The Bunker Door is Welded Shut #nlpoli

Kathy Dunderdale cannot quit as leader of the provincial Conservative Party,  says Fairity O’Brien in an interview with NTV.

He stresses it over and over.  The caucus is solidly behind her.

He stresses it so much – right down to telling you that he wants to stress the message in this interview – that where you’d start to believe that what he is saying is the literal truth:  Kathy wants to go but the caucus won’t let her.

Montana Time #nlpoli

Both CBC provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane and Telegram editor Russell Wangersky had opinion pieces this weekend telling the provincial Conservatives that they have a big political problem now that they are in third place in a CRA poll. 

The Conservatives need to change what they are doing.

Wangersky had some specific suggestions on changes.  Cochrane added the tidbit of news that there is a cabal  inside the Tory caucus that is growing increasingly frustrated with the inaction of people running the cabinet and caucus.  They live inside The Bubble apparently.

This is pretty much the same thing SRBP has been on about for the past year or so.  The Tories are in a hole.  They need to stop digging.

Great minds think alike, eventually.

The fools differ.

Ministerial Whimsy #nlpoli

Ever wonder why the provincial government passes laws and then never puts them into force?

Like the Sustainable Development Act that the Conservatives pushed through the House in 2007 and then abandoned.

Or the Court Security Act they passed in 2004, ignored for six years, then brought back with a couple of minor changes to the wording, repealed the old Act they’d never implemented, and passed through the House the new one as…wait for it… the Court Security Act, 2010. <fake dramatic music noise>Dunt…dunt… dah.

No planning and priorities: Conservative cabinet committees - 2013 #nlpoli

There’s one little gem in James McLeod’s pile of censored orders in council that isn’t censored.

It dates from January 2013 and gives the current list of cabinet committees.

There’s the economic policy committee:

There’s the social policy committee:


There’s the treasury board:

And there’s the routine matters committee:

Charlene Johnson and Tom Hedderson also sit on that routine committee.

There’s a curious omission in this list and it doesn’t appear to be a case where the committee make-up didn’t change after the cabinet shuffle with Jerome Kennedy and Tom Marshall.

There’s no planning and priorities committee, apparently. That’s odd because P and P is usually the key cabinet committee chaired by the Premier and responsible for the strategic direction of government. Kathy used to have one in her cabinet.  Every cabinet in Canada uses a planning and priorities committee.  Most have had one for the past three decades or more.

At some point, the Newfoundland and Labrador one seems to have vanished without an effective replacement.

That would explain a great deal.

It would explain, for example, why the Premier often seems to be unaware of what is going on inside her government.  She wouldn’t know because she doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the running of cabinet.  And that, more than anything else, is what the Premier is supposed to be doing. 

Rather than being the boss, Kathy Dunderdale often appears to be nothing more than the government’s official spokesperson, the dead parrot as it were.

In the absence of a P and P committee,  cabinet would have to hope that the key committee chairs could sort out among themselves what to do.  They would be:

• Joan Shea, chair of economic policy,
• Susan Sullivan, chair of social policy, and,
• Jerome Kennedy, president of treasury board.

Whatever the government is doing, these three would know about it and approve of it. 
In December 2010, cabinet had a P and P committee.  It’s members were:

-srbp-

Creating a Baby Boom. Not. #nlpoli

Flip over to the Occupy NL blog and you’ll see a critique of some recent SRBP posts on the provincial government’s bonus cash for live babies program.

Let’s summarise the critique and then go from there.  While this summary will get you through this post, to be fair and to make sure that nothing gets missed, go read the full post with all the charts included at Occupy NL.

The author takes issue with the SRBP approach in the initial post in the December series, which looked at the total number of births. He contends that we should look at “the average number of live births a woman can expect in her lifetime based on age-specific fertility rates in a given year.  Secondly, his analysis doesn't acknowledge that declining birth rates is a trend nation-wide and that provincial rates should be compared to what is happening in other provinces.”

The DG 3 Dog and Pony Show #nlpoli

Big Show.

Room full of people all there because they have a direct interest in the project.

Live streaming by the news media.

And all to release the latest cost estimates for Muskrat Falls.  The show was so big, however, that it looked like someone had decided to puff the whole thing up to make it appear much more important than it was.

That turned out to be a fairly accurate impression.

Darin King and the Tory Charm Offensive #nlpoli

A couple of the exceedingly small changes in the recent cabinet shuffle came out of the Bill 29 fiasco.  Felix Collins went from the relatively low profile job of justice minister to the complete obscurity of intergovernmental affairs.

Everyone saw that.

And over in another corner, there was a switcheroo people didn’t notice quite as much.  Jerome Kennedy gave up the job of directing Government business in the House so that Darin King could take over.

There was no doubt Jerome had completely frigged up in the House, just like there’s no doubt the Tories are way down in the polls.  The two went hand in hand all last session and indeed, for most of the last year or more.

Darin King offers no chance of changing that.

One fine Friday afternoon, or change versus more of the same #nlpoli

A little over a week ago, Kathy Dunderdale told the provincial Conservative annual meeting that her administration is overspending. Dunderdale acknowledged yet again what she and her predecessor have admitted since 2009. 

The provincial economy is overly dependent on offshore oil, Dunderdale told her fellow Tories.

Dunderdale and the Tories are at historic lows in the polls for a majority Tory government.  Dunderdale announced a cabinet shuffle to her caucus months ago and to the public weeks ago.

After weeks of waiting, Dunderdale finally changed her cabinet on Friday afternoon.

Sex and the cabinet #nlpoli

If all the speculation about a cabinet shuffle in the near future turns out to be true, it will be interesting to see if Premier Kathy Dunderdale breaks the fundamentally sexist nature of her current cabinet.

Kathy Dunderdale is justifiably proud of being the first woman premier in Newfoundland and Labrador’s history.  The fact that she is the first woman to hold the job is what makes her choice of cabinet ministers stand out a bit. Frankly, it’s a wee bit odd that no one has mentioned a curious pattern that appeared.

More mumbo on the mumbo-jumbo #nlpoli

Keith Russell apologized on Tuesday for comments he made a week ago about the religious beliefs of some aboriginal people in Labrador:

I don’t buy into the mumbo jumbo about the trail leading to the Muskrat Falls site as being sacred ground. You can romanticize and sensationalize that particular piece of land all you want, but it is a resource.

As CBC reported, Russell issued a written statement:

With regards to my recent comment about Muskrat Falls, I apologize for my poor choice of words,

There it is: apology.  Job done.

Well… yeah but read a bit more.

Osborne quits Tory caucus #nlpoli

Tom Osborne is part of the old townie Tory establishment in Newfoundland and Labrador.

He quit Kathy Dunderdale’s party on Thursday to sit as an independent member of the House of Assembly.  Osborne’s announcements sent a shock through the political community since no one saw it coming.  He cited a series of grievances he’s had with the way Dunderdale is running the party, although he never referred to the Premier by name.

Osborne’s announcement was a neat bookend to the week in which CBC’s David Cochrane reported on leaked news of a pending cabinet shuffle.  As SRBP noted, that sort of leak suggested that Dunderdale’s administration was “in far more serious political trouble than it first appeared.”

Polls, Politicians, and Messages #nlpoli

Cabinet is where the real political power sits in a parliamentary democracy. Ministers have enormous power both individually and collectively.

Only the first minister – the prime minister or premier – gets to decide who sits at the cabinet table. That’s a power first ministers are always careful to preserve because it is the ultimate expression of their control over their caucus.  People want to get to cabinet and the only way in is through the premier.

Changes in cabinet are often rumoured but until they happen, they are not real.  Only the premier and her closest, most trusted advisors know what is coming.  They only tell the people involved at the last possible moment.  The expectation  - often a clearly spoken expectation - is that the people who know will keep their mouths firmly shut. 

So when CBC provincial affairs reporter David Cochrane can report that a cabinet shuffle is imminent, attributing information to multiple unnamed but apparently high-ranking Tories, you can understand that Kathy Dunderdale’s administration is in far more serious political trouble than it first appeared.

That and a buck fifty… #nlpoli

Former natural resources minister Shawn Skinner thinks that the Progressive Conservatives can turn around their current abysmal polling numbers if once they get beyond Muskrat Falls and turn their attention to other things.

Skinner was part of the political panel this weekend for On Point with David Cochrane.

Well,  that and a buck fifty and you have a cup of coffee.

So then what will they do? #nlpoli

Let’s make no bones about it. 

Even at the deepest darkest moments after the death of Meech Lake, federal-provincial relations were never as bad as they are right now between the crowd in Ottawa and the crowd in Sin Jawns.

Danny Williams put all his political credibility into his anything but Conservative campaign.  He pledged to campaign across Canada to defeat the federal Conservatives.

Williams lost.

Big time.

Sure he changed his goal at the end – as his failure became painfully obvious - and all the local media just repeated his reimagined version of the ABC campaign, but the truth is Williams screwed himself and the rest of us politically with his little ego-stunt.

Kathy Dunderdale decided the best way to fix that was to campaign for Harper in the next election.  Okay, well she thought it best to say she would campaign.  Whether she did or not depends on who you talk to.

And that worked out so well that the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador can’t get the Prime Minister of Canada to return her phone calls.

The latest idea Kathy had was to give the deputy minister of the intergovernmental affairs secretariat a new job.  He will spend an unspecified amount of time “conducting a horizontal review of federal-provincial agreements to determine their efficiency and effectiveness.”

Does that mean Sean will lie down while he studies?

Seriously.

WTF is a “horizontal review”?

Now this is such an important initiative that the only word of it is in a news release announcing yet another shuffle around of members of the senior public service.  Sean gets this new gig.  Meanwhile, someone will fill in for him. 

No word on what criteria Sean will use to determine efficiency and effectiveness or indeed what federal-provincial agreements they are including in the review.  Most likely it is the deals that shift federal cash into provincial hands so the hands can hand it out to other provincial hands.

These agreements cover things like the federal gas tax transfer to municipalities,  money for bridges,  and big transfers for health, social assistance,  and education.

We are talking big money, too. Last year, federal transfers to the provincial government totalled more than $1.0 billion.

No word on how long Sean will take.

And there’s no word about what the government will do with Sean’s report once he gets it done.

Perhaps Kathy will call Steve and…

Errr… maybe that might not be such a good idea.

- 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 -

The rewards of planning an organization #nlpoli

While the Liberals in this province shuffle aimlessly toward the political gloom, their Nova Scotia brothers and sisters actually have enough cash in the bank that they can take $2.3 million and put it into a new thin-tank.

Nova Scotia’s Liberals have long been dogged by their controversial trust fund. 

But the Grits finally put the decades-old issue to bed at their annual general meeting in Halifax on Saturday. 

Liberal Party president John Gillis said the party is divesting itself of $2.3 million in the fund to help establish a think-tank, the Allan J. MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Government. 

Gillis told the meeting the new institute will honour a distinguished Nova Scotian who has dedicated his life to public service. A retired senator, MacEachen was a long-time federal Liberal cabinet minister and is an Order of Canada recipient.

Just think about that.

Meanwhile, the local Liberals are the better part of a million bucks in the hole with not much chance of paying it off in the near future.

- srbp -

Dunderball - Traffic for Jan 10-14, 2010

Who would have thought a mere two months ago that the ruling Conservatives could be embroiled in a political clusterfrack entirely of their own making?

Who would have thought that Danny Williams would be parking in the Confed Building parking lot with Kathy Dunderdale the day before a surprise cabinet shuffle?

Well, all of that has gone to making this another big week for Bond papers traffic.  Not surprisingly, all but one of this week’s top 10 posts are all about the bizarre psychodrama that is the province’s Conservatives.

The other one is an op-ed from Kelvin Parsons that the conventionals carried and the Liberals sent along here as well. Any of the other parties who want to do the same thing are welcome to send their submissions along as well for consideration.

1. Brad and Circuses
2. Is anyone surprised?
3. Logically Challenged Conservatives
4. Cabana candidacy causes Connie caucus consternation
5. Dunderball Run!
6. The persistence of patronage politics
7. The caucus’ worst nightmare
8. Kremlinology 29:  Easybake Tories
9. Cabinet Shuffle Bored
10. A sweet energy deal for someone

- srbp -

Cabinet Shuffle Bored

The back room plan to slide Kathy Dunderdale into the Premier’s job isn’t going so well.

The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight is back shooting itself in the foot.

Kathy Dunderdale meets with Danny Williams one day and then the next day there is a surprise cabinet shuffle that Dunderdale explains with some lame comment about getting fresh blood and shifting ministers around to give them experience.

That is most definitely NOT what this is about.

Oh and to be really sure, you can guarantee that it is not about Dunderdale “picking her key lieutenants” as CBC has been presenting it. None of the portfolios involved are biggies.  This is purely a shuffling around at the bottom end of the cabinet list.

So what is it about?

Well, for Derrick Dalley it is a huge promotion that can only mean he is in serious political trouble in his district.  Danny’s coat-tails were barely enough to get him elected last time and without the Old Man, that seat is likely to flip.  This way Dalley gets a nice boost in pay and a higher profile.

Dalley has no background in business so sticking him in that portfolio makes no sense at all.

Charlene Johnson got a sweet little promotion after years of slogging it out in a  department that is usually a starter department for ministers.  She’s a loyal Dan-ite so giving her a higher profile helps bolster the back-room deal crowd:  she takes direction very well.  Johnson’s never shown signs of understanding the portfolio she had and she’s unlikely to inject anything other than further listlessness in a new department that is still struggling.

Here’s hoping there are no more giant controversies in a department known to generate nasty headlines. Charlene had a tough time even with Danny on the ground to shore her up.  With the Old Man out of the picture, she could be a major disaster waiting to happen. 

Ross Wiseman slides downward to environment and conservation.  He isn’t likely to run again so this just keeps around one of the Dan-ite stalwarts until Dunderdale gets through the current crisis and the spring budget.

Darin King gets a huge demotion.  The leadership hopeful and likely internal dissident got the big ole bitch slap for something.  Like he’s paying a double price that includes a bill for the shitstorm he caused by trying to do his old job at Eastern School District.  Darin’s school reorganization is a cock-up of monumental proportions since it has served only to agitate voters needlessly in seats the Conservatives normally would call safe. 

Joan Burke is being called back to the limelight likely to clean up Darin’s mess.  It’s a novel concept and logically, Burke’s arrival should mean the plan goes in the bin.  Burke’s usual approach would be like adding gasoline to a political fire and even Dunderdale couldn’t blunder that badly. 

Putting her back in charge of education also gives Burke the chance to raise her profile again in anticipation of the leadership race that will inevitably follow the next election. 

Everyone knows Dunderdale is just a placeholder.  Well, everyone except people who think she is promoting her key lieutenants for the next election.

Sheesh, what a head-slapper of an idea.

- srbp -

Scrum Update:  Take a watch of the post-swearing in scrum. The most over-used line – after Charlene talking about “the children” and how important they are -  is the effort to portray this as some sort of renewal and refreshment.

The cliché is so over-worn that all you’d have to say is “deck chairs” but everyone will know instantly how true it is as a description of Thursday’s cabinet shuffle.

As for Darin King, notice that he spoke last of all and started by thanking Dunderdale for the privilege of serving.  If anyone has any doubt that this guy is being punished then let them watch the scrum and seen the proof.

Kremlinology 26: Magma Displacement

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

Magma displacement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh yes.  Some places, plural.

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

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

- srbp -

When the status quo is not an option, Newfoundland and Labrador version

A year before the next provincial election and Premier Danny Williams shifted around a couple of bodies in his cabinet.

What is telling about this event is not so much what happened but what the Premier said about it. Aside from the platitudes about the three people who got new jobs, the Premier said the shuffle came as a result of the death of one of his ministers. That’s no doubt quite literally true, but the clear implication is that if Diane Whelan had not contracted cancer last year and, sadly, passed away a few days ago, he’d have left everything exactly as it is.

No change. 

No shuffling. 

No new direction.

Just more of the same.

Take that as confirmation that,as Bond Papers has noted before, we are in a strange pre-election period coupled with a pre-leadership spell. Ordinarily a party and a leader headed for his third term would already be looking at bringing in a new crop of faces around the cabinet table, working out some new ideas and, generally, laying the foundation for the future. Think of it as a sort of political version of Mike Holmes meets Sarah Richardson.

Successful political parties tend to re-invent themselves over time. In Alberta or in Ottawa, the more successful political parties have tended to shift as the public mood has shifted.  Different political challenges require different political styles.  The public likes change periodically,.  They get tired of the same crap over and over. The people themselves tend to wear out. There are a bunch of reasons  for it, but change is important if parties want to stay in power and actually do something while they are at it.

The alternative is that they get punted and the public sticks in another bunch. With the exception of Joe Smallwood, post-Confederation’s successful elected Premiers have tended to stay in office for 10 years or less.  Frank Mores left after seven years in office.  Ditto Clyde Wells.  Brian Peckford went for a decade but, realistically he was worn out after 1985 or 1986.

If the Tories had run a leadership campaign in 1986, they might well have carried on running the province forever.  But for some inexplicable reason, Peckford hung around growing increasingly paranoid or grandiose or whatever that was.  By the time he finally handed off, the party was so split up internally they settled on Tom Rideout.

In 1989, the Tories ran a crop of worn out faces who tried to pretend they represented change. Voters responded accordingly. In St. John’s, the Liberals scored historic victories in the 1989 election. Not post-Confederation historic, but historic electoral success since 1833 kinda stuff.

Failure to change is basically the story behind the Liberal defeat in 2003 as well.  One old Liberal political hand said publicly at the 2001 leadership convention that the party would have to change – to reinvigorate itself – or the voters would change for them.  He was right.

There is still time for the Reform-based Conservative Party currently running the province.  Nothing says the Old Man won’t shuffle his cabinet in the spring.  After all, there are a bunch of cabinet and caucus members looking at hanging up their skates next fall. Spring could still be a good time to put a lick of paint on the old house.  The scouts might have picked up a few local stars at the municipalities convention in St. John’s last week.  We won’t know for sure until happens.

But the trend and the attitudes suggest that what you are seeing today is what you will get to vote for next fall.  Any change will come after 2011.

The only problem is that the province needs some new ideas right now. 

The big news on Wednesday was an announcement by business minister Ross Wiseman that the provincial government will now aim cash handouts specifically to airplane operators.  Now this practice of offering cash hand-outs to businesses has a very long and sorry history in Newfoundland and Labrador. That history  - well known to anyone over the age of 30 in the province - and their own sorry-assed experience  - known to anyone who can read - hasn’t stopped the Reform-based Conservative Party led by Danny Williams from keeping up the practice.

From tossing public cash at any hare-brained scheme imaginable to unsustainable public spending to constantly looking for federal hand-outs, the current administration is an homage to every idea that never worked for this province.

The status quo is not a viable option for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

But the news from the provincial government today, on any front, is that we are doomed to more of the same.

- srbp -