunderdale gov over “political” e-mails on gov comps, phones

-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. 

Diversifying the economy and slowing things down #nlpoli

Paul Oram was a colourful politician.

Well, colourful in the sense that he flamed out very quickly.  Regular readers of these scribbles will remember him as the guy who had no idea what had happened in the province during his lifetime.  Not long after taking over the health department, Oram precipitated a huge political crisis.  Then he high-tailed it from politics altogether with some pretty damning comments about how his colleagues were spending public money. 

These days Paul turns up as the token Tory on CBC Radio’s West Coast Morning Show political panel. he is still colourful.

On Monday’s show, Oram said that Muskrat Falls was a wonderful thing because it diversifies the provincial economy.  He did not say how.  Oram just said that it would.  No one asked him to explain what he meant.

That’s a lucky break for Paul.  You see, Muskrat Falls will not diversify the provincial economy. It is a public utility project.  What’s more, it does not produce any revenue other than what the people of this province will be forced to pay.  In that respect it is less of a way to diversify the economy as it is a new kind of government tax on the local economy.

But that’s okay: Paul has usually had trouble understanding this whole economic development thing.  That’s probably why Danny put him in charge of economic development at one point.

After bashing that around, the panel switched to talking about the provincial budget and health care.  Bernice Hillier – the host – asked Paul about the money in the budget for planning the new Corner brook hospital. 

Not a problem, said Paul.  The hospital is important.  The government will build it.

It’s just that times are tough, according to Paul.  The government is just slowing things down a bit until they have the money to build the hospital.

Interesting idea Paul had there.

Interesting because it is something that Oram’s old colleagues have categorically denied. 

Don’t have the money to build it now?

“That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard in a long time,” said finance minister Tom Marshall last week.   Here’s what health minister Susan Sullivan said in the House of Assembly on Monday:

What we had in the past was a replacement design. Mr. Speaker, we are much more progressive than that. We do not want a replacement of the Corner Brook hospital; we want a hospital that is going to see us into the future. Therefore, we have asked them to go back, and with this $1 million we will look at a hospital that will meet the needs of the future in terms of essential services that are going to be in that hospital, Mr. Speaker. When that is done, then we will move forward with a design concept for the facility itself.

Paul Oram was a colourful politician.

He still says some curious things. Makes you wonder what he is going to say next.

- srbp -

Corner Brook hospital: follow the money talk #nlpoli

Let’s get something clear up front.

The provincial government will build a new hospital in Corner Brook.

That much shouldn’t be in doubt.  The existing Western Memorial Hospital is long past due to be replaced.  The provincial government has the cash in the bank.  And even if they didn’t, they’d have to find the money somehow to build it.  That’s the thing about hospitals.  You have to build them even if you don;t have money in the bank.

The current political problem finance minister Tom Marshall faces in his hometown comes from the usual problem he and his colleagues seem to have:  they announce something, put timelines on it and then fail to deliver on time.

Then the other problem cuts in:  they resort to all sorts of bluster and such, all the while insisting that absolutely nothing is wrong. That’s the thing about the Tories:  you always know what they are going to say. 

Tom Marshall went to the Corner Brook Board of Trade on Friday to talk about the budget and, inevitably, the hospital. The Western Star sent Gary Kean out to report on it.  He’ll stay in politics until the steel for the hospital starts going up, insisted Marshall, “and I plan on going soon.”

Good on both points:  Marshall was supposed to retire last year.  He put it off as part of the deal cut inside the Tory caucus that left Kathy Dunderdale as leader to get them through the election.  Marshall is due to go as are a number of others, including, most likely, Dunderdale herself.

As for the money supply, he was equally firm that there wasn’t a problem.  He’s a quote from the Western Star story:

“That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard in a long time,” Marshall said, when asked about criticism that government doesn’t have the money to proceed with construction right now.

“We are flush with cash. Our financial position is the strongest it has ever been. The economy is as strong as it’s ever been.”

Let us forget, for the moment, that the main message Tom is carrying around these days is that the provincial government coffers are flush with cash.  They are full to overflowing.  And now, having just finished spending public money the likes of which we have never seen in this province before – including taking the public debt to record heights -  Marshall  must now start on a 10 year program of spending cuts and layoffs in the provincial government the likes of which we have never seen in the country before, let alone the province.

Let us just forget all that for a moment.

Let us also dial back Tom’s inevitable hyperbolic outburst a bit.  They will have the cash. They will have to find the cash because they need to replace the hospital.

And so they will build a new hospital once they figure out what they want the hospital to do.

The first plan the health department came up with wasn’t the right one, according to health minister Susan Sullivan.  According to the Western Star,

Sullivan said the plan did not adequately reflect the province’s changing demographic, so planners were sent back to the drawing board to come up with a better programming strategy.

When the Western Star wondered how that could have happened, Sullivan claimed she didn’t know.  She wasn’t the minister when they started so she had no idea what they were asked to do.

And as for what “better programming strategy” means or what the “demographic“ thingy was, she didn’t let on. Those are wonderfully vague terms, wonderful bits of bureaucratic gobbledygook. What it sounds, like, though, is the same sort of problem the current administration have run into with other major projects.

The health centre in Lewisporte, for example, went so far over budget that the provincial government started hacking out services in order to get the costs under control. That was at the heart of the problems in 2009 that contributed to Paul Oram’s untimely departure from politics.

So while Corner Brook will get a new hospital - at some point in the future - the major problem seems to be a familiar one:  balancing what gets done in the hospital with what it costs to build it. Part of that problem could be in whatever promises He Who Must Not Be Named suggested eons ago that are simply no longer affordable, if they ever were in the first place.

Almost certainly, part of the hang up is within the health department.  After all, they are trying to cope with increasing pressures on budgets at a time when cash is getting tighter and tighter.  You see that’s the real issue.  Corner Brook will get a hospital, but the government’s financial and demographic problems will have a profound impact on what the hospital costs and therefore what the final hospital winds up doing.

Now as for all that financial stuff Tom Marshall mentioned that we said we’d forget for a moment?

Well, the moment is up.

- srbp -

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 Others, a.k.a the Ghost and Mrs. Dunderdale #nlpoli

Regardless of any change in the cost of other forms of energy,… we will have stability in this province that few parts of the world could depend on with the same reliability.

Did Premier Kathy Dunderdale say that? During the provincial election last fall, she told The Scope that Muskrat Falls is:

…i the way forward that will provide us a new energy we are going to need to run the place, but it will stabilize those energy prices because we don’t have the volatility of oil anymore.

In January 2012, she told the St. John’s Board of Trade that:

Our government firmly believes developing the hydro-power resources of the Lower Churchill is the key to a sustainable future for our province over the long term. Muskrat Falls is a venture that will pay for itself through lower energy costs, new export revenues and new opportunities for economic development here at home.

Maybe natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy tweeted it one day:

Hydro avoids the volatility of oil.

Might have been Nalcor’s Ed Martin:

Muskrat Falls translates to lower and stable rates for customers.

None of them did.

Premier Frank Moores said it in 1974 when local politicians first turned their attention seriously to developing the Lower Churchill. No matter what happens in other parts of the world, no matter what other technologies exist, hydro-electricity would be the future for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Economics had nothing to do with it, if you follow the comments from others involved in the project.  As Philip Smith notes in his account of the development of Churchill Falls*, the Lower Churchill generated more power than the island part of the province needed in total. Environment and technology made difficult the task of running lines across the narrow gap between Newfoundland and the mainland.

The provincial government found some of the finest minds of the time, American consultants, to look at the project.  They pronounced the scheme “economically viable and socially desirable.”  Advances in underwater transmission in Scandinavia made the underwater link to the mainland a better bet than it might have been a decade earlier.

Moores was sold:

It is the intention of the provincial government to use power created from the Lower Churchill within the province only.  It is clear to us that this position is in the best interest of all Newfoundlanders.

A second consulting firm, more smart minds from Winnipeg and Montreal, took on further studies.  They predicted that there were “excellent prospects” for new industries to use the power.  Their forecasts held that the whole 1800 MW output of Gull Island would be absorbed on the island by 1988.  With the federal government helping to underwrite the project, the Canadian consultants predicted that island consumers would get the power for 14 mills per kilowatt hour, at a time when the going wholesale rate for power if sold to or through Quebec was less than eight mills.

The past weighs heavily on the mind of politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador.  They go back to it regularly.  Kathy Dunderdale, Jerome Kennedy, finance minister Tom Marshall, and the crowd at Nalcor have invoked the historical totems of Churchill Falls and Bay d’Espoir to justify their Muskrat Falls project.

What they are talking about is not the actual events, of course, but rather the imagined version of events they or others hold to be true.  They are a form of cultural short-hand.  They are metaphors for other ideas. They are coded speech.

What we are talking about here is not an academic abstraction, nor is it about competing interpretations – narratives, if you will – of local history.  Newfoundland history, as used by politicians, is a living language.

But it is a language that has no basis on reality.  It is entirely fictitious. The people who speak about the past are, like Paul Oram, fundamentally ignorant of the past.  Oram was not an historical revisionist, as the title of that old post suggested.  To be a revisionist requires a familiarity with both the events themselves as real occurrences and the competing stories of what those events mean.

Rather, Oram was a typical political actor of the modern Newfoundland stage.  History for such an actor is not about concrete events involving people who behaved in the sort of complex world in which all of us live, simultaneously at the moment.

Their history is plastic. It can be moulded to suit any need.

Their history is not, to paraphrase Calvin, an exercise in interpreting the past to suit our current biases.  Nor is history solid.  Rather, history for them is air. 

Former Premier Brian Peckford intruded into the Muskrat Falls world on Tuesday.  His letter to Premier Dunderdale is a simple thing. The second sentence of the first paragraph is the basis for his understanding of the project and the issues:

Of course, as you know, I was heavily involved in this enterprise when I was Minister of Mines and Energy and as Premier.

Dunderdale dismissed Peckford with her characteristic arrogance:

But a message from afar, about a debate that you haven’t been engaged in, or public information sessions that you haven’t participated in, then you know it’s difficult for me to deal with.

But before she got to that she started from a very curious place:

I don’t know how close Mr. Peckford ever was to the energy files here in the province in terms of a new development. I know a great deal of work went into (Upper Churchill) redress.

This is not Dunderdale admitting her lack of knowledge of Peckford. Far from it.  That is Kathy Dunderdale dismissing Peckford out of hand as knowing nothing about the subject.

If he had something useful to say, then she’d listen. But he doesn’t know anything so just pay no attention to him.

But it is Dunderdale who clearly doesn’t know anything.  She is ignorant, both in the sense of not knowing anything and in the local sense of being rude.

The Premier is profoundly uninformed of events that happened in her adult lifetime.  She can’t be posing or pretending. One must be not only completely unaware of the truth but also assured of its irrelevance in order to make such an obviously ridiculous comment with such complete self-assuredness.

What is truly remarkable about Dunderdale, Kennedy and Marshall is that they speak of history.  They tie their decisions to the past. “We must learn from the mistakes of the Upper Churchill,” tweeted Kennedy last month.  “I don't want to spend my nights wondering if I'm going to be the new Joey Smallwood,” Kennedy told an audience in Corner Brook.

For all that sort of comment, Kennedy, Dunderdale, Marshall and the others have no sense that they are displaying exactly the characteristics – arrogance and tunnel vision, among them – that led to the events in the 1960s they wish to avoid.

Such is their understanding of what our history is.

- srbp -

*  Philip Smith, Brinco:  the story of Churchill Falls, (Toronto:  McClelland and Stewart, 1975)

The Fragile Economy: addictions management #nlpoli

The provincial government in Newfoundland and Labrador spends more per person on delivering services for most things than does any other provincial government in the country.

Health care is the one the Premier highlighted a couple of weeks ago.  There are others.

This is not something new.  Here’s a snippet from a post in 2009 back when Paul Oram lit the issue up from inside the current administration.  Note, though, that the quote highlights the situation three years earlier:

That level of per capita spending [second only to Alberta] is unsustainable in the long run. As a recent Atlantic Institute for Market Studies assessment concluded:

“If the province fails to reign in its whopping per capita government spending (about $8800/person [in FY 2006]) and super-size me civil service (96 provincial government employees /1000 people) it will quickly erode any gains from increased energy revenues.”

The reason for all this spending and the generally high cost of government in this province is simple:  government spending is all about paternalism, patronage and pork. 

Note that the largest employer in Grand Falls-Windsor these days is the local hospital.  The town is also a centre for government services and, as in Stephenville, the major provincial government response to the mill closure was to push in more public service jobs.

Public spending is all about jobs.

The problem with public spending is that it is easy to get hooked on it.  Not surprisingly, a recent post at the Monkey Cage went with the title “The Narcotic of Government Dependency”.  It’s a pretty concise discussion of the issue from the American perspective with plenty of interesting links.  Follow the links and you’ll find plenty of stimulating stuff. 

Canadians might find it especially interesting to see reference to David Frum’s assessment of the inherent contradiction in conservative arguments.  While they rave and rant against public spending on a ideological basis, on a practical basis, American conservative constituencies are also among the biggest beneficiaries of federal government programs.

Now in this province, the local conservatives don’t really have an ideological basis to argue against public spending. They aren’t really caught in that trap.  But it is interesting to notice the gap between their self-image of being fiscally conservative, debt- fighting wunderkind and the reality of running up the biggest debt load in the province’s history and wanting to jack it higher.  Plus they’ve increased dependence on government spending and increased the public service to an unprecedented size.

looked at from that perspective, Kathy Dunderdale’s recent speech about the need to tighten public spending wasn’t so much about putting the province on some kind of methadone program for patronage junkies so you could get ‘em off the junk.  It seems more likely to have been about another type of addictions management, more like “b’ys we gotta lay off the pipe for a while and just do the oxys and some percs”.

- srbp -

Ridiculous is all the rage #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Fresh from her triumphant speech about co-operation and consultation as the way to develop the north, the potential for developing uranium in Labrador and  - of course – the glories to come from Muskrat Falls, Premier Kathy Dunderdale is off to Atlanta as part of an Atlantic provinces’ trade mission.

Regular readers will recall then-business minister Paul Oram’s insightful interview on Newfoundland and Labrador history during one of his trips to Georgia.

Yes, friends, this is not the first time people from this province have gone off to the southern United States to see if we could increase trade with the Americans.  It has been a popular destination.  Danny Williams took one of his last over-seas trips to Mississippi as part of one of the trade junkets.

As you can see from that post on Williams’ trip, the Americans are looking for people to come to their states, invest money and start creating jobs for their people. There could be no better time to talk to them about investing in our province and creating jobs here.

Obviously.

And if you wanted to find some place to sell stuff we make then surely there can be no better time to do that than when our largest trading partner  - the United States – is struggling to come out of a recession. 

Again, a bit obvious, but apparently not quite so obvious to some people.

In a province where even the finance minister said the economy was fragile,  the provincial government can’t quite seem to get the concept that looking for new markets might be a good idea.

Other people certainly get the point.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been talking about expanding trade with Asia and Europe.  In British Columbia, they’ve got a new natural gas strategy  - h/t to David Campbell in New Brunswick – that talks about developing natural gas as an export to places like Asia.

Meanwhile, in Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s no serious interest in finding new markets for stuff. A couple of years ago, the current provincial government refused to take part in trade talks with the Europeans.  The locals were more interested in the seal hunt than in creating jobs. Just last year, one local politician said it would be like doing a “back-room deal with a group of serial rapists”.

You can see the level they are working at.

As for natural gas, developing it for any practical use at all is about as popular an idea in government circles as a one cheek sneak sliding across the pews on Sunday morning.

Any talk of it as a means of generating electricity gets them raising the completely absurd idea of buying liquefied gas from somewhere else and importing. 

Too expensive, the government’s favourite economist clucked, to be a viable alternative to the favourite economist’s preferred project. He didn’t really even need to hold a match to his straw-man to watch it burst into flames.

And the local natural gas? 

Well, it’s just not possible.

Because, well, it just isn’t.

Never mind that you wouldn’t have to liquefy the stuff to bring it ashore.

Never mind that there is enough of it out there to power a 500 megawatt plant all day long, every day, all year long for a century.

Never mind that they could get it from one field today where it is getting costly to re-inject the gas they get during oil production. 

Never mind that the provincial government need take only as much gas as they needed to run a gas-to-electricity plant. 

Never mind they could put a price on it and take the gas as a partial credit for offshore royalties.

Never mind there’s likely tons of it onshore Newfoundland.  The same people pushing the very expensive electricity scheme actually found gas in 2011 in not one but two wells drilled at Parsons Pond. Nalcor shut down drilling on a proposed third well because they found gas, not the oil the company hoped for.  And, as CBC reported:

Vice-president Jim Keating said there is no need for a third well as it would likely produce the same result.

Same result being gas.

Gas?

What could they possibly do with gas?

Sheesh!  <insert eye rolling>

The government crowd want to go with their Labrador project and that is really the end of it as far as they are concern.

It is a green project, you see.

Just don’t bother to notice that their “green” scheme includes building – wait for it – more oil-fired generation than the current plant they want to replace with the hydro one.

Not gas.

Oil.

Yes, their argument is ridiculous, but then again, it’s no more ridiculous than giving up a market worth billions for new products in order to posture about a product almost no one wants any more.

Or heading off to the sort-of recessionary United States for the umpteenth year in a row to talk trade with people we already trade enough with.

Ridiculous, you see, is all the rage.

- srbp -

The old cabinet documents ploy #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale and her ministers refuse to hand over documents on more than $5.0 billion in public works spending by the Conservatives since 2004.

The documents are cabinet secrets, as their argument goes, and under the access to information law cabinet cannot release that information to him.

like her predecessor, Premier Dunderdale was unavailable to talk to reporters earlier on Thursday but she did have time to call an open line radio show to talk about the Auditor General and other things.  Dunderdale eventually turned up at a 2:00 PM scrum to take reporters questions.  Predictably she rejected any claims that she is withholding information improperly.

Here’s one bit, as relayed by CBC:

Every piece of information that comes in to government is available to the auditor general. It's just the preparation of material used specifically for the preparation of cabinet documents is not available.

Elsewhere in the scrum Dunderdale explained that the Auditor General had others ways to get the information he needed.  When asked to explain that by reporters, she couldn’t.  Dunderdale also admitted that there was actually no infrastructure strategy.  Instead there were documents prepared for cabinet that gave a complete overview of the government’s capital works spending.

But anyway,  by her own account, therefore, that’s the sort of thing that the Auditor General wouldn’t be allowed to see. The AG wanted to look at a strategy and assess the performance.  By Dunderdale’s account there’d be no way he could see what was included in the non-existent strategy and what wasn’t.

Sounds foolish.

And it is foolish.

It’s also familiar.

In 2006, Danny Williams and his cabinet (including Kathy Dunderdale) took exactly the same position when another Auditor General asked for documents on the fibre optic project. 

No way, they said:  cabinet documents. 

Secret, don’t you know, old chap. 

Access to information law and all that, what what.

Now in that instance the government  - through a resolution in the House of Assembly – asked the AG to “investigate all the details and circumstances” of the controversial deal.  That’s really no different than the AG doing the job he got from a law passed by the House of Assembly (the Auditor General Act).

Same situation.

Same effort to hide information.

And ultimately, cabinet’s excuses are still just as flimsy.

Your humble e-scribbler pointed out in 2006 that cabinet can use its own discretion and release any documents it likes. They did it in 2004 and, eventually, Williams and cabinet relented with the fibre optic review and gave the AG what he needed. 

Now it took four months, mind you, for them to do the right thing.  But after lots of public pressure, Williams and his cabinet reversed their stand.  In effect, Williams and his cabinet (including Kathy Dunderdale) admitted the argument they’d used the year before was utter bullshit.

Just to be sure, folks, what we are talking about here is just provincial capital works spending dolled up as something much grander than it ever was. They called it “infrastructure” but essentially it was – and is – the sort of road building, road paving, schools building and all the other capital works that government shave done for decades.

And Auditors General before the current one have had no problem looking at the documents, totalling up the amounts, checking the way things were done and then reporting what they’ve found.

Until now.

For some reason Kathy Dunderdale and her cabinet want to keep a giant chunk of  public works spending over the past eight years away from the Auditor General and his Excel spreadsheet.

The question is why.

Maybe it has something to do with what the AG did get to look at. The Labrador Highway and public publics repairs chapters don’t make for pretty reading. 

Maybe it has something to do with just how much political consideration goes into public works decisions like road paving.

Maybe it has something to do with what SRBP already noted about capital works under the Tories.  So much of the “stimulus” and the infrastructure program was nothing more than regular public works spending announced and re-announced and announced over again.  Through it all, though, it appears that massive cost over-runs and inexplicable delays measured in years are routine for government public works projects. 

Some of the most embarrassing of the administrative messes cost the provincial government a cabinet minister in 2009. Remember the Lewisporte and Fleur de Lys health care centres and Paul Oram? That was about capital works decision-making within one of the departments that refused to turn over documents to the Auditor General.

Whatever the reason, one thing is clear:  early on in his tenure, while Danny Williams could keep up the old cabinet documents ploy for six months, six years later, the public won’t put up with that sort of political tomfoolery any more from any one.

- srbp -

Unsound financial management – the Dunderdale acknowledgement #nlpoli

It’s not hard to find the toad of truth in the swamp otherwise known as the ruling Conservatives’ record on public spending since they took office in 2003.

You can find it because since 2009 they like to admit every now and then that their spending habits are “unsustainable."

As nottawa reminds everyone, Premier Kathy Dunderdale has now acknowledged that:

“[o]ur spending at the rate that we've been doing over the last eight years — and it has been very necessary for a number of very good reasons to do that — is not sustainable in the long run.” [CBC online story]

But when Mark claims that “[u]p to now, Tories (and others) have disagreed with that assessment” he is not exactly right.

In 2009, Paul Oram was the first Tory cabinet minister to acknowledge publicly that “unsustainable” thing.

As your humble e-scribbler noted at the time, those words must have received the blessing of the Premier’s Office since cabinet ministers under Danny Williams couldn’t break wind without permission from Hisself’s posse.

Fnance minister Tom Marshall.chimed in with an unsustainability admission.*

And then they just kept up the same old habits.

It’s not surprising therefore that the public sector unions just won’t react to Kathy Dunderdale’s comments that the unions must not expect big wage increases in the upcoming round of negotiations.  Local CBC has been pounding away for a couple of days trying to make a story out of this but so far they’ve come up with zip.

The unions know the sad Tory record of saying one thing and doing another.  They also know that the Tories are still in a pre-leadership phase.  Danny’s gone.  Kathy’s a fill-in. 

If they thought about it for a moment, they’d also know that the local economic boom the Tories like to praise themselves for is actually a function of public sector spending.

That’s right.

It isn’t oil.

It’s a massive increase in the number of public servants since 2003,  fantastic wage increases, and unprecedented increases in  public spending. Roads and buildings are just part of it.

That unsustainable public spending is what has been sustaining the provincial economy. Under the Tories, the provincial economy is considerably more fragile than it’s ever been before. 

Any effort by the Tories to get their spending under control – to get it to sustainable levels - will put a chill through the place.  That will inevitably lead to a chill in the local economy.  The chill won’t just hit St. John’s where most of the public servants and the construction industry lives.  The chill will be felt everywhere and that will put a chill on the Tories’ political standing.

All that is the answer to Doug Letto’s questions in his essay on the “massive obstacles” Kathy Dunderdale is facing:

Can she and the government say no? Consistently?

No.

And no.

And everyone knows it, including Kathy.

Muskrat Falls, incidentally, is nothing more than the best example of a party addicted to unsustainable public spending.  The project will increase the public debt to new record levels but that is irrelevant to the province’s Tories.  They want all those jobs to keep the economy humming.

You can easily find the toad of fiscal truth in the swamp of Tory financial mismanagement since 2003. The truth is – as Kathy admitted herself – their spending is unsustainable.

The part Kathy didn’t say is that she won’t be able to do anything but keep it up.

- srbp -

* Changed wording to clear up sentence meaning in the context of the post.  Original post had wording left over from earlier draft.

“…particularly hypocritical…” #nlpoli

Tories bums in the province must be a wee bit tighter than usual this week.

The province’s Dippers – new Democrats to the uninitiated – filed a lawsuit this week challenging the constitutional validity of a Troy law passed in 2007 that lets people vote when there are no elections.

You can tells Tory bums are tight.  No, it’s not because of because of the agitated yelping of the local dogs who, alone among God’s creatures, can hear hypersonic flatulence.

Rather it is because of the number of Tories belching verbal flatulence against the New Democrats.

For starters, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the Telegram that

“Ms. Michael’s about-face is disturbing on a number of fronts — first of all, her flip-flop on this matter shows a lack of principles and, secondly, rather than taking responsibility for her actions, she tried to blame her staff for not doing adequate research….”

An argument that starts by tossing aside a cabinet minister’s usual reluctance to comment on matters that are before the courts.

And then to start by impugning the personal integrity of one’s opponent.  The vicious, petty ad hominem slur:  there’s something you usually don’t hear from Tories in this province. 

So sad are these comments:  sad because Jerome Kennedy, the leading light of the administration, and one of the better cabinet ministers of the past couple of decades, has nothing of substance so he must instead rely on this sort of foolishness.

Sadder still are his words because Jerome knows that in the Tory version of the house of Assembly,  opposition parties do not have the time to research bills properly and investigate them.  the Tories won’t open the House or allow any time for such things. 

More on that later.

Then there is another Tory who did a stint as the last caller on the morning open line show on Friday.  He dismissed the lawsuit as being “particularly hypocritical” of NDP leader Lorraine Michael. Back in 2007, you see, the NDP leader voted for the Tory bill that made their special ballot foolishness the law of the land.

Said Tory claimed that if Michael was “legitimately concerned” then she would have used the “mechanisms available to her’ to suggest amendments to the election law.

Where might she do this?

Why, the House of Assembly, our Tory friend insisted.

This would be the same House of Assembly that has come to resemble a legislative house of ill repute under the Tories.  They ram through a handful of bills through in the scarce number of days they let the place open.  Parliamentary oversight committees don’t exist. 

And even if all that weren’t true, the Tory on the radio knew full well that he and his colleagues would vote down any amendment any opposition politician came up with, just because.

Coming from these Tories, any talk of relying on the legislature would be disingenuous at best

These are the same Tories whose current leader has criticised the House for being useless when it comes to dealing with the truth where the real problem has been her own demonstrable distance from truthfulness in the past.

Their former Glorious Leader routinely made a mockery of accountability, himself, and once mused out loud that it might be time to get rid of free speech in the legislature once and for all.

The thing is, the Old Man wasn’t joking.

What is a bit of a joke though is that this whole onslaught of Tories is in defence of Clyde Jackman, the Tory who won his seat in the last general election by a handful of special ballots. 

Where Jerome might be one of only a couple of high flyers in the current cabinet, Jackman is definitely at the other end of the scale.  He might not be the most incompetent minister to hold office since 2003.  The competition  - Charlene Johnson, Kathy Dunderdale, Paul Oram, Dave Denine to name a few - has been extraordinarily stiff even in a province used to having some especially stunned-arse cabinet ministers.  You’d be safe, though, if you suggested that Jackman would certainly be in the Top Three.

Jackman’s abilities are not the joke here, though.  Rather, the joke is that the lawsuit against the special ballot voting provisions came as a result of the fact that Jackman won a tight race by relying on them, as it turned out.

He wound up in that tight spot as a result of some rather clumsy political manoeuvring by Jackman and his colleagues on the fishery and the Marystown fish plant, the Marystown shipyard and likely the government’s botched response to a hurricane or two.

Now his Tory colleagues are employing equally clumsy  - embarrassingly clumsy - political claims to back him up.

And while that may not be particularly hypocritical, it is particularly funny.

Damned funny.

- 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.

- srbp -

Truth in small things #nlpoli

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- srbp -

15 ideas (and more) for a stronger Newfoundland and Labrador – Introduction

In her first speech to the House of Assembly as Premier – which she and her staff erroneously and arrogantly like to call her inaugural speech – Kathy Dunderdale claimed that, since 2003, she and her party had “demonstrated an unwavering commitment to fiscal responsibility”.

The words turned up again in the Speech from the Throne and found their way into the finance minister’s budget speech for 2011.

There was nothing surprising about this.

The claim of fiscal responsibility, of having transformed the province’s finances from catastrophe to prosperity is the one thing that the provincial Conservatives claim as their singular achievement since taking power.

Last week the people of Newfoundland and Labrador learned that  - in the words of a famous politician – nothing could be further from the truth.

Through the 1980s and early 1990s successive Liberal and Conservative administrations managed to steer the provincial government successfully through treacherous financial times.  They laid firm foundations for future prosperity based on a diversified economy.  Included in that diversified economy was supposed to be an oil and gas industry that included local companies capitalising on local knowledge and experience to compete globally.

“One day the sun will shine,” Conservative Brian Peckford said, “and have not will be no more.”

“I can’t wait for the day”, said Liberal Clyde Wells less than a decade later, ”when we don’t get a penny” in federal hand-outs.

Last week, Memorial University economist Wade Locke described a future for Newfoundland and Labrador that is far bleaker than anything that either Wells or Peckford faced.  As the Telegram reported:

Unless something changes, Locke said the government’s debt could be up to $10 billion within the next 10 years. By 2020, he said the government could run a $1.6 billion deficit on the provincial budget.

“If we don’t start dealing with it, it will become quickly unmanageable,” he told reporters after the event.

The situation is far bleaker because the government is in this state despite having unprecedented income. It is far bleaker because the problem comes not as the result of global economic circumstances or forces beyond anyone’s control.  The financial mess is directly the result of actions taken by the provincial government since 2003.

Regular readers will know the story all too well.  Your humble e-scribbler first raised concerns in 2006 and each year after that as concerns grew.  Telegram editor Russell Wangersky’s column this weekend reminded everyone of his own comments over the years. As Wangersky notes, the province’s auditor general has also warned about the current administration’s spending. So too did former cabinet minister Paul Oram and at least one of the provincial government’s bond rating agencies.

With their one claim to fame now shown to be a complete fraud, the provincial Conservatives have even more problems to worry about as they head toward this fall’s general election.  The truth about their record of financial irresponsibility only compounds their dwindling public support.  Inevitably it will only add to public unease at the Conservative plan to increase the public debt beyond what Locke has forecast and at the same time saddle domestic electricity consumers with ever-increasing electricity prices while selling cheap power outside the province.

Even if the Conservatives could admit the province faces a financial mess of their making, they would be hard-pressed to do anything about it.  Election years are never good years for an incumbent government to face problems.  What’s more, Kathy Dunderdale remains a place-holder leader put in place via a backroom deal to avoid a possibly contentious leadership contest during an election year.  If voters re-elect the Conservatives under Dunderdale, they can bet on a new Premier within four years.

For their part, the New Democrats won’t be promising to do anything to clean up the mess. Federation of labour president Lana Payne already dismissed Locke’s analysis out of hand.  With the province’s labour unions taking a reactionary position, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael will follow suit, first rejecting Locke’s assessment and most likely proposing policies that will make the bad situation that much worse.

While the Liberals under Yvonne Jones were quick to endorse Locke’s idea of a task force to study appropriate financial policies, it still isn’t clear what sorts of policy ideas the Liberal party will offer heading into the fall election.  They will likely be tempted to follow along with the others and offer ideas that look like what everyone else is talking about.

It wouldn’t be the first time.  Political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador seldom offer bold and innovative thinking.  They tend to rely on the hackneyed - blaming Ottawa in one way or another is a popular distraction – or the grandiosely ridiculous like Danny Williams 2003 obsession with an economically foolish stunnel to the mainland.

This post is the start of a series on some options for the future of Newfoundland and Labrador.  The next post will set the table, as it were, by describing the domestic, national and international environment in which the province must operate. Some of that will be a quick summary of other posts.  Some of that will be new.

After that, successive posts will explore a series of ideas for change.  They cover the economy,  government and society. They are offered to stimulate further discussion.

Some of you may notice that the series goes back to one started in 2008.  While the series never got beyond the first post,  the ideas didn’t die. Now that more people are seeing the situation as it is, perhaps this is a better time to talk about options and ideas.

The future is not bleak.

The future is ripe with opportunity.

We just have to be open to taking the first step toward a future that works.

- srbp -

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

- srbp -

For the world is hollow…

Okay so a bunch of people are spilling ink or pixels or whatever over a bunch of new members of parliament elected in Quebec as if they were somehow a special breed of politicians significantly different from any others anywhere else in the country.

Bar managers who have never visited their ridings and don’t speak the dominant language of the riding.

Four university students.

All New Democrats elected in Quebec.

You know the story.

And now a bunch of other people are pointing out that they really aren’t such an odd bunch after all.

Lysiane Gagnon has a column in the Globe that Bill Rowe would crib if he was still column-writing.  She rattles off the rather impressive credentials of some of the newly minted politicians.

Susan Delacourt has a blog post over at the Star that is a wee bit more cynical:

Forgive me for dashing any lingering  illusions, but the CV has almost nothing to do with winning and losing elections. And it has even less to do with how well MPs fare once they arrive on Parliament Hill.

Geography and gender are equal, if not more important considerations in choosing cabinet.  Good looks and an ability to repeat party talking points  will score MPs  those  sought-after spots in Question Period and on TV panels. Doing what you're told counts more than talking about what you know.

Gagnon and Delacourt and all the people who are gobsmacked at the greenness of some of the new MPs are each correct, in their own way.

Anyone out there who thought politicians have all been budding Nobel laureates are basically as full of crap as the cynics who dismiss them all as the progeny of several successive generations of first cousin intermarriage.

Hello, Canadians, these are the sorts of people you’ve been electing to represent you since at least 1867.

They are – not surprisingly  - no better than the rest of us. 

Nor are they any worse.

Bit of a shocker, eh?

They also aren’t necessarily any different from the politicians we’ve been electing at the provincial or federal level in the past decade or so, at least.  Since 2003 in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, we’ve had a steady stream of politicians whose previous interest in or knowledge of major issues affecting the province has been a bit sketchy.  Former cabinet minister Paul Oram demonstrated that pretty clearly in a couple of interviews during a trip to Georgia. 

He really isn’t alone.  You can find similar displays of fundamental ignorance from former finance minister Loyola Sullivan talking about Equalization or Danny Williams and Charlene Johnson discussing Abitibi’s history in the province or any of a number of pols talking about hydro-electric development in Labrador.

This is not like missing a question on Jeopardy. Politicians get to vote on the laws that govern our lives. Government spending. Criminal code.  Access to information.  If these politicians don’t really know how things work in the world, then you can figure out that – at least for a while – they are going to make a few mistakes.

Big mistakes, maybe.

Or they’ll be more likely to go with the flow rather than challenge dodgy ideas, like say spending public money without any accountability.

Like in the infamous House of Assembly spending scandal.  How many of the newbie politicians took to the improper spending like ducks to the proverbial water only to claim that the rules they found didn’t say you couldn’t do those sorts of things?  Pretty much all of them.

Now the people just elected to the House of Commons are, for the most part, a clever bunch.  Odds are that they’ll learn.  Odds are that many of them will successful politicians.

And in four years time, many of them will be ex-politicians looking for a new job. 

Just as they reach the point they should have been at when they started.

- srbp -

The unsustainable lightness of Tom Marshall

Tom Marshall keeps a tight grip on the provincial government’s purse strings.

He has to do that.

The damn things won’t stay that wide open on their own.

In presenting the provincial government’s budget to the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Marshall announced that the Conservative administration of Kathy Dunderdale would continue the practice of unsustainable public spending set under Dunderdale’s predecessor, Danny Williams.

Overall government spending will grow by 4.9%;  that’s about twice the rate of inflation. 

A windfall in oil prices directly attributable to turmoil in the Middle East helped to erase a forecast cash deficit of $959 million and turn it into a modest cash surplus of $133 million. (Estimates 2011 p. iv)

For the past two years, Marshall claimed the government’s profligate spending came from the need to spend cash to fuel an economic recovery. 

Now he’s got a different excuse:  we can afford it.  Marshall told reporters that the provincial economy was “sizzling”. That’s nonsense, of course.  The economy is actually becoming increasingly fragile and public spending is sustained by cash coming from a volatile source, namely oil. Marshall seems to know that just like he knows the public debt is something he should be reducing.

Oddly, Marshall never seems to do anything about it. 

Marshall forecast that the province’s net debt will increase in 2011, largely the result of continued growth in unfunded pension and benefits liabilities in the public service.

And that’s despite repeated warnings from the province’s auditor general among others.  In 2009 a provincial cabinet minister resigned unexpectedly citing concerns about unsustainable public spending.  Earlier this year, Auditor General John Noseworthy repeated the same concerns;  interestingly enough he did it in a report on Fiscal Year 2009, the same year Paul Oram left cabinet.

Two years later, the provincial government is still on the same path.

- srbp -

Related:

• Fragile Economy:  Staying the course
• Fragile Economy:  reductio ad argentum
• Fragile Economy:  …and two steps back
• Fragile Economy:  now three steps back and loving it
• Fragile Economy:  hard numbers
• Fragile Economy: The Public Sector

Cleary to unquit for NDP again?

Ryan Cleary, former newspaper editor, former talk show host and former NDP candidate is considering another run at federal politics six months, after he packed it in as the New Democratic Party candidate in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

Cleary carried the orange banner in the 2008 federal election, lost that one, then took up a job hosting a late night talk show.  Although the gab-fest was well suited to his talkative style, Cleary quit that gig to spend more time with his family and then sought the NDP nomination again.

Last October he gave that up to go back to journalism and now he is apparently considering an offer from the NDP to run again for them in St. John’s South-Mount Pearl.

Talk about on-again, off-again.

A campaign involving Cleary, Liberal incumbent Siobhan Coady and reputed Tory heavyweight Loyola Sullivan could turn out to be an interesting race.  Cleary has the potential to split up the nationalist Conservative vote especially among local Conservatives who are still can’t get beyond the whole demon Harper thing. 

In 2008, Danny Williams’ gang tried to drive the Tories to Coady.  Four prominent members of his caucus, including Kathy Dunderdale and Paul Oram, went door-to-door for Coady.  It didn’t work.  The local Blue Crew that did turn out opted for Cleary, instead.

Cleary also might not be able to count on quit so much spill-over help from Jack Harris in St. John’s East.  The darling of the East End will be in a tighter race of his own against Jerry Byrne. 

As a result, Jack might not be able to give any serious help to the fellow some will soon be affectionately referring to as Yo-Yo Maw.

- srbp -

Finance minister cops to unsustainable spending

The provincial government hasn’t really been managing the public purse in a sustainable and fiscally responsible way.

Your humble e-scribbler has been saying that since 2006.  There have been plenty of charts and graphs to drive the point home.

In 2009, Paul Oram said that government spending is unsustainable, but unfortunately he said it on the way out the door as he left politics. 

But you don’t have to just accept that just because you read it here.

Now you know that government spending is unsustainable because no less an authority than Tom Marshall – the province’s finance minister – is saying that in every single one of his pre-budget consultations.

Take a look at the slide deck for his presentation.  You’ve seen similar slides here and in some of the conventional media maybe.  You’ll find the information is a wee bit familiar and that’s because the figures your humble e-scribbler uses and the ones Tom is using come from the same place:  the provincial finance department.

But Tom’s slides are better because they are accurate and up-to-date. Now Tom doesn’t give you all the information you’d but what is there is enough to scare the bee-jeebers out of any doubters out there.

Before we get into the details, let’s just say that True Tory Believers should turn away and go play Free Cell or something.  They really should not read on.  Fan Clubbers should really not read beyond this point.  They are putting their heads in jeopardy.  Their whole world only keeps making sense because they have convinced themselves that nothing at BP is real, that it is all wrong and just some sort of partisan plot. 

So if they keep reading to the end, your humble e-scribbler cannot be held liable for the resulting carnage as their skulls collapse.  After all, if your faithful servant says these things only because he is a Liberal and then Tom Marshall says the same things then either Tom is telling whoppers or I am a Tory or…

You can see how easily they could wind up in the Waterford trying to make those two things fit into the same twisted mental space.

Anyway, here goes.

This slide from near the end of Marshall’s presentation shows the net program expenses – everything except debt servicing and capital costs – compared with the consumer price index and the growth in the economy. This is a really good comparison because it shows the changes in the core government spending without things like the “stimulus” capital spending.

This is the sort of spending that would be very hard to cut if revenue dropped drastically.  And you can really see the point if you recall that so much of the economy – 30% or so of the labour force – is paid out of net program expenses. This is your health care spending as well.

Now just because Tom Marshall used it, let’s look at the slide showing the comparison between the growth in gross health care spending – with capital works tossed in – and the consumer price index.  This slide together with the one above illustrates the astronomic growth in spending over the past four years.

 

This slide also shows you a comparison which pretty much destroys any argument that the rate of gro9wth was the only thing Tom and his friends could have done.  You’ve heard all the excuses about catch-up and making up for previous neglect or that costs are just going up because things are booming.

Don’t look at 2009-2010 because that’s the recession year when the costs of goods and services didn’t grow very much at all.  Look at the two years before that.  The provincial government could have boosted spending by double the rate of inflation and they still would have boosted spending by a huge amount.  Instead, they went for triple or more.  in 2007, the year of the last election, they boosted spending by what looks like six or seven times the rate of inflation.

And all that spending was built on what Tom Marshall acknowledges are windfalls from the price of oil.  They are windfalls driven by price and by production of a non-renewable resource.  All wonderful to spend and spend more as long as the cash is rolling in.  But when the prices don’t keep skyrocketing and the money isn;t flowing in, you have a hard time driving spending up at the rate people want.

That’s the definition of unsustainable spending.

Not surprisingly, you can see all the problems in the final slide Marshall used in which he laid out his “challenges”.

That second bullet, the one about high dependence on resource revenues is the bit about price and production.  Great going up but prices do go down.

Skip down a bit and you’ll see the other point:  there’s pressure to continue spending increases and people are used to seeing growth of nine percent on average over the past seven years.  Inflation averaged around two percent each year or thereabouts over the same period.

All the stuff that comes before this points to that bullet about the “Need to control expenditure growth”.  Problem is that expectations are there for continued growth and those expectations are on top of the real need that comes from having an aging population and that is on top of the commitments to boost public spending on megaprojects like “equity” stakes. 

If that weren’t bad enough the combination of election year plus the unsettled Conservative leadership combine to make it very difficult for politicians to make the tough choices and actually control spending.

Remember 2007?

If you’ve forgotten already, scroll back up and look.

A very popular leader with a reputation for toughness and they still couldn’t spend in a responsible, prudent manner.

And if all that weren’t enough to make you cringe, take a look at that last point.  There you have the provincial government’s great plan to reduce public debt:  they will pay it off as it comes due.  That means about $200 to $300 million a year.

Divide that into the $12 billion gross debt and you can figure out how many decades will take  - theoretically - to get to zero at that rate.  Yeah don’t bother.  Let’s just sum it up by saying the current administration does not have a debt reduction plan at all.  Not really.  They don’t.  If things get really bad, they can just roll debt over and that’s what governments have done over the past couple of decades. They could pay off some debt as it came due;  otherwise they just spent as they needed and ran up the debt bill.

We aren’t done yet, though.

That middle bullet about a “requirement” to borrow to pay for the Lower Churchill.

It is only a requirement because the provincial government already made the decision to add another $4.0 to $6.0 billion to the public debt.  They don’t absolutely have to do it and, frankly, the deal as laid out currently is one that doesn’t make any sense.  It would be a huge risk for any government or private sector company that had a healthy balance sheet.  Even with a federal loan guarantee, it is sheer foolishness for the province with the biggest per capita debt load in the country.

Upside:  admitting there’s a problem could mean that Tom Marshall and his colleagues will start sorting out the mess they’ve made.

Downside:  Tom’s admitted to some or all of this in the past in the pre-budget consultations only to bring down a budget each time that did exactly the opposite of what was needed to fix the problems. Only Danny’s gone:  the rest of the people responsible for seven years of unsustainable public spending and unsound management of the public purse are still in charge.

We can hope for the best but experience tells us all to expect the worst.

- srbp -