Paging Dr. Freud #nlpoli

Moya Greene, head of the Premier’s Economic Recovery Team, told municipal leaders last week that the provincial government spends almost $2.0 billion less on health care than it actually does.

Weird.

She said the government spent 25% of its budget on health care.  VOCM reported it: “Greene says healthcare is about 25 per cent of the province’s total expenditures, and that it is a conversation we have to have.”

The actual share in 2019 was 42% and the forecast share in 2020 in 37%. You can find the figures in the budget tabled in the House of Assembly at the end of September.

This is a really bizarro comment since Greene is already well into her job of sorting out both government overspending and re-organizing the economy.  She should have a handle on all numbers. 

After all, Greene and her provincial recovery team will deliver a preliminary report by the end of February. Sure she’s not due to have the whole thing finished until April, but the first deadline of February is really only about three months away, if you allow an interruption for Christmas.

But that’s not the only weirdness.

Come by Chance and the Politics of Inertia #nlpoli

Is *this* the real El Dorado?

More than six months after they shut it down, the company that owns the Come by Chance oil refinery wants to sell it.

 And they want provincial taxpayers to pay.

According to Saltwire, “Glen Nolan, president of the United Steel Workers Local 9316 union, said that in recent conference calls officials of the province’s energy department indicated Silverpeak had floated” the idea that the provincial government would pay to keep the plant in hot idle mode.  

Between 150 and 175 workers have been laid off from the facility since February.  Another 60 or so are working to keep the plant ready to run.   

A deal with Irving – reported by Canadian Press and others as a done deal in late May – came apart for reasons that aren’t clear.

So while they are trying to sell the refinery Silverpeak wants the provincial government to pay to keep the refinery idled in a state where it could get back into production very quickly.  The alternative will be to mothball the refinery and lay off the remaining workers at the refinery.

The only company interested in buying the refinery – Origin International – doesn’t want to run it as a refinery.  But that hasn’t stopped the provincial government from talking it up and for representatives of the union at Come by Chance from being excited at the prospect.

It’s hard to imagine the provincial government won’t put up the cash.

Change versus more of the same: Summer 2020 edition #nlpoli

Link to video

Spring 1994.

At the point Clyde Wells spoke to the graduating class of Memorial University’s business school that year, the administration he led had already started getting government spending under control and transforming the economy.  Wells goes through all of that with the class, why government was undertaking the changes, and what he hoped would be the outcome. 

Give the speech a listen.  It’s only 38 minutes and it is striking on a few levels.  First of all, think of the last time you heard a Premier speak to an audience in Newfoundland and Labrador this calmly, rationally, and with as much detail.  This is not a speech of clever quips or turns of phrase.  This is basic information.

Building on our successes #nlpoli

"First and foremost, be totally honest with the electorate,”  former Premier Clyde Wells told Anthony Germain on CBC’s Sunday Edition last weekend.  He was giving some general advice to the next Premier on how to handle the provincial government’s enormous financial problems.

“Don't go sugar-coating anything. Fully disclose what you're doing [and] why you're doing it. Have a logical plan that will treat everybody fairly.”

Right after honesty,  came communication in Wells' approach.  Hes told Germain that he took every opportunity to explain what was going on and why it was happening to the public.  He made a couple of televised province-wide addresses to do just that.   

People didn’t like it at first.  The opposition parties and the unions criticised everything.  That’s what they are supposed to do.  But, as Wells, pointed out, “the people of the province come around. In my case, it was proven that they come around, because in the 1993 election, after four years of the most severe cutting, we had an increased majority.”

Few Premiers have done that in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1855 and none have done it since Wells.  In 2007, with bags of cash, great times, and no opposition to speak of, the governing Conservatives won more seats than they did in 2003 but they did it with fewer votes.  In 1993, the Liberals got *more* votes than they received in 1989.

But that doesn’t really tell the whole story.

What started in 1989 was a change in strategic direction for the provincial government and the province. 

The provincial government didn’t just cut spending and eliminate jobs in the public service.  Reforms to health care and education organization and governance were supposed to shift power out of the bureaucracy in St. John’s and hand it to people in the regions where they lived. 

Education reform was tied to improving economic performance and opportunities laid out in the Strategic Economic Plan.  The plan was the product of a two-year-long process spearheaded by the economic planning group, appointed by cabinet in the summer of 1990 under the chairmanship of the Premier's chief of staff, Edsel Bonnell.  The group brought together a diverse set of individuals with an equally diverse set of ideas. There were within the group contending ideas, as former chairman of the Economic Recovery Commission Doug House describes in his book Against the tide. 

The process the SEP team used overcame those differences and built a consensus on a future direction found on three fundamental changes, as laid out in the introduction to the plan:

• A change within people. There is a need for a renewed sense of pride, self-reliance, and entrepreneurship. We must be outward-looking, enterprising, and innovative, and to help bring about this change in attitude we will have to be better educated. During the consultation process, most people agreed that education is essential to our economic development.
• A change within governments. Governments (both politicians and the bureaucracy) must focus on long-term economic development and planning, while still responding to short-term problems and needs. Government programs and services must place a greater emphasis on the quality of the services provided and on the client. Changes in education, taxation and income security systems are also considered critical to our economic development.
• A change in relationships. To facilitate the necessary changes in the economy, new partnerships must be formed among governments, business, labour, academia, and community groups. In particular, better co-ordination between the federal and provincial governments in the delivery of business and economic development programs is needed to eliminate duplication and to prevent confusion for those who use them.

What happened in 2003 abandoned that strategic approach in favour of (once again) using provincial spending as a substitute for economically and environmentally sustainable private sector development. Megaprojects were all the rage and economic development became basically an exercise in handing out cheques.  Changes to education and health care governance put power back in the hands of the central bureaucracy and minimised the connection between schools or hospitals and the communities they served.

In every respect, the current financial and organizational mess of the provincial government is the result of the strategic change of direction after 2003.   Dwight Ball’s “Way Forward” stays within all the same strategic premises. Not surprisingly, it hasn’t fixed the problems.

Any proposal from any political party that doesn’t change the strategic direction of the province won’t succeed in fixing the current financial problems the provincial government faces.  That doesn’t mean going back to the 1992 strategic plan, which was designed for a different situation. 

It means using the same integrated approach, though, starting with the understanding that only a strategic shift will work.  The process is important as:  strategic change is only possible with a consensus across the province. A strategic consensus is essential because making strategic changes will require a commitment that will last beyond one four-year administration.

That consensus will only come with a lot of public discussion and debate. There will be differences of opinion.  There needs to be a lot of disagreement to make sure we explore all the options before setting on a new strategic plan made up of elements that can work.  

The new strategic plan must shift the focus of economic development from government to the private sector.  Government needs to create the environment in which the private sector can succeed while protecting the public interest through proper regulation.

The plan needs to focus not on specific topics – like substituting “tech” for the current obsession with oil – but on creating an environment in which the private sector can respond to market forces.  We cannot know what will be important in the future.  Instead, we need to create the economy that can best respond to shifts.

The lesson from the 1990s is that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can solve their own economic and financial problems. Wells’ interview this past weekend is the first he’s given in almost 30 years and it is a reminder of what happened here, not in Saskatchewan or Iceland. 

We’ve been ignoring what happened in the 1990s in Newfoundland and Labrador.  People are casting about for some easy answers to their current problems that don’t involve actually changing anything. Unfortunately for them, more of the same simply isn’t an option.  

Well, the answers are right in front of use.  We just have to decide to build on our past successes rather than continue with tales of doom and gloom that get us nowhere. After all, it’s not like we haven’t faced bigger problems than the ones we have today and solved them ourselves.

-srbp-

Guiding Principles for Economic Development

from the

1992 Strategic Economic Plan

1. The Province must focus on strategic industries. With increasing competition in world markets and limits to growth in primary- resource industries, the Province must target high-value-added activities in which we have, or can develop, a competitive advantage.
2. Our education and training system must adapt to the changing labour market demands for a highly skilled, innovative, and adaptable workforce. In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, it is critical that governments, business, and labour work together to improve the level and quality of education, training, and re-training.
3. Newfoundland and Labrador must be competitive both at home and in world markets. To improve our prospects for economic growth and  development, and to maintain and expand local and export markets, the province must diversify its economic base by producing goods and services that are internationally competitive in price, quality, and service.
4. The private sector must be the engine of growth. While it is the role of government to create an economic and social environment that promotes competitiveness, it is the enterprising spirit of the private sector that will stimulate lasting economic growth.
5. Industry must be innovative and technologically progressive to enhance productivity and competitiveness. A competitive advantage can be created by integrating advanced technologies in the workplace with the innovation, skills, and creativity of our people.
6. To achieve economic prosperity, there must be a consensus about the need for change and a commitment from governments, business, labour, academia, and others to work together in building a competitive economy.
7. Government policies and actions must have a developmental focus where the client comes first. The structure of government must be streamlined, efficient and responsive to public needs and to changes in the economy.
8. The principle of environment must be managed to ensure that development can be sustained [economically and environmentally] over the long term.  

 

The facts of the case #nlpoli

From the start of the pandemic, the provincial government  took decisions for political reasons, not medical ones.  It continues to do so.  It is clear that the provincial government has maintained very tight restrictions on the public far longer than necessary and that far more extensive efforts to control the public since 30 April are not based on evidence and medical necessity.

This is fundamental mismanagement that is harming the province and its people. 

The root of the problem is the political divisions in cabinet. The prospect of a new Premier to replace Dwight Ball brings with it the chance to sort out the problems and get the province ready to deal with COVID-19 for as long as necessary.  

The current situation is unconscionable.

Whatever it takes

The government's own advisors give evidence
that contradicts government's decision.

The Chief Medical Officer disclosed the first case of COVID-19 detected in Newfoundland and Labrador on 14 March.  The woman had recently returned from a cruise in the Caribbean.  Public health officials had tested 114 people half of whom had tested negative for the disease.  They and another eight besides were quarantined at home as a precaution.

The government’s first action attributed to COVID-19 came two days later.  At a news conference, Premier Dwight Ball, health minister John Haggie, education minister Brian Warr, and chief medical officer Dr. Janice Fitzgerald sat literally shoulder to shoulder behind a long desk.

We are “in uncharted waters” Ball told reporters.

Effective immediately, Ball and Warr announced, they had closed the province’s schools and daycares as well as College of the North Atlantic.  The move sent 74,000 children home along with thousands of adults across the province from the post-secondary college.

Haggie told reporters that effective immediately, the province’s health system had stopped all elective, diagnostic and surgical procedures. 

Ball said that public servants were also going to work from home, effective immediately.

“We will do whatever it takes, when necessary, to ensure your safety,” Ball said.

Asked about the impact of public cries to close schools as other provinces had done, Ball said "You always listen to people. We want to do what's best."

Ball and his ministers made the decisions to close schools, hospitals, and the provincial government that Monday morning.  There was a single case of COVID-19 in the province.

The importance of what we care about #nlpoli

When we do not talk about the most vulnerable people in our society – sex workers and people in homeless shelters to name just two groups – we tell the world that our community does not care about them.  Last week’s spectacle in the House of Assembly showed the world that the 40 people who Newfoundlanders and Labradorians elected to represent them and run the province do not care about very much at all.

Alison Coffin and Ches Crosbie
talk to reporters on Friday about Gerry Byrne.
(Not exactly as illustrated)

A 23-year-old man lay on the pavement in downtown St. John’s last Tuesday night, the blood running out of him and mingling with the rain on the cold pavement.

He died outside a shelter for homeless people. The community learned very quickly that it was a shelter, that it was a rental property, and that police frequently visited the place to deal with disturbances among the people who came and went from the house with great frequency.

We learned that information because neighbours put it on social media, where the local conventional media – newspaper, television, and radio - picked it up and repeated it.  Before anyone knew who the young man was, or what had gone on, they had decided what the issues were in the story.

That morning, in the House of Assembly,  the opposition parties asked for the Premier’s opinion on the fact that provinces in Canada received transfer payments from the federal government because they  - unlike Newfoundland and Labrador – didn’t make enough money on their own to meet the national minimum government income standard.  There were questions about flooding in a district on the west coast, a couple of questions about specific constituents who needed government money, and about the deaths of a couple of million salmon in a fish farm a couple of months before.

There was only one question thread - about ferry service to northern Labrador - that stood out for its consistency and seriousness - and the only question about homelessness was about people with high paying jobs in western Labrador who had to couch surf.

The morning after the death,  the few questions related to the murder were generic:  “’What plan does the government have’  to deal with crime and homeless in St. John’s?” opposition leader Ches Crosbie led with.  His second question was about a growth in payments to temporary shelters run by landlords, not not-for-profits.  That story had been in the local media before and brought back because of the assumed connection in media reports between the for-profit shelters and the murder.

Attention then turned to a general discussion of health care.  By the time the official opposition was done, the New Democrat leader Alison Coffin’s question about homelessness was also generic: 

“APEC reports that despite growth in the oil industry, our province is struggling. Homelessness, addictions, cost of living, bankruptcies, gangs, unemployment, electricity rates, out-migration are all on the rise.

“I ask the Premier: Will Advance 2030 address these pressing issues, or will we continue to stumble forward?”

That was the lone NDP question before her colleague got back to the dead salmon.

Captain Dildo, Dwight Ball, and the New Approach to Old Stereotypes #nlpoli

Last week, the Premier’s Office sent out a picture of the Premier standing next to the mascot of a town in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Nothing odd about it until you realise the mascot is called Captain Dildo and the Premier named Ball is standing to the left of the figure, which is slightly taller than him.

A dildo and a ball. 

Easy pickings for the jokesters out there. 

At least he is not Da Wight Ball, a wag observed.  No, came the reply, he is Da Weft Ball.

Some people might struggle to understand how the Premier and his staff could be beweft themselves,  beweft… err.. bereft… of a stwategy….

No, stragedy.

Umm.

Strategy.

The Narrative War (2015) #nlpoli

The day after a massive Liberal victory in the general election,  CBC’s David Cochrane posted an analysis piece on the new administration.  CBC distributed it nationally.

Cochrane described Dwight Ball as a man “unlikely” to be Premier:

Four campaigns. Two losses. Two wins.  By a combined 75 votes.

Cochrane’s account leaves out relevant context.  When it comes to describing how the Liberals won,  Cochrane focuses not on anything the Liberals did but rather a string of Tory blunders that  - according to Cochrane  - made it easy for the Liberals to win the election essentially by accident.

And now, as Cochrane’s story goes, Ball The Unlikely will have to face enormous financial problems using a plan that Cochrane claims “was greeted with enormous scepticism in the final week of the campaign.”

In the supper hours news, Cochrane then reported on information leaked to him by someone with access to highly confidential government  information.  Their purpose  - quite obviously – was to maximise the the damage to the new administration before it even had a chance to take office.  The information fit quite neatly with Cochrane’s ongoing narrative and so, he naturally, had no hesitation in using it. 

Spending the future (2005) #nlpoli

" [The change in the province's financial outlook] That's very dramatic...Some people are going to stand back and say 'Oh yeah, that's just because your very lucky. That's because the oil prices have gone up.' Well, no. That's part of it. But we had a tough budget, a prudent budget. We've managed the province, fiscally, very tightly."

Premier Danny Williams

Quoted in "Cash boon may fund province's infrastructure"

by Rob Antle, The Telegram, 22 October 2005, p. A3

Premier Danny Williams is absolutely correct.

The provincial government's financial state is a direct result of oil and gas revenues. High oil prices have produced a boost beyond what the Real Atlantic Accord, the offshore royalty regimes and development at Voisey's Bay would have produced anyway.

Unfortunately, the premier's positive comments may have two unwelcome results. First it may make it seem as though the province can afford to increase spending in a number of ways. Second, his comments divert attention away from the fundamental failure of the Williams administration, two years into its mandate, to produce integrated plans to address the province's financial windfalls in a way that will yield the greatest long term benefit.

The graveyard of ambition #nlpoli

Think of it as an inside joke.

James McLeod interviewed Premier Dwight Ball about the horror show that has been Ball's first year in office. "Ball also came under heavy fire,"  McLeod wrote, "for his handling of Nalcor Energy and perceived dishonesty about what he knew about outgoing CEO Ed Martin’s exorbitant severance package." McLeod quotes Ball:  "'I understand why people would suggest that, well, this guy, I can’t trust him, simply because of the HST or because of this or that.'"

This or that, of course, would be Ball's claim that he knew nothing of the plan to pay Ed Martin any form of severance although he'd quit as the head of Nalcor. That's the sort-of joke part. I can see, said Ball understatedly, how people might think I have some trouble telling them the straight story.  Subsequent evidence made it pretty clear Ball knew about severance payment Martin got, even if it was only to the extent he believed Martin was entitled to a severance payment under his employment contract and didn't know about the elaborate fraud perpetrated by the Tory-appointed Nalcor board.

The trouble with transparency #nlpoli

Last week, the provincial government's communications gang tweeted a picture, which we have reprinted on the right. It was supposed to show where Premier Dwight Ball is on his little sojourn to tomorrowland that he calls "our fiscal future."

You can see how they have crossed off a whole bunch of milestones on the way along.  Supposedly we are now at the "Focus and Refine" stage.  Next thing to come is the "Report of Choices" due at some unspecified point in the fall. Notice the diamond-shaped point there called the fall fiscal update.

The Liberals haven't told us when the update will come.  First we have to get through this thing on October 11 at which a bunch of hand-picked leaders from various "sectors" of our society will get to see what choices the government has already made for "our fiscal future."

This is "consultation" in GovSpeak. In LibSpeak, it is Transparency,  one of the Five Points of the Liberal Plan for Strategic Word Capitalization.

The Way Forward #nlpoli

Last December, Dwight Ball laid out his plan to deal with the provincial government's financial problems.

Ball made the comments to CBC's David Cochrane a week or two after he'd been sworn in.  This was after he'd been briefed on the provincial government's financial situation, so he'd had a chance to get over any shock and figure out a plan to cope with an unprecedented financial mess.

Depending on whether you go with what Ball said last year or what he said at the Liberal fund-raising dinner last Thursday,  Ball was totally shocked to find out how bad things were or didn't bat an eyelid because he knew exactly how bad things were.  Take your pick.

Either way, here's what the newly minted Premier said were his three ways to handle the unprecedented financial mess:

Dependence and Independence #nlpoli

For those who might be interested,  Tuesday's post on Churchill Falls and Wednesday's post on the road to Muskrat Falls are a summary of a draft on hydro-electricity development that's been in the works for a couple of years now. It was supposed to be the chapter of a book but it got out of control and might be worth turning into a book.

Sometimes you get caught up in the details of things so it's useful to take a step back and look at the broader themes that emerge from your writing.  One that hadn't appeared before now was the consistency that ran from Joe Smallwood in 1949 through Moores and Peckford in the 1970s and 1980s,  Wells and Tobin in the 1990s and finally Roger Grimes.  

Each of their administrations had as its goal the development of the provincial economy to the point that the provincial government would no longer be what Smallwood called a poorhouse. His vision was a "growing prosperous province of independent families."  That's not surprising if you know anything of Smallwood's experience in Newfoundland from the 1920s onward.  He had disagreements with the federal government, the most famous being the 1959 row over Term 29 payments.

In-house and cheap #nlpoli

Provincial government communications consists chiefly of making up vacuous comments for ministers to recite.

They are called key messages.  In the uncomms-speak of the government bureaucrats,  they are KMs, pronounced Kay-Emmzzz.

On Thursday, two rating agencies downgraded the province's rating with a negative outlook.  Not surprising but definitely not helpful since the government has already exhausted its political capital for nothing thanks to the complete disaster last spring.

Anyway, let's take a look at what Moody's said about the government's finances.  Specifically let's look at what they said about the negative trending.

Being there #nlpoli

Thursday is July 14.

Bastille Day.

It's also another anniversary.

Dwight Ball has been in office seven months.

In the latest edition of The Overcast, publisher Chad Pelley asks "What do we do if Dwight Ball resigns?"

That's a  reminder of where we are in this province.  A mere seven months into his first term, after winning a comfortably-large majority government,  people are demanding that Dwight Ball resign.  In the most recent poll Ball's personal popularity is south of 20%.  His party is in the same neighbourhood as is the level of satisfaction with his administration.

There is no precedent since 1949.   No precedent for the dramatic drop in a Premier's public support. No precedent for the calls that Ball resign.

And certainly no precedent for an article with that title that isn't panicked at the prospect the Premier might resign.

Developing a sustainable, diverse economy #nlpoli

When it comes to developing a successful economic development strategy, Edsel Bonnell has advice worth heeding.

He co-chaired the team that developed "Change and Challenge," the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan. The SEP "called for a transformation of culture, away from a dependence on government initiatives and government control and toward one based on individual initiative and private-sector entrepreneurship.

"The plan did not promise easy answers, nor did it fixate on one sector of the economy or on large megaprojects. Change and Challenge represented the result of a long development process that was itself crucial. The long period of discussion and consultation both inside and outside government helped to develop a consensus among those who took part in the discussions."  

Everything in the SEP represented a departure from the unsuccessful approaches we had already tried in the province,  all the ideas we knew were unsuccessful and yet the ones that the  Conservatives put back in place after 2003.  In many respects, it's how we got into our current financial mess... again.  

The process  - "the long period of consultation and discussion" - was an important part of the SEP's success.  The discussions helped build a strong agreement throughout the province about what needed to be done to develop a sustainable, diverse economy.  Not surprisingly,  Edsel recommends we try the same thing again.  He's described the approach very simply in two recent letters to the Telegram:  June 13 and June 18.   

Edsel may be a bit optimistic about how fast we might develop the plan:  this fall would be very fast.  But there is is merit in the idea of bringing all the parties together to set an apolitical task force on the track to build a plan to get us out of the very big hole in which we find ourselves. The politicians can't do it alone.  The bureaucrats can't,  and the business community can't. Nor can ordinary citizens fix things all by themselves.

-srbp-

A chasm they can't ignore #nlpoli

That didn’t take long.

The fundamental strategic political problem Dwight Ball and his senior advisors have been busily building since last year exploded on Wednesday with the leak of a treasury board directive to departments, agencies, boards, and Crown corporations.

Ball has been promising that he would deal with the provincial government’s mess without layoffs.  As recently as last week Ball said that attrition – job vacancies due to retirements – were the only way he’d consider job reductions in the public service.

Yet,  the ministers of the treasury board have recently sent a note to departments, agencies, boards and Crown corporations asking them to come up with options to reduce spending by 30% over the next three years. There is no commitment that government will cut that much.  This is an exercise in generating options for the cabinet to consider.

Process Question #nlpoli

Finance minister Cathy Bennett told CBC that "everything is on the table and we have to make sure that we don't leave anything that potentially could help us move to the destination that we all want to get to...So, my answer would be everything is on the table."

Soooo, my question would be "where is that destination?"

Consistency #nlpoli

"We need to find a way to bridge us [from] where we are currently until the commodities rebound and be [sic] the significant contributor we need them to be." That’s what Premier Dwight Ball told NTV’s Mike Connors in an interview that will air in full this coming Sunday.

The words are very familiar. 

We heard them just a few short months ago.

"I have laid out a five year plan,” Conservative finance minister Ross Wiseman told the House of Assembly last spring, “to bridge the commodity revenue dip and get us back to surplus, step by responsible step." 

The Narrative War #nlpoli

The day after a massive Liberal victory in the general election,  CBC’s David Cochrane posted an analysis piece on the new administration.  CBC distributed it nationally.

Cochrane described Dwight Ball as a man “unlikely” to be Premier:

Four campaigns. Two losses. Two wins.  By a combined 75 votes.

Cochrane’s account leaves out relevant context.  When it comes to describing how the Liberals won,  Cochrane focuses not on anything the Liberals did but rather a string of Tory blunders that  - according to Cochrane  - made it easy for the Liberals to win the election essentially by accident.

And now, as Cochrane’s story goes, Ball The Unlikely will have to face enormous financial problems using a plan that Cochrane claims “was greeted with enormous skepticism in the final week of the campaign.”