Oh yeah, Pam's fried...just like a whole raft more

Telegram editor Pam Frampton has been writing about the Memorial University thing for some time now.

Her column on Sunday is not for the faint of heart.

She's fried.

Pissed would be a better term.

And she's got good reason, since she's discovered that sometimes people in government like to dance on the extremely fine meaning of words. They'll answer the question you asked - literally - but not even think about giving the answer to the question they know you were really driving at.

In the media relations business that sort of thing is something you do rarely. It's the kind of stuff you save for when they ask you about invasions from Mars and you are sitting on the body of a Venusian. No sez you, no Martians. The only justifiable motive for that kind of semantic dancing, in other words, is something of supreme national importance.

Even then a simple response like "we don't discuss national security issues" is way better than what amounts to a lie by omission:

In June, long before the Globe and Mail published its speculative piece about what was going on behind the scenes of the stalled presidential search process, I asked Joan Burke straight out: "Has MUN's board of regents, acting on the recommendation of the presidential search committee, brought any names forward for cabinet's/the premier's consideration?"

Her response: "We have had no correspondence from the board of regents and the presidential committee."

Really? So how did Minister Burke know there were two shortlisted candidates winnowed out from a longer list by the search committee?

According to Burke's public relations specialist, Nora Daly, "The minister became aware of the short (list) last winter/spring through routine contact with the chair of the board of regents."

Well, golly, I'm no education minister, but to me "routine contact" certainly falls under the definition of correspondence.

The problem with this sort of too-cute-by-half stuff is that it doesn't erode credibility, it smashes it with a battle axe.

Pam Frampton just won't trust Joan Burke and her colleagues ever again on anything. Sure there have been plenty of examples of other people being jerked off over the past few years, but until it happens to you, there's always the temptation to think it isn't really as bad as others portray it.

Then it happens to you.

And you wind up being done browner than a wedgie left in the deep fryer too long.

No amount of malt vinegar and ketchup will make that taste disappear.

And it won't disappear.

Part of what the public have been seeing over the past six to eight months in Newfoundland and Labrador has been the dismantling of the very comfortable situation between the news media and the government. Some would say it's lasted too long anyway, but basically, it stayed extremely positive for government civilized as long as reporters didn't feel they were being frigged with too much.

In some respects the change in reporting mirrors the considerable volume of critical public comment coming in the online spaces. Some of it might be planted, but with the opposition parties in the state they are in, they'd be organizational miracle workers if they could sustain the variety and intensity of the stuff turning up so far in 2008. People aren't shy to voice their disquiet as they might have been before 2007. The cause is irrelevant; it's just notable that there's is such a change.

None of this means that the government will collapse tomorrow. it just means the news media and the public have changed. Government will have to shift itself and start responding differently to the new environment than they have been.

Otherwise we are witnessing that start of something which could get quite ugly. It's not like we haven't seen that happen before. Reporters who haven't been able to get the Premier on the phone even though they know he's in town might ask their gray-haired colleagues about the days when they couldn't get Peckford at all even the Premier's press secretary didn't answer his phone messages.

Much depends on the man behind the curtain and whether he really plans to pack it in next year, as he suggested in 2006. Danny Williams might just tough the whole thing out for a few months and leave everything to his cabinet to cope with, if they wanted to. That would possibly meet his needs but, frankly, the long term prospects for his party would just get dimmer with each unanswered e-mail.

All of that just remains to be seen.

All we can say today is that Pam is fried. And if Pam is fried, things are not good for government and its relations with news media.

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The pack politics of ambition

Politics is a strange thing.

There's a lot of individualism and ego but at the same time there's some really obvious group behaviour within the party pack.

The ambitious ones are always hungry to move up in status. 

Nothing surprising in that.  That's what ambitious people do.

There's nothing wrong with ambition. That's what keeps the blood pumping in a party that otherwise might be mistaken for dead.

Joan Burke for example, is one of a couple of the current crowd who fancies herself and is fancied by some as an eventual alpha to replace the alpha currently running every pack around the province.

Jerome is another one.

These ambitious betas will not challenge the alpha outright. Rather, they actually copy the alpha in many respects, especially speech patterns and attitudes.

Most obviously, they become supremely loyal:  they will do and say anything the alpha demands, no matter what, since currying favour with the alpha raises their own status within the pack in the meantime. 

They'll even try to anticipate the alphas demands so they can be ready to satisfy him immediately and appear therefore all that much more loyal within the pack.

No surprise then that someone familiar with Joe Smallwood would consider Burke to be aping one of the biggest political alphas in the province's history.

"The way Burke is acting is as if the 1973 amendments never took place," says [retired Memorial University head librarian Richard] Ellis. "It's a little bit ironic for a Progressive Conservative to be harkening back to Smallwoodian legislation."

Ellis had responsibility at one time for the Smallwood archives, among other things, so when it comes to the recent past, Ellis would know a thing or two.

He's off by a few decades but the idea's the same.

Danny Williams is the one channeling Joey Smallwood, either deliberately or inadvertently.  And, by the transitive property, Burke is channeling Smallwood, but only doing it through Williams.

She's adds some ruffles and flourishes of her own to her public speaking - the completely flat affect in her voice, for one -  but the attitude behind the words is unmistakable:  this is the way things are because I said so.  Period.

We likely won't be seeing any ticking right shoulders on the education minister soon and neither will she likely develop less harsh speaking voices  - at least without professional coaching.  But that's really just packaging.

What you can expect are more of what we've seen over the past couple of weeks.  It's really the same Joan Burke we've seen in other cock-ups or controversies in her department already - like the Eastern School district alleged fraud case that cropped up while her current parliamentary assistant was running the school board -but for some reason it just stands out more in the current Memorial University crisis. 

Joan Burke, the alpha wannabe will stick even harder to her guns under pressure because that's what the alpha would do (or what he wants) and in order to be loyal and eventually replace him, the covetous beta must be more alpha than alpha.

And like all ambitious politicians, Burke like knows there a pattern to how the future alphas move around government and move up within cabinet.

If memory serves, she has done or is doing her stints in financial management on treasury board.  She's the government House leader which gives her more parliamentary experience - such as the House is these days - and more experience managing her colleagues in cabinet.

Running the big social departments would be crucial to her future.  Having run education for the past three years, Burke is likely angling to replace Ross Wiseman in the next shuffle, whenever it comes. 

And if she gets the promotion to health, as a number of future alphas and presumptive alphas did in previous administrations  [think Grimes and Aylward most recently] putting Burke in charge of health care would be a sign of her heightened status within the pack.

There's no guarantee health is a stepping stone to greatness.  Look at poor Tommy Osborne.  From minister of the largest department in government one day where all he had to do was follow orders and not shag up, to government backbencher the next via a castrated justice department in between.

The only way Osborne could have been handed a bigger slap in the goolies was if he'd been given permits and licenses instead of justice on the way out the door.

But in the current crisis in education, Joan Burke has really done anything to diminish her status as one of the betas most loyal to the alpha.

She's done all the things she needs to do to prove her status.  Burke will be rewarded, at least in the short term with an alpha who will back her to the hilt.  He will go to the ends of the Earth for those who follow his orders tirelessly.

When he emerges from escorting second place essay winners around, the Premier will likely lash out at everyone and everyone.  Everyone that is, except Burke, who will be commended for her hard work in the best interests of the province and the people.

Yada, yada, yada.

In the politics of the pack, loyalty counts above all else.

-srbp- 

The market for oil and gas support industries

The real key to long-term economic benefit from oil and gas is not in revenues flowing to a state-owned oil company, but from the development of a healthy, innovative support and service sector.

Oil industry consultant Gerrit Maureau thinks the overseas opportunities for petroleum service companies have never been greater.

The hungry market is with foreign national oil companies (NOCs).

Foreign NOCs are so hungry for technology and training that Maureau believes a good service company will almost certainly find a market overseas if its sales effort is well-informed. But success is unlikely to come cheap, he warns: "Above all, be persistent. Canadians have developed an unfortunate reputation overseas for showing up once and never coming back." In his experience, a half dozen visits may be needed before a significant breakthrough occurs.

The rest of the Maureau profile can be found at

DOB Magazine.

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The best and the worst

From the Star Phoenix (Saskatoon), a perspective on the province and its politics:

It did not present a very becoming picture of the premier, certainly not of one who until recently at least, commanded the support of 70 per cent of the province's population.

The premier's less attractive side recently re-emerged when his government intervened in the selection process for the new president of Memorial University.

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Internet Explorer problems when loading? Try the mirror Bond Papers.

For the past 24 hours, some people have been reporting problems when trying to access Bond Papers using Internet Explorer.

This only applies to the blogspot.com address.

There are no problems loading bondpapers.blogspot.com using Firefox or other browsers.

If you are committed to your Microsoft browser and are having trouble reading Bond at the blogspot address, please try the mirror site at:

bondpapers.wordpress.com

Those of you reading Bond Papers via Blackberry, iPhone, Smartphone or other mobile device may also find the WordPress a little friendlier.

For those who want to shift from Internet Explorer, you can download the latest version of Firefox at the Mozilla site.

EGH

A small but significant distinction

The Telegram's Russell Wangersky gives cabinet some good advice this rainy Saturday in order to avoid what he describes as "boneheaded mistakes".
Around these parts, we'd make one small quibble over this otherwise apt comparison with the current Memorial situation:

Stymied at the CNLOPB, Wells miraculously became the best choice for head of the PUB - oh, wait. He was the only choice considered. Unlike at MUN, the Public Utilities Board job didn't bother with the niceties of anything like a messy old search for the best candidates.

Turns out there was a messy old search for candidates, after all, as Bond Papers reported last February.
Andy Wells doesn't appear to have been a candidate since there was no mention of the competition or of Wells winning said merit-based selection process after the initial ads appeared in the Telegram and elsewhere. The Public Service Commission parsed the details of the thing in such a way as to leave more questions than the parsing answered.
With that little piece of information corrected, Wangersky's piece  - particularly the Andy bit - now makes even more sense.

-srbp-

The Looking Glass Cabinet

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone," it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

Through the Looking Glass: and what Alice found there

Tom Marshall must have received his law degree from the University of Wonderland.

You know.

The place Alice went.

She ran into Tom's old law prof, Humpty Dumpty, who first taught him that the words on the page are meaningless plastic things. 

Humpty Dumpty's lessons took.

Last week, education minister Joan Burke said that, in picking a new president for MUN, the university board of regents would send over a list of names and cabinet would make the appointment since - as the law provides, according to Burke - the president's job is a cabinet appointment.

Hang on there, said a number of people including Grenfell professor Dr. Paul Wilson who insist that the words in the law - 'the board of regents shall appoint a president" - doesn't mean that cabinet does the job.

Marshall, a former attorney general, insists that Wilson is being a stick-in-the-mud, and that Wilson is "not helping" the university.

There's that favourite government phrase "not helping" or "being unhelpful".

In this case, it would mean pointing out the obvious bankruptcy of the government position, but that's really a separate issue.

Marshall, sounding a bit like a 1960s hold-over, insisted that the professor was being square, Man.

What's interesting is the way Marshall (LLB, U Wonder) described Wilson's view:

Everyone is entitled to their view. He’s given his analysis. I consider his analysis a literal interpretation — a strict, constructionist interpretation. A proper interpretation of the legislation would have to consider the wording in context. When you consider the wording in context, the minister of Education plays a very important role.

"Strict, constructionist interpretation". 

You will note of course, that no where in Marshall's comment does he say that Wilson is actually wrong.  Not at all.

Not if you actually read what Marshall said:  according to Marshall, the legislation properly read with all the words in their context means that the education minister plays an important role in the process.

Marshall  - clever fellow - didn't define that role, however.  The role envisaged in the legislation is that the education minister takes the name of the appointed person to cabinet for approval.  That's the role.  it's largely administrative in nature.

And no where does it say cabinet picks, which is what Burke insisted she and her colleagues will be doing.

But still, according to Marshall,  Wilson is wrong because he is using a "strict, constructionist interpretation"?

Here's a simple solution.

Let's put this before a judge.

They are easy to find down on Duckworth Street.  Odds are, we could find one of them with a few spare minutes in between trips to the neighbourhood Timmies to hear the learned former attorney general appear on behalf of the Crown to argue the matter.  Now we'd be doing this no just to resolve the dispute between Marshall and Wilson, but to settle on the legality of the cabinet's move in this extremely important crisis.

The justices would likely fight over the chance to hear this one.

And they get paid to resolve disputes.

After all, government has been extremely successful in this Mad Hatter, March Hare approach to the things before.

There was the now famous October 2004 interview Danny Williams gave to the CBC's Carole MacNeil.  According to Williams, once the province didn't qualification for Equalization, clawbacks wouldn't be 100 per cent but zero., even though when the province qualified for just a fraction of a penny of federal handout, the clawback was 99.9999999 per cent.

Then there was Tom Rideout's classic time travel episode:

Consider Rideout's efforts to explain that while today might well have been June 14 when the bill was passed, tomorrow did not actually mean June 15. Rather it meant some date four months hence:

"Since Green didn't say the act comes into effect today, we, in consultation with him, said what can come into effect today comes into effect today, what needs time to come into effect tomorrow comes into effect tomorrow, and tomorrow is Oct. 9, 2007"

Or Marshall gamely trying to criticise Brian Peckford and in the process fibbing royally about the province's finances.

Or on legal matters, just ask Don Burridge, the current deputy attorney general and, odds are, the poor sod who would carry this threadbare Stanfield's of an argument downtown to see what others made of it.

Burridge is the extremely talented lawyer who was in the unfortunate position of having to carry forward government's argument in Ruelokke.  The government argument, one suspects, was dictated to him by the learned barristers in cabinet but he gamely laid it out.

They tried the argument that a clause in the 1985 Atlantic Accord which said the hiring tribunal's decision was binding on both the federal and provincial, governments really meant that the courts couldn't intervene in the matter.

Mr. Justice Halley loved that one, one suspects, so much so that he likely had to stab himself repeatedly with a fork under his robes so that the pain would keep him from rolling on the floor in laughter.

We all know the outcome of that foray into the courts.

All of this just goes to show just exactly how desperate the cabinet is to try and escape the Memorial mess they've created.  Tom Marshall is trotting out all sorts of verbiage to try and obscure things.

The problem for Marshall in this little drama  is that he is stuffed in the role played before by Burridge. He is carrying a preposterous argument and he knows it.

But if he is game, there are a few people wearing black robes in the later summer heat who will gladly sit and enjoy the government's revival of Through the Looking Glass or Alice in Wonderland.

We'd all enjoy the play immensely even if the outcome is predictable.

-srbp-

Into the deep

The provincial government's crisis with Memorial University got just that much deeper today.

Op-ed pieces in the province's largest daily newspaper from two distinguished professors simply and succinctly laid out the problem in plain English. [Not available online]

As political science professor Steve Wolinetz wrote:

Simply put, universities can only function effectively when they are at arm's length from government or any single entity funding them. This not only ensures academic freedom and allows members of the university community to "speak truth to power," but also enables them to harness the creative energies of faculty, staff and students. Independence and autonomy are at the core of any university. It has enabled Memorial to explore vital issues and helped the province and its people grow and thrive.

Independence and autonomy are indeed at the core of any university and they are at the core of the current problem. By injecting herself into the selection process for a new president, education minister Joan Burke she has not stepped across an invisible but well-defined boundary, she has committed to completely ignore the law by making the presidential appointment a cabinet one instead of a decision of the board of regents, as the law provides. She has usurped the authority of the board to appoint the president, which in itself is an expression of the university's independence and autonomy.

Nor has no one outside cabinet and government back benches is able to ignore the evident contradiction between Burke's action in this case and the government's commitment to make Grenfell College "autonomous."

All that is pretty much old hat now, as this story ends its first of what may prove to be several weeks of political pain.

What made the hole Burke dug even deeper is the revelation in another op-ed piece - this time by former academic vice president and pro-chancellor Evan Simpson - that the university has been reduced, in effect, to the status of a Crown corporation or agency:

The university depends heavily upon its operating and capital grants from the government. Memorial used to receive block grants and set its priorities within the financial limits they imposed. Now, in submitting a budget, the university presents a menu of initiatives and the government chooses those it likes. In effect, Memorial has surrendered its capacity to set its own priorities. Basic operating funding continues but room for innovation is limited. The government expects Memorial to have a strategic plan, but it is difficult to take this seriously when the Treasury Board decides what it will or will not fund.

Clearly, the current crisis at Memorial University has been brewing since the fall of 2003. The clash over Burke's intervention in the hiring process for a new president is merely the tip of a very large and very dangerous iceberg. Former president Axel Meisen's early departure from the job was perceived publicly as flowing from the clash with government over the Grenfell issue. Odds are that there have been a series of events that led to his move to Alberta eight months before his first term expired.

Burke did not recover with her late-afternoon news release. The release was in many respects cumbersome and contained errors of style and punctuation suggesting it was very hastily written.

In it, she insisted - despite the evidence to the contrary in plain sight - that she had not interfered and that her actions were within the bounds of the law. She also insisted the government has not violated academic freedom, however with that claim she simply pushed the next shovel deeper into the earth at the bottom of the hole in which she currently resides.

“I have yet to hear one concrete example of how exactly our government has impeded or interfered in academic freedom or autonomy,” said Minister Burke. “We have never told people what to teach or how to teach nor have we suppressed opinion. We are very simply saying we will exercise our legal obligation under the act, which clearly states that Cabinet has an approval role as an oversight, and I can assure everyone that we take that role seriously and will exercise our responsibility.”

Right away the claim that government had not interfered in the university's autonomy is nonsense given the evidence already in the public domain.

However, on the other issue, that of academic freedom, Burke's protests will likely prove unconvincing. The reason is easy to see.

Throughout the week, Burke repeatedly used government's financial stake in the university as justification for government's action. There may not be an example of interference in academic freedom yet. There may be no signs of political arm-twisting yet.

But given all that the public has learned to date, it is not hard to imagine a day in the not too distant future when a member of cabinet will find some public comment by a professor or student to be unwelcome. A call will be made and the justification will be simply that the government is concerned the comments are damaging this, that or the other interest of the province.

If the matter ever became public some minister may undoubtedly say that there has not been a violation of academic freedom, despite the plain evidence to the contrary and using exactly the same words and the same rationalizations Burke has used already:

We have invested heavily in our post-secondary institutions. The current and capital budget for the university alone this year is nearly $240 million. Memorial University and College of the North Atlantic are making names for themselves in the international arena.

Do I think that government needs to step away from this process? Absolutely not. As long as we have a budget of $240 million, we have 2,500 staff, we have 18,000 students (at the school), I think that we are expected by the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to play the leadership role that is ours.

Newfoundland and Labrador can certainly make its own decisions and we don't have to act in the way that other provinces or other universities do.

No, it's not hard to imagine it at all.

After all, until recently, no one might have though the government would ever interfere in hiring a president for the university.

And then Burke did just that.

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Why Joan and Danny rejected Eddy

Eddy Campbell has withdrawn from the presidential competition.

His statement is an eloquent defence of the university in a time of crisis:

That [presidential search] committee should be free to conclude the mandate it was given without interference or outside influence, as is the case with all presidential search committees at other Canadian universities.

Heresy!

Jeffrey Simpson starkly describes the issues and problems tied up in the Memorial University crisis.

Once the usual suspects find out about it, they'll be screaming to the Great Oracle of the Valley for Simpson to be tossed in jail for hating Newfoundland.

Only one problem with Simpson's column: "But nary a peep is heard about the principles involved in political interference, because no one dares question the man who can leap tall icebergs."

The entire body of public criticism on government's illegal intervention is focused on the principles involved.

-srbp-

53K in ACOA cash for Lego contest

Where to begin?

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, originally set up to foster economic development, has dropped a total of $53,861 years ago since 2004 to send a group of junior high school students to a Lego robotics competition in Georgia.

1.  Time to sort out ACOA:  The agency is badly off track, having become  a funnel for all manner of federal pork.

2.  Connie hypocrisy: The Connies claimed they wanted to scrap ACOA before they got elected. Turns out that, they love ACOA's pork pushing properties.

3.  Connie hypocrisy:  Fabian pushed more pork into this pork project.  This bit of business started while John Efford was regional minister and the member of parliament for the area.  Fabian Manning has somehow managed to get the amount of cash increased, according to the Chronicle Herald story.

4.  The robotics competition is an excellent learning project but... this isn't something that ACOA should be funding.  This is an educational project and should be supported from provincial coffers.

-srbp-

Purely coincidental

July 29.

1.  CBC:  "Too muggy to operate"

High humidity is creating a sticky situation in operating rooms in a western Newfoundland hospital, where a dozen procedures have been postponed.

July 31.

2.  Western Star: "Four days affected by humidity" (posted 1:33 AM)

Western Memorial Regional Hospital had to modify its surgical services for four days because of humidity.

3.  Globe and Mail (Canadian Press): "Surgery rescheduled due to high humidity" (posted early morning)

Dr. Minnie Wasmeier says the operating room schedule at Western Memorial Hospital was modified on July 11, 16, 17 and 25 because of an increased risk of infection during periods of high humidity and high temperatures.

4.  NLIS (government news service), "Progress being made on new Corner Brook hospital" (issued at 4:25 PM)

The Provincial Government is moving forward with plans to build a new hospital in Corner Brook with the announcement today that AMEC of St. John’s has been hired to undertake site investigation.

Backed by quotes from no less than four politicians:  public works minister Diane Whelan,  Premier Danny Williams (MHA for Humber West), finance minister Tom Marshall (MHA Humber East) and Terry Loder (MHA - Bay of Islands).

But... "Premier Danny Williams has not been available for interviews this week..." according to the Great Oracle of the Valley. 

-srbp-

The Old Approach

Turns out the scuttlebutt on the Hebron announcement was off.

No announcement this week.

The deal is apparently done, but the formal announcement has been moved.

Best guess:  August.

After the by-elections are underway and somewhere in the middle of the CRA polling time.

Perfect time for an announcement in the old fashioned political tradition.

-srbp-

Regents chair has splainin' to do; high jump in his future?

According to an education department spokesperson, board of regents chair Gil Dalton gave the short list of candidates to education minister Joan Burke.

If that's the case, then Dalton needs to quit immediately as chair of the board and chair of the selection committee. If Dalton is the leak - which apparently occurred last winter or this spring - then it goes along way to explaining Dalton's silence on the whole matter of the selection and Burke's interference.

If that isn't the case, then he needs to parse the details of the process and set the record straight.

-srbp-

And then the crisis deepens...

Like no one saw this coming.

1.  Former education minister Chris Decker:

"I can only see one possible way to redeem this, is for the minister to resign or for the premier to have her ... shuffled to another portfolio. I can't use words strongly enough."

Add to that Decker's cabinet colleague Dr. Phil Warren, who is quoted by VOCM as saying he was shocked by Burke's action.  Warren noted that in his time he did not interfere in the selection of Dr. Art May.

2.  Professor Paul Wilson, university senator and a prof at Grenfell (!!!):

“She can be as defiant as she wants — as she was in the scrum — but I’m sorry the legislation is absolutely clear and there is no room for interpretation of that simple sentence in English. There’s no legalese. There are no notwithstandings.”

3.  From the Great Oracle in the Valley, otherwise known as the voice of the cabinet minister comes some predictable stuff from the other perspective:

• Finance minister and former attorney general Tom Marshall weighs in, backing his colleague in their complete misrepresentation of the law.  No quotes but those who heard it were surprised at Marshall's continued insistence that up was down.
• The Premier was unavailable - as in out of the province, presumably - but an unidentified publicist from his office said the Premier did back the minister.

4.  And in the same online story  - headline:  "Burke gets support from colleagues" - we find that opposition education critic Roland Butler doesn't like Burke's actions at all.  That's not the only thing wrong with that online story but there's only so much space, even in a Bond Papers post.

-srbp-

Poll goosing, the UK version

Via Guido Fawkes, world-class politicians in a world-class country do what world-class knobs do:  they pay attention to a call-in poll.

Anglerfish, maybe?

Gary Kelly posted to a video of an unusual fish caught off Burgeo on the south coast of Newfoundland.

Maybe it's an anglerfish, a deep sea fish. 

Just a thought.

Update:  Identified.

Triplewart seadevil (Cryptopsaras couesii) - Pêcheur à trèfle, found frequently in the delta of the St. Lawrence Seaway, not far from Burgeo.

 h/t bigcitylib (see comment)

-srbp-

Phoning it in

Education minister Joan Burke turned up this morning as the first caller on Open Line with Randy Simms.

She was calling from Stephenville, or "from the district" as Simms put it.

He made it sound like Burke was just back in her district for a visit.

After all, that's likely what you'd expect given that the department she runs is headquartered in St. John's. Being a minister is usually a busy life, even in the summer, what with the meetings related to cabinet and the meetings in the department and just being available to sign all those letters that have to be signed even in an age of computers and e-mail.

Thing is, Burke likely wasn't just stopping in for a visit.

And she likely isn't the only minister who tends to head back to the district during the times the House isn't in session.

Something keeps coming back to your humble e-scribbler about a comment Burke made having to do with ministerial expenses. There was a document establishing her primary residence, which, if memory serves, government officials expected would be in St. John's while she held Her Majesty's commission. The declaration was part of determining what set of expense rules from treasury board would apply.

Burke's comment stood out as she found that form a bit problematic, given her primary residence was in Stephenville. There was some mumbling criticism about the whole arrangement reflecting the "old boys club" of politics.

Now memories can be faulty, not the least of which being the one between the ears of your humble e-scribbler, so it's possible that wasn't exactly what was said.

The old boys club crack just stood out, though, because it was from straight out of left field. Why would it be surprising that an employer would expect you to live within easy commuting distance of the place where your job was located? There's something sexist in that?

Anyway, Tom Marshall is another minister not originally from the capital city who seems to spend a whack of time working from somewhere other than the Confederation Building.

Sit and think for a second and you could probably come up with a bunch of ministers who have offices and work responsibilities in the capital city but who seem to spend a huge amount of time not in the office.

Well, not in the main office. Marshall likely has a suite in the provincial government building in Corner Brook. Burke too, could likely scare up a bit of space in Stephenville.

John Hickey? Patty Pottle? Trevor Taylor? Tom Rideout when he was still a minister? Charlene Johnson? Kevin O'Brien?

These are just tossed out as possible examples because their districts are not within typical daily commuting distance of the metropolitan region.

Any of them keep two offices and work from home, home being somewhere other than within an easy commute of Sin Jawns?

This is not just a matter of some mouldy old rule after all. The cost of maintaining duplicate offices can be steep. Add to that the cost of having to grab a quickie flight at full fare from Stephenville - for argument sake - and then hopping back the same day just to do a media scrum.

Then there are the regular cabinet meetings and the committee meetings and all the rest.

Pretty soon, the cost of commuting like this would get to be a tidy sum.

Then there are the intangible costs. It would be much easier to meet and discuss some business face to face rather than do it by e-mail or over-the-phone. Ministers living in St. John's - where their main office is located - also have the chance to be more accessible to news media in a slow period during the summer. It gives all sorts of opportunities to increase the amount of information government provides to the public on its activities.

Well, that assumes government wants to give more information or that ministers are capable of doing more than parroting prepared lines, but let's just work on the assumption the current situation is an aberration in the great scheme of things.

Still it seemed a little odd that Burke was in St. John's for a 2:45 newser on Tuesday and then bright and early on Wednesday morning was safe on the west coast again.

Maybe it's just a misperception but then again, there have been too many references to some sort of dual office arrangement over the past couple of years to make it a case of being completely mistaken.

There's a subject for a little bit of investigative reporting.

In the meantime, it might be worthwhile to keep track of the number of cabinet ministers who are phoning in their media hits during times when the House is not in session.

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Memorial University crisis to deepen

A member of the university senate apparently had a chat with the Western Star and told it as it is: the board of regents appoints the president, not the minister of education or cabinet.

Once the first one speaks, more are likely to follow.

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Nothing says election like politicians and cash: the desperate leprechaun version

Oil prices may be plummeting and with them gasoline prices, but if you are an incumbent politician looking warily at the electoral weathervane, you'd be talking out loud to anyone who will listen about finding a way to gasoline and other fuel costs.

He might be running a deficit, but federal finance minister Jim Flaherty is talking about finding some way to interfere in the marketplace in a way that would likely bring more problems than it cures.

Next thing he'll be screaming for tight monetary policies and jacking up interest rates to frighten off the inflation demon.

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Memorial University autonomy crisis: choice quotes

From The Telegram coverage:

1.  Education minister Joan Burke:

"When those names and that selection process hits the cabinet table I want to ensure that we have the best possible selection, the best leadership that we can possibly find," said Burke.

Okay.

Define "best" and define it publicly and quickly.

If we all know what the cabinet thinks "best" means, then we might be able to figure out why it is that the board of regents Burke and her colleagues appointed and the people who run the university were suddenly struck incompetent.

Potential applicants would like to know what "best" means, especially since they now face a new and thus far secret process with secret selection criteria.

2.  Undergraduate student union external affairs director Cameron Campbell:

"I think the main problem here is the lack of accountability and the lack of transparency in the process, and I think that's really the issue we have to deal with," said Cameron Campbell, MUNSU executive director of external affairs.

While Campbell's comments earlier appeared to be somewhat equivocal, this line is an indictment of a government that supposedly embodies accountability and transparency.

3. The bizarre, from the cbc.ca/nl news story user comments by someone logged on as Anthony11:

I only hope that the next time the Premier is shopping at the South Carolina Home Depot that he stays there.

Huh?

This is either completely off the wall or a clue to some sort of back story that sounds interesting.

Made only more weird if someone googled "charter flights from South Carolina to St. John's" and landed at the Bond Papers post about Miss Teen South Carolina and her concern for education.  Remember Caitlin?

There's education for you and a totally freaky connection.

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CAUT: Prov Gov threatens MUN autonomy

Predictable but still, a voice worth heeding:

“This is an unprecedented and serious violation of university autonomy,” says CAUT president Penni Stewart. “Universities must be free from political interference or any outside influence.”

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Memorial University crisis: the media coverage to date

Conversation at the Tuesday family supper table included a question from your humble e-scribbler's sister as to why the education minister held her scrum with reporters at 2:45.

Good question, since, as the Sister noted, media now had time to get reaction from critics of the government's policy.

There is no good answer, though, except that she was essentially correct. Since news runs on controversy, this story will have legs. The contradictions between the Premier and the minister will fuel further inquiry.

At some point, the Grenfell issue will come back since a key part of the earlier rumour held that at least one of the candidates Burke now admits rejecting may have been someone who wasn't a fan of the proposed second university. Burke denied the issue had any impact on the hiring selection but that sounded a bit like what labradore calls "Not(x) = x".

Media coverage on Tuesday only intensified the criticism since the rumours of cabinet interference in hiring the university president have now been confirmed.

Canadian Press filed a story about seven hours ago with about half the story consisting of comments from the university faculty association: N.L. university faculty say freedom jeopardized after minister's intervention. The reaction is strongly negative:

"What it suggests is that if she's going to be actively administering the university, would she come in and deal with an individual faculty member whose politics she didn't like? Or an individual administrator at a lower level that she didn't like?" [Ross Klein, president-elect of the faculty association.]

That builds on a story that ran earlier on Tuesday across the country.

The Telegram's quickie version from Tuesday afternoon is simple and focuses on the continuing search. That's pretty much been their coverage to date. vocm.com's little summary sticks to the simple.

CBC's online story is a bit more detailed. it includes critical comment.

The CBC Here and Now supper hour news piece was harder hitting. On the Go played the entire scrum. None are online as of Tuesday evening unfortunately. The scrum would be worth having in its entirety, especially the bit where the education minister dances around the fact the Premier's version of events and hers are somewhat at odds.

NTV's report was longer and included critical comment.

There's also been a bit of blog coverage, like a post at Macleans.ca by a MUN education professor who labeled the media coverage "sometimes bizarre".

Editorial opinion has also been strongly negative, like this column from last weekend's Telegram. That's been the case since the details of the story and the allegations of interference first surfaced on the front page of the Globe and Mail last Saturday.

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Closed minds, reason and the Memorial University crisis

Education minister Joan Burke today confirmed the rumours that have been swirling around the province for months, namely that the cabinet had interfered in the process to hire a new president for Memorial University.

In her media scrum, today, Burke repeatedly spoke of following the provisions of the Memorial University Act. She then described a new process for selecting a president of the university in which a list of names would be presented to cabinet and from which cabinet would make select the person to be appointed.

That is not what was intended. The Memorial University Act is clear:

51. There shall be a president of the university who shall be appointed by the board in consultation with the senate and with the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

The board of regents makes the appointment. The cabinet - the lieutenant governor-in-council - may reject an appointment but nowhere is it provided in law that the president of the province's university is appointed by cabinet.

Memorial University traces it roots to Memorial College, founded in 1923 as a non-denominational institution of higher learning. In a country where public affairs were more sectarian than politically partisan, this was a revolutionary move. The college became a university in 1949, but government's intention, as expressed, in the Memorial University Act was to create a publicly-funded university that operated autonomously from government.

The Act gives to the board of regents the power to run the university and central to that is the authority to select the university's chief executive officer, the president. The hiring system, as it was, has functioned exceedingly well, finding successive presidents of extraordinary calibre: Dr. M.O. Morgan, Dr. Leslie Harris, Dr. Arthur May, and Dr. Axel Meisen are examples.

Under their leadership, the university has grown. It has earned a well-deserved international reputation despite sometimes very difficult financial times. The vision of the university founders has been fulfilled. The wisdom of their approach and that of successive government administrations has been proven.

Those administrations contained men and women of no mean ability. They were no less visionary, no less intelligent, no less capable and no less virtuous than Burke and her colleagues.

There was no reason to change the method of finding a university president.

To be fair, Joan Burke did not attempt to provide reason, nor did the official news release.

She simply laid down the law, even if she violated the statute as she did so.

Before going any further, let us dismiss any suggestion that Burke acted alone here. Only someone overly concerned with insignificant distinctions, only the most partisan of partisan apologists would consider it important that Burke claims to have made the decisions rather than the Premier, as accounts such as the one in The Globe and Mail have alleged.

Only someone totally unaware of how the administration works might think that a minister who cannot travel outside the province without the prior approval of the Premier's chief of staff might have undertaken to inject herself into the selection process at Memorial without the full approval of, if not direction by, the Premier's Office.

Burke is merely the instrument of government policy and that policy is aimed squarely at dismantling Memorial University's autonomy, the basis of its success thus far. Cabinet has already shown it's willingness to ignore the board of regents with its decision to create a separate university at Corner Brook. Now it confirms the policy by usurping the legal authority of the board of regents in not merely watching, but in substituting itself for the board.

Government policy, as described by Burke, will make finding a genuinely superlative candidate all that much harder.

The potential applicant will face an entirely unknown set of criteria for selection. Merit - the basis on which selections have been made to now - has been replaced with secret considerations. If the goal is to continue the university with the sort of success it has achieved to date, we should be suspicious of anyone who submits to this selection process. It is hardly the sort of thing one would expect in an academic institution that is supposedly "competing with other institutions nationally and internationally for the right person to take on the job."

The potential applicant will also know that - as demonstrated both in the Grenfell decision and in the hiring of the president - he or she will have no say on the future direction of the university. Cabinet is the sole authority, and it must be obeyed. Burke said it plainly in her scrum.

In the end, Burke made it clear that cabinet is not interested in open discussion.

There can be no more eloquent a reason for cabinet to stay out of the future of Memorial University than closed minds and the absence of reason. For all the contradictions between Burke's words and government actions, the contradiction between the essence of a university and the essence of this cabinet could not be more stark.

The only question left for the public right now is what the board of regents - those with the legal authority to appoint a president - will do now that their authority has been usurped.

Memorial is, to use Burke's abysmal phrase, the people's university. The people should look to the board, and to the candidates for the elected alumni seats on it, to know if the university will continue to reach for the heights or if it will begin a slide into the deep.

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Academician, heal thyself

If there actually is concern among academics that there is political interference in the hiring of a new president at Memorial University, then doesn't having a cabinet minister speaking about the issue - instead of the chairman of the university board of regent's hiring committee - tend to confirm the interference?

Just an observation.

Update: Interference confirmed.

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Speaking of deer in the headlights

Boo!

Fall election.

The Connies must be a runnin' skeerd.

Oddly enough, we're talking Canadian Connies frightened of an American Democrat named Obama.

Maybe it's the fear from their American cousins seeping across the border. Maybe it's the fear that if there's a fall federal election in Canada, then somehow the voodoo vibes from the Obama campaign will infect voters in Canada who will dutiful trudge off to the polls and voter for the Liberals.

Anyway, there is the smell of fear in the Connie camp.

But, c'mon, Kate.

Seriously?

A Rush Limbaugh youtube vid is evidence of something other than your need to get out more?

Count the number of posts attacking Obama.

Talk about a "tell".

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BlogHer Nation

The New York Times carried a feature over the weekend on the fourth annual BlogHer conference.

Yep.

Since 2005, women who write blogs have been coming together for a couple of days of seminars and networking.

A study conducted by BlogHer and Compass Partners last year found that 36 million women participate in the blogosphere each week, and 15 million of them have their own blogs. (BlogHer, which was founded by Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins, has itself grown into a mini empire that includes a Web site that helps publicize women’s blogs, and an advertising network to help women generate revenue for the site.)

As with men bloggers, some women have found financial success through blogging. Belle de Jour, a London call girl, managed to parley her blog into a book deal and now a television series. Read it. You'll be surprised and then you'll see why Belle has been as successful as she has been.

One of the presenters at BlogHer was Kyran Pittman, whose blog Notes to self is a well written, visually appealing collection of posts on whatever strikes her. She's also met with some financial success.

As Geoff Meeker wrote a couple of weeks ago, Kyran pitched a couple of posts to Good Housekeeping. her real success came in the August edition, currently on newsstands:

“The pitch came from feeling frustrated with yet another women’s magazine article on Wardrobe "Essentials" that added up to thousands of dollars,” Kyran wrote on her flickr page. “I challenged Good Housekeeping to let a real mom find out just how essential "investment" clothes are in real life. They went for it in a wonderful way.”

The result was a four-day assignment in New York City, complete with photographer, art director, makeup artist and her own trailer (with bagels and coffee inside). Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Kyran has the looks of a model, but she’s self-effacing about this – and is a gifted writer, by any measure.

According to the Times, one of the workshop sessions at BlogHer this year was the continuing struggle of women who write political blogs to get their work noticed. Outside of Ariana Huffington, political blogging in the United States is dominated at the national level by men. That isn't quite the same in Canada. One of the leading Conservative blogs - small dead animals - is written by Catherine McMillan.

What's most striking about BlogHer, though, is what can be seen if you look past the chromosomal structure of the authors. There's an eclectic mix of writing by people from different backgrounds on topics as diverse as the authors themselves.

And the challenges of blogging discussed at the San Francisco conference by women bloggers? As with Kyran's posts, the topics are things we can all appreciate because we've been there.

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Connecting sources with reporters: killing bad pitches

Over the past couple of months two new web sites have sprung up - one Canadian and the other American - aimed at connecting reporters with potential sources for stories.

HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out. Consider it a sort of match-making service.

If you are a potential source of information, sign up at the HARO site and you'll receive an e-mail up to three times a day containing a short description of what reporters might be looking for.

If you are a journalist, there's another page consisting almost entirely of a form to enter your contact information and the background on what you are looking for.

HARO is the brainchild of Peter Shankman, a marketing public relations consultant in New York City. As Shankman describes it,

I built this list because a lot of my friends are reporters, and they call me all the time for sources. Rather than go through my contact lists each time, I figured I could push the requests out to people who actually have something to say.

These requests only come from reporters directly to me. I never take queries from that other service, I never SPAM, and I'm not going to do anything with your email other than send you these reporter requests when they arrive in my in-box.

Many of us in the business get the same sort of calls from time to time. Shankman just decided to do something with a broader reach.

Meanwhile, three Canadians have started a similar concept north of the border. Journalistsource.ca is newer and will likely take a while to get rolling. Your humble e-scribbler signed up a couple of days ago and so far there's been one e-mail looking for a connection. Two public relations professionals and a journalist are behind the site.

Occasionally a journalist will want to remain anonymous, so in this case, we ask that you email us your response to the request, and we’ll send it on to the journalist on your behalf.

What do we ask in return? That’s simple too - When you see a journalist’s request that you think you/your organization is capable of fulfilling, please be SURE your response fits the request before replying. Why? Because one of JournalistSource.ca’s main goals is to eliminate PR Spam.

That last hyperlink is in the original text. It will take you to one of several sites that have cropped up detailing some of the horrible pitches arriving in newsrooms from marketers and PR consultants looking to place stories with a news organization.

It's a legitimate part of the business but when it's done poorly, everyone suffers. Other sites try to combat the bad pitch.

HARO and Journalist.ca are two new efforts to get past the bad pitch and connect people with stories to tell to the people who are looking to tell a story.

Oh. If you think this will just make a handy list for you to spam from, be warned. It gets back quickly and thus far Shankman hasn't been shy in his circulars in outing the spam artists.

Death to bad pitches.

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A buzz around the university

From the inadvertent humour category, provincial New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael told CBC this afternoon she'd like to see someone as president of Memorial University who could create a buzz.

For those of a certain age, the words "buzz" and "university" are synonymous, but likely not for the same reasons the NDP leader had in mind. Now if Ms. Michael wants to harken back to the salad days of many a young man and woman from the province, then we might be able to add a few new names to the list of possible presidents.

The only thing is we'll have to check and see if some are coming up for parole.

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First gold pour at Pine Cove

Three bars as part of the ramp up for full production of an estimated 16,000 ounces per year from Anaconda's Pine Cove operation, near Baie Verte.

The company issued a news release on 23 July.

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Hebron announcement this week?

In June, we had the CBC orgy of speculation on a Hebron deal right before the NOIA annual conference.

Nothing happened.

In his otherwise generic opening remarks, the Premier did say he hoped that everyone's patience would be rewarded well before Regatta Day.

Well, Regatta Day is next Wednesday and true to form, there's scuttlebutt - not solid enough to qualify even as a rumour -  that the final Hebron deal will be unveiled this week, possibly  Thursday, July 31 and Friday, August 1 in St. John's.

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Darren will lose his mind

Prototype Boba Fett figure, circa 1979, on original card mock-up.

Missile firing version, never mass produced.

eBay asking price: US$100,000.

Status: unsold

h/t Kris Abel at CTV.

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Crushed!

The most ambitious single media project in history.

Turns out it had nothing to do with the Independent at all.

Here in the Happiest Far Eastern Province, the punters had been told for years that the six part balance sheet of Confederation put together by Ryan and his merry band had been the most ambitious single media project in history.

It's NBC's Olympics coverage.

Another illusion shattered, hopelessly.

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Globe runs MUN president story

The Globe is reporting what has been rumoured for months, namely that the Premier nixed the nominee to replace Axel Meisen as president of Memorial University.

There are denials - sort of - from the powers that be.

Elizabeth Matthews, who is Mr. Williams's director of communications, said provincial legislation allows the Premier to have the opportunity for input, and the government doesn't apologize for having an interest in who takes on the job. “It would definitely be fair to say that he would ultimately have an interest when the names are brought forward,” she told The Globe earlier this week.

She also denied suggestions that the Premier has interfered in the process. “He can't have interfered because no names have been brought forward yet,” she said.

One minor problem with that bit: it's not correct. The Memorial University Act gives certain power to the Lieutenant Governor in Council - that is the entire cabinet - not just to the Premier.

51. There shall be a president of the university who shall be appointed by the board in consultation with the senate and with the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

As for the rest, it's a bit of verbal gymnastics that doesn't get to the point one way or the other. Any of a number of people on the senate could have, informally and unofficially, notified the Premier's Office of the name or names under consideration, there by giving plenty of opportunity for the Premier to have his say even though "no names have been brought forward yet" officially.

All deniable.

The Globe makes an increasingly common comparison, one that seems to be finding favour with the 8th:

The current situation harks back to former days in Newfoundland when politics did play a direct role in the leadership of Memorial, which gained university status in 1950 and has long been regarded as a key institution for the province. In 1966, Premier Joey Smallwood picked Lord Stephen Taylor to lead the university. Changes to the university's governance structure in the 1970s eliminated such direct appointments, but still require that the selection of the president be approved by the lieutenant-governor-in-council – essentially the premier and cabinet.

Those who have taken part in recent presidential searches say that approval has been a formality. “The recommendation was not questioned,” said Chris Sharpe, a geography professor who was a member of the committee that chose the last president.

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Accountants question government budget reporting

The Certified General Accountants Association of Canada said on Friday it is time for greater transparency around the budget process in Canada.

“The entire budget process needs to be more transparent. It’s become far too difficult for Canadians to make sense of the practice and to fully understand how their tax dollars are being spent,” said CGAAC president and chief executive officer Anthony Ariganello in a news release.

The CGA association questioned whether the surprise surpluses were actual surprises or part of a deliberate political strategy.

“You have to wonder whether these surpluses have allowed governments to be much less disciplined in their budgetary spending,” Ariganello noted. “The use of any federal surplus should be decided within the budgetary process, not as a consequence of poor planning.”

While Ariganello was referring specifically to the federal government, successive provincial budgets in Newfoundland and Labrador have followed the pattern to which the CGA president referred.

In the most recent budget news releases and comments by the finance minister referred to a projected surplus, but the budget documents tabled in the legislature forecast a $1.2 billion shortfall.  As well, the financial results for 2007 have been presented as yielding a surplus while the government actually borrowed $88 million to cover all financial transactions. 

That was the second straight year of provincial deficits, despite public claims of surpluses. Even Bond Papers was fooled (note the reference to record surpluses), until a thorough check of the documents revealed the real picture.

The chart shows total borrowing requirements from provincial government budgets between 2004 and 2008.

At the same time public sector spending has grown at a rate well beyond the annual rate of inflation.

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Humber Valley Resorts - new business plan

Flip to Crazy about Newfoundland and you'll find some interesting information on Humber Valley Resorts, the high-end real estate development started by former Indy publisher Brian Dobbin.

A major reorganization and refinancing effort has been underway since late last year. This is the first hint of the new initiatives aimed at stemming losses reported in the last two fiscal years and becoming profitable.

The post comes - apparently - from an e-mail sent to owners of existing chalets by the new Newfound NV chief executive officer Jayne McGivern following her first visit to the property.

Key initial points
* Newfound wants to retain the operation of the resort within the company
* The primary focus will be to build high-end chalets
* Tennis courts will be added [Update: Dan from Crazy advises by e-mail he made an error on the swimming pool mentioned in the original. He's adjusted his own post accordingly]
* Focus on completion of the road system, cycle paths and verge landscaping
* Reduce the property sales activity - to create a more controlled build plan

There are some other interesting developments, though, including this:

As a postscript - Jayne McGiven [sic] also met Tom Marshall the provisional [sic] finance minister and local MHA representative [sic], and apparently made it clear that the company would not continue to fund the only tourism flights from Europe, and reinforced that if tourism is to succeed the provisional government [sic] needs to take a much more active role. I also hear that her suggested solution is the resumption of the London to St Johns route. (Not that great for Western Newfoundland in my opinion). [Emphasis added]

There were hints of this publicly already. The Telegram reported in early June on Newfound NV's annual report for 2007.

Since late 2007, the company has reorganized, reduced losses and introduced a new management team to further develop properties in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, estimated in the company annual report to have a value of US$227 million.

The annual report describes the efforts made at turning around the company's fortunes:

As mentioned in my statement last year, we have been addressing the construction issues and although some still remain we did achieve our aim of accelerating the construction program during 2007 and we are making healthy margins on new build.

During the year, we carried out significant construction work on over 60 chalets resulting in an increase in revenue in local currency from construction and furnishings of 66% to US$ 21.3 million. We have nearly completed the construction backlog inherited at the time of the Newfound acquisition in 2006 and, subject to suitable funding being in place, it is hoped that all of the remaining outstanding contracts will be started during 2008.

In 2007, the first full year of operation of the 18 hole golf course, we won four prestigious awards including Golf Magazine (golf.com) Best New International Course 2007 and ScoreGolf Magazine's Best Canadian New Golf Course 2007. The credit for this must go to our Golf manager and his team.

We have recently signed an agreement with Monarch Airlines to run a weekly Boeing 757 from Gatwick to Deer Lake to cover both the summer and winter seasons, thus supporting the expected increase in vacation traffic. Although the charter at present makes a financial loss until such time as vacation numbers increase, it is an important part of both the operations at Humber Valley Resort and its future development.

Notice that there is no reference in the annual report to finding financial subsidies for the charter flights. In fact, the last statement suggests the current losses will be rectified once vacation numbers increase.

The idea of government paying for or subsidizing flights was first hinted at publicly by Brian Dobbin in his farewell column in the last issue of the Indy.

Humber Valley Resort showed a lot of people how good our tourism product can be to international markets, but it is now controlled by a mostly non-Newfoundland group of shareholders who see it only as an asset amongst others. While a private company we invested over $15 million just in marketing our tourism product internationally and providing air service from Europe. I know of no other international developer in the world who paid for weekly overseas flights for four years. Although I remain a shareholder in the company, I don’t expect our board will accept that kind of capital expenditure in the future on something they rightfully see as the province’s job. [Emphasis added]

Commercial air service, including international service, is available to Newfoundland and Labrador from London via several carriers. Air Canada discontinued year-round service between St. John's (YYT) and Gatwick in 2006 due to reportedly low traffic volume. It announced at the time it planned to introduce summer-only service in 2007.

Following the Air Canada announcement, Newfound's charter carrier at the time - Astraeus - began competing with Air Canada on the summer service run in 2007.

Both carriers subsequently withdrew from the St. John's to Gatwick run, although the provincial government only attacked Air Canada. The provincial transportation minister John Hickey offered a convoluted - and often incorrect - version of events.

The idea of the province having some financial involvement in the flights is a new twist though. In comments made to CBC in December, Newfound Group president Jeremy White referred to a request for the provincial government to lobby Air Canada to restore the direct Gatwick-St. John's flight. He also said government had offered to help defray some of the marketing costs for Humber Valley.

No representative from Newfound NV is listed in the provincial lobbyist register, as of 25 July 2008.

Humber Valley general manager Paul Shelley is a former provincial tourism minister. [Update: Dan from Crazy reports by e-mail that Paul Shelley is "long gone" from Humber Valley. He's now in St. John's but still with Newfound NV.]

Brian Dobbin, still the major shareholder in Newfound NV according to the 2007 annual report, sits on the provincially-appointed Ireland business partnership board.

Between 2006 and 2008, the provincial government was the "anchor advertiser" at the Independent, Dobbin's weekly newspaper, according to comments by editor Ryan Cleary.

In summer 2007, the Indy featured a front page story on Astraeus and its weekly service. The piece attracted considerable criticism:

This week, Cleary himself has shown the folly behind this thinking; has demonstrated that independent ownership does not guarantee editorial independence. The main story on page one of this week’s Independent (July 20) is what journalists indelicately call a “suck piece”. It takes up more than a third of page one, then turns to a massive two page spread inside. And nowhere in the article does Cleary disclose to whom he is sucking up.

In other words, there is a blatant hidden agenda.

Cleary and photographer Paul Daly took a round trip to London, thanks to free tickets from Astraeus Airlines. In return, Cleary lectures us that the flight was less than one-third full, and that the airline does not have a “bottomless pit of money.” The headlines exhorts us to “Use it or lose it.”

Actually, Cleary didn’t need to accept the free tickets to write this piece. He could have secured the essential information from a face-to-face or phone interview. But no matter – I don’t begrudge a reporter a freebie here and there, as long as there is full disclosure.

Nowhere in the body of the article does Cleary bring himself to say the tickets were free. You have to read the photo caption to discover that “the airline provided the paper with two round trip tickets.”

Update: 'ullo, 'ullo. What's all this then? An eagle-eyed reader has noted that the provincial government's tourism statistics report for 2007 claims there's been an increase in commercial airline travel by the infamous "non-resident" visitor to the province and that air capacity has gone up likewise.

The number of non-resident air visitors reached an estimated 81,100 to
the end of April 2008, an increase of 5.0% over the same period last
year.

...

Air capacity has increased significantly to Newfoundland and Labrador
for the summer of 2008 compared to the summer of 2007 with the
exception of international/overseas outbound direct. Not including the
Newfoundland to London, UK flights, there has been an overall increase
in air access of 6.9% flights (23 additional flights per week) and
14.3% or 3,353 seats per week

That "non-resident" visitor thing is such a joke. It's like you sleeping in another part of the house when the in-laws come to visit and then claiming that in addition to the endless string of visiors from out-of-province, your living room had a few "non-resident visitors.

Tourists are tourists. Visitors are visitors. The provincial government need to find another term for what they describe, and what is a legitimately business activity. But, they need to separate it from the real tourism statistics more clearly than they do. That way, the public can see - transparently - what kind of impact the tourism advertising budget is having on the market.

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Hat tip to Gary Kelly for the link to the Crazy post. Humber Valley has potential. It will be interesting to see how it grows, hopefully without public subsidies.

Sound advice, thus far ignored

Non-renewable resource revenue should be invested, at least in part, according to several economists and economic experts.

"You don't want extraction commodities to be the sole provider of prosperity," says Brett Gartner, an economist with the Canada West Foundation. "The risk is that when things are going well, the whole push to innovate and to diversify the economy gets forgotten, crowded out by all the money being made off resources."

The provincial government has thus far expressly refused to consider even a small investment fund of the type common in other places where non-renewable resources are a major or the major source of economic activity. 

In Norway and Alberta, a portion of government resource revenues is invested, thereby generating additional revenue for the future.

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Related:

Create wealth fund: OECD

Investing non-renewable revenues

Exports up. Dollar, oil, down: EDC forecast

Export Development Canada forecast Thursday at Canadian exports will rise by 4.2% based on high energy prices.

EDC is also predicting the Canadian dollar will drop to between US$0.94 and US$0.97 cents in early 2009.

“While EDC recognizes that global supply and demand for crude is tight, we sees signs that a large price correction is on the horizon”, Mr. Hall continued.  “On the demand front, growth expectations are likely to moderate as the global slowdown spreads and oil price subsidies in emerging markets are scaled back.  On the supply front, the Energy Information Administration is already forecasting a doubling of OPEC surplus capacity, to 4 million barrels per day in 2009, and non-OPEC supply gains of 1 million barrels per day.”

The forecasted correction:  crude below US$100 per barrel before the end of 2008 and averaging US$84 per barrel in 2009.

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End the gas price fraud

In the past week, crude oil prices have dropped roughly 15%, from US$147 per barrel to somewhere around US$125.

In St. John's today, gasoline prices dropped 6.5%.  That's after an increase last week.

Promoters of the scheme  - none of them economists evidently - will claim it has benefits.  It's hard to see how, considering that asa  result of government interfering in the marketplace, local consumers are being screwed.  "Regulation" is a sham the actually prevents the marketplace from working properly to deliver benefits to consumers. 

It's long overdue for government to end the fraud of "regulation".

Pay George Murphy to keep track of prices as useful information for consumers, if need be, but scrap the charade foisted on the province by people like Doc O'Keefe.

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So force feeding seals would be okay?

In response to a proposed European ban on seal products owing to the inhumane killing methods, Canadian sealers are considering penning the animals in cages and force feeding them boiled corn meal laced with fat, a practice to which EU legislators can turn a blind eye.

Relax.  They aren't. 

But they should given the Europeans' collective ability to wag their fingers at others while doing as they wish themselves.

Meanwhile, the French are leading a fight against fishing restrictions affecting EU countries.  Surprisingly, they'll be backed by the Spanish and Portugese.

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The price of freedom: Vimy + porn = one euro

A 30 something French couple was fined $500 euros after being found guilty of exhibitionism in France. 

They were also given a four month suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay one euro in compensation to the Canadian government.

The couple video recorded themselves having sex at the Vimy memorial to Canadian First World War dead and posted the video to an Internet site.

The memorial has become popular in France as a site for exhibitionism. Three cases were pending in January, 2008.

Samuel Cogez, a reporter with the local newspaper La Voix du Nord, told CBC that the memorial has been known "for years as a meeting place for all kinds of sexual encounters.

So the price of French freedom comes out to be about 15,000 Canadian lives in one war and a buck sixty Canadian 90 years later.

We'll have to keep that in mind the next time.

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Authentic: And he does snowploughs, too?

St. John's-based Newfoundland & Labrador Tourism commissioned artist Cam Mahy to paint a calm-inducing Newfoundland nature scene to get Torontonians thinking about an eastern getaway.

Hmmm.

With all the visual artists - photography or paint, for example - in Newfoundland and Labrador, is this the guy who painted the Gardiner billboard?

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I am my own electoral grandpa, the latest version

nottawa says he isn't making this up.

How could he. The truth is always stranger than fiction.

And who ever heard of voting in an election that hasn't been called, anyway?

Meanwhile, Paul Wells blogged it.

How long before the rest of the national media take notice of this embarrassment?

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Authentic

No sweat to tell the difference between a public relations professional who knows how to use the tools to do the job compared with well, the opposite.

On the opposite side, we have this ham-fisted piece of nonsense from the company doing advertising for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Incidentally, the ham-fist is not the billboard on the Gardiner.

Then compare it to Joseph Thornley's personal pictures from a recent holiday in Prince Edward Island. Sure he used it as a means to talk about how easily he uploaded the great photos to his blog and to Flickr, but what he is telling is a simple story of someone who went to the Island, had a great time, took gorgeous pictures and then uploaded them to the Internet complete with geotags.

I uploaded about 100 pictures of the attractions and historic areas of Charlottetown, North Rustico Harbour (the epitome of a Canadian east coast village), the beaches and cliffs of Prince Edward Island Park (look for the picture of the fox that trotted right up to our car while holding a rabbit in its mouth) and, of course, Green Gables (if you’re the parent of a girl, you’ll know what that is.)

I uploaded photos from my flickr page directly to PlanetEye. It was simple. Took about 2 minutes for each batch of 20 to 25 pictures. And then the geotagging worked perfectly. I simply dragged and dropped my photos onto a map in the location where I’d taken them.

The difference between the two approaches is a simple word: authentic. Thornley's experience carries with it all the credibility of someone who has actually been there and done it. There's a story to be told here and the pictures are part of the whole thing.

Now theoretically, he could be working for the PEI tourism department or the software companies he mentions but nothing on the site would suggest he is. Ethically he'd be obliged to disclose such a connection and base don a number of factors, including the fact he doesn't comment on the issue, it's a reasonable assumption that he isn't. Note that one of Thornley's viewers chides him about the software developer.

Even after a suspicious mind has gone to that point and returned, you come back to the integrity and the sincerity of the post.

His last line, which will be seen by thousands in exactly the demographic Islanders are looking to hit, says it all:

If you’re interested in an unspoiled place for a summer vacation, take a look at Charlottetown on PlanetEye or at my Charlottetown photo set on Flickr .

A simple call to action - for you marketers out there - and the links are left in it so you can act, just as Thornley would have wanted.

Compare that to the other thing. There was a conventional media story in the billboard. The thing would have to be pitched and worked to get coverage.

A n Internet search turned up this story online, albeit in a media trade publication. There's another mention, again from a trade publication that focus es on the agency and not the client. The Telly had a picture on July 11. Notice this story appeared the very same day as the release, suggesting it was organized ahead of time.

There might be other stuff but it sure as heck isn't turning up online where the video and the story of the billboard had a chance to go truly viral.

If handled properly.

And that's the catch.

This was a potentially hot new media story, completely with daily blog posts about the development, complete with amateur video done by the creators as they were doing it. Three weeks worth of material is stuff most blogs would kill for, especially stuff as compelling as that. When you combine the story inherent in the billboard production with the authentic flavour of a local artist hired to complete the work you have a truly delightful tale that tells itself.

And seriously, except in a world where agency self-stroking is the goal, the trade pubs that showed up in the search are useless to accomplishing the client goal of boosting the number of people who don't usually come this way headed to the farthest eastern airports in the country.

It's not like the record on this over the past couple of years has been anything to write home about, although plenty has been written and spoken at home about it.

Throwing more cash into tourism advertising isn't necessarily the way to go in a highly competitive market at a time when it's tough to get people to travel.

Being genuinely creative in your approach - being authentic - sure can make a difference. As the great advertising persuader put it, authenticity helps break through the wall of cynicism about advertising generally.

It's easy to talk about authenticity, but sometimes it's pretty obvious that some people don't get what the word means.

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That economics thing

Via John Gushue, a simple test of financial literacy from the freakonomics blog.

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Crude futures go lower

Light, sweet for August delivery hit $127.24 today, down almost $4.00, on the New York Mercantile Exchange, according to ctv.ca.

That's down $20 from the record high set last week.

Refined gasoline for August delivery hit US$3.124 per gallon.

bloomberg.com offers more detail.

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Adios Indy

The sides were too far apart, according to Geoff Meeker.

No new investor means the paper folds.

It will be interesting to see if anyone can find out what "too far apart" actually meant.

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A provincial government strategic planning session...

Captured in graphic form.

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