The issue behind the Abitibi upset

Human resources minister Susan Sullivan responded to Mark Griffin’s letter about Abitibi printed in last week’s Grand Falls-Windsor Advertiser.

The root of this whole issue is really the upset in central Newfoundland among people who believed that somehow magic would occur and the mill wouldn’t close. They expected the ministerial committee to do things that were likely never even discussed. 

That’s what happens in these cases. 

Some people just imagine magical results. Like they did in Harbour Breton or Stephenville.  The difference in this case is that there isn’t any place to sop up all the laid-off workers.  As a result people are edgy. They  want to point fingers.

You can tell this is part of the local political dynamic by the line Sullivan uses that essentially sits the whole thing in the hands of the union.  You’ll hear that a lot:  “We only did what the union/workers wanted.” As Sullivan describes it:

"At two specific meetings I was present with Minister Dunderdale when she said clearly to the unions when she said 'Do you understand if you vote in this manner these are the repercussions, these are the consequences; this could happen and this could happen, and ultimately the mill could close. Do you understand that? 'We want to make it clear you understand what the repercussions of your vote might be.' We made that abundantly clear to them and they told us, yes, they were clear, but they had their own decisions to make. We said that was fine."

In short hand:  Hey don’t blame us.  Those guys knew what they were doing when they turned down the last offer.

You can see that real issue too in the portion of the article in which Griffin responds:

"What I would have thought would have been an appropriate approach would be an attempt on the part of government to broker a deal, to mediate deal if they could," Mr. Griffin told the Advertiser.

"If they attempted that and the end result was there was no deal, so be it, but it seems that the government's approach was 'we are not getting involved in the relationship between the union and the company', as if to say that is government policy. There are many examples in our history of government getting involved in these private relationships."

Government getting involved in private relationships.  Like say Stephenville where the government laid millions on the table to subsidize the mill.  You can find plenty of references to that power subsidy coming up online and elsewhere in discussions about the Grand Falls-Windsor mill.  For those who want some discussion of it, you can find references at this old post from 2006 and 2005.

You can see the political upset this is causing in certain quarters by the attacks being mounted against Griffin personally by the Premier – his usual smear that someone has a “political agenda” or “political aspirations” – and some of his staunchest supporters.

We are in polling goosing season after all.  Surely it doesn’t help the partisan illusion of invincibility derived from overwhelming popularity if people actually start voicing concerns about government policy and actions. As one wag put it, the issue doesn’t have to be correct, true or even remotely plausible to capture the popular imagination.  After all, said the wag, the current administration has thrived on things that aren’t true.  They are afraid of this issue because they know too well the power of a highly emotional issue and the political damage it can cause.

All that’s as maybe.  The Abitibi issue has legs and it is causing political problems in central Newfoundland for an administration that has been remarkably able to make these issues disappear.

Let’s see if they can work their magic again.

So far their efforts haven’t been working.

-srbp-

Comment update:  You can find additional detail in a series of columns by Roger Pike in the Advertiser.

Williams backs hydro lines through UNESCO World Heritage Site; protests mount on line

Danny Williams sees no problem.

“When park officials look at what the trade-off happens to be for the benefits we get at the end of day ... I think they will see the benefit,” he said.

Meanwhile, protests are mounting such that even voice of the cabinet minister is reporting them. One online petition has started and the same crowd have started a Facebook group.

The  petition  - Save Gros Morne National Park – includes the following:

While only early in discussions, now is the time to let the government know that a new massive transmission line cutting through Gros Morne National Park would be a terrible mistake. The environmental and visual integrity of the park would be damaged forever. This would have disastrous consequences for the local economy which relies on the tourism industry to survive.

-srbp-

Norsk Hydro planning for two more years of downturn

Like the groundhog seeing his shadow, Norsk Hydro is preparing for a economic downturn that will last at least another two years.

The company said it was in the process of raising new funds, which it would be able to borrow, and did not rule out further production cuts as the global economic slump ate further into demand for raw materials.

Hydro has already announced cutbacks of 22 percent compared to last year, including at its Karmoy and Soeral smelters in Norway and Neuss in Germany.

-srbp-

Verbal tics (5) and wandering into a math minefield

Two things stand out from this scrum by the Premier and finance minister a little over a week ago. [CBC video link: “Premier Danny Williams and Finance Minister Jerome Kennedy respond to the latest from the nurses union. The union said Friday that it would not return to negotiations until its strike vote is completed.”]

First, Danny Williams utters only 11 of his now famous “you know” verbal tics in the entire nine minute scrum.  He racks up a mere four in the first two and a half minutes and only hits 10 by the end of four minutes.

Either he’s much more comfortable with this subject – the nurses’ labour negotiation – than he was with other subjects or he’s been doing some anti-tic practice in the past couple of weeks.

Second, finance minister Jerome Kennedy gets himself into a bit of a pickle when he brings up the projected deficit.  He puts the shortfall at about $500 million based on assumed production levels and assuming CDN$50 per barrel for oil and then adds on the $400 million from loss of the Equalization option.  We’ll grant him that even though it’s a bit of a fiction.

Then Kennedy starts down the dangerous road, mentioning the need to allow for “growth”.

How much growth?

Six per cent.

6%.

Or put in other terms about six times the rate of inflation.

That’s pretty typical for an administration that has been known to ratchet up spending by about 14% annually in some years.

So even with oil prices down, mines in limbo and mineral revenues down drastically, a thousand people out of work in central Newfoundland who knows what else, the government is actually planning to increase overall spending in 2009 by six per cent.

That alone would whack $400 million or so onto the deficit all by itself.

Looks like all that the federal changes to Equalization did was take away the convenient federal transfer that would have covered some of that planned unsustainable increase in public spending. Now they just have to stick it on the provincial Amex card.

But still, if you look at where Kennedy headed as he wandered into that mathematics minefield, we are looking at government booking a $1.2 billion deficit this year, the largest in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador, before or since 1949. 

In fact, in one single budget, these guys sound like they are going to add more debt to the shoulders of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians than the entire debt millstone that sank the country in 1933-34.

If you go back and look at the assessment by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in 2004, the projected deficit for next year – based on the finance minister’s own numbers – will look worse than anything in that document.

That probably explains why Kennedy’s voice trails off at the end of his discussion of the coming deficit.  he realised what he’d said.

-srbp-

Williams lends credence to other expropriation theory

The Premier may have been trying to deflect one set of questions about the expropriation of AbitibiBowater’s hydroelectric assets when he told reporters:

Williams explained that the province didn't need the power from the Exploits River in order to accommodate the Long Harbour plant. He said 70 megawatts were freed up when the Stephenville paper mill closed, and an additional 54 megawatts of wind power has also been added to the grid.

In the process, though he just leaves hanging the question of why he bothered to expropriate the hydro assets in the first place including Star Lake, a site that wasn’t feeding power to the ABH paper mill at Grand Falls.

If NALCO didn’t need the assets and the assets weren’t going anywhere and the only thing they could do is generate electricity, why exactly was the provincial government in such a rush to seize them?

Failed Star Lake bid?

Eliminating any potential competition – guaranteeing NALCO’s monopoly position - seems to be the prime motivating factor. As the Telegram renders the Premier’s comments,

he said the most important fact is that the province, through Nalcor Energy, a Crown corporation, will take full control of the power at the end of March. [Emphasis added]

No details update:  Premier Danny Williams will confirm that NALCO tried to buy a portion of Star Lake but he won’t give any more details.

So if they didn’t need the power – as the Premier said in another interview - why try and buy in? According to the Premier, it was to bring “provincial ownership of the resource.” 

Odd statement that since the Premier knew that legally the provincial government owned the resource already. Al the Star Lake partnership had was a set of water rights leases and agreements.

Forget the conspiracy theories.  This is looking more and more like a case of “Why buy when you can seize?”

-srbp-

Mark Griffin: traitor

The poor guy asks a few questions.

This is what he gets for his troubles:

"It's really unfortunate when one of our own comes out and betrays us like that," [Premier Danny] Williams said of Griffin.

The "We are not amused" update: And who exactly is this "us" of which he speaks?

-srbp-

Chutzpah

The old definition of chutzpah was killing both your parents and then seeking the mercy of the court because you are an orphan.

The new definition of chutzpah is signing a deal for less research and development money than the regulations required  - Kathy Dunderdale and Hebron - and then claiming credit for all the new research and development money that came from someone else’s initiative.

-srbp-

Bootie call stats – humping your leg version

As labradore has noted, a story turned up on voice of the cabinet minister on Friday claiming that there had been 4900 live births in the province in 2008.

Interestingly enough, the provincial government’s own research and analysis division figures for 2008 don’t jive with what labradore notes would be the most dramatically successful breeding program in the world.

In the third quarter of 2008, there were 1,138 live births in Newfoundland and Labrador. Couple that with the first quarter result of 1025 and you have 2163 live births in six months of 2008.  That makes it highly unlikely that the other 2800 occurred in the remaining half year, especially considering the seasonal variation.

Maybe there’s a discrepancy because the bootie call also gives cash for adoptions. Still though 400 adoptions would mean four hundred babies brought into the province from outside since the total number of births captures all children born in the province.

But still, notice the figures. 

Two months after the old year ended there are still 800 people who haven’t submitted their bootie call cash applications, if that story is true.  On top of that, the government bureaucrats are so slow getting their act together that only 3300 people have gotten any cash thus far.

That’s pretty sucky all ‘round.  Either people aren’t hearing about the bootie call cash or they aren’t getting their applications in or there just aren’t that many babies being cranked out.

They certainly aren’t getting their cash in a timely way.  Six weeks to process the application and therefore starting out owing people $1200 bucks in benefits right off the bat.  The bootie call consists of a cool grand for the live wriggler and then $100 a month for 12 months.

But let’s go back to that 4900 figure again because something just isn’t right.

The finance minister’s own statement and government’s budgeting on this don’t add up either.  They’ve allocated $12.4 million in 2008 for the project which works out to over 5600 babies.  Then they’ve allocated $9.9 million annually thereafter for it. That works out to roughly 4500 children which is the exact figure in the minister’s statement:

The combined total of births and adoptions each year is approximately 4,500.

So anyway, the numbers don’t add up. Looks like voice of the cabinet minister is just drying humping on the bootie call.

-srbp-

Holyrood an “absolute necessity” for decades to come: Hydro

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is pushing the $10 billion Lower Churchill project and the multi-billion dollar power lines through a UNESCO World Heritage site as a replacement for the Holyrood diesel generating station near St. John’s.

But, Hydro’s 20 year capital plan, submitted to the public utilities board in 2008, notes that “[d]epending on which scenario unfolds, some, or all of the Holyrood generating plant will be required for decades into the future.”

According to Hydro, the Holyrood generating station is an “absolute necessity in the system.”

It is important to consider that whichever expansion scenario occurs, an isolated Island electrical system or interconnected to the Lower Churchill via HVDC link, Holyrood will be an integral and vital component of the electrical system for decades to come. In the isolated case Holyrood will continue to be a generating station; in the interconnected scenario its three generating units will operate as synchronous condensers, providing system stability, inertia and voltage control.

-srbp-

Prov gov’t expropriated after it lost bid to buy hydro asset

Human resources minister Susan Sullivan appeared on local talk radio today responding publicly to a letter by Grand falls-Windsor lawyer Mark Griffin.  In a letter to the Grand Falls-Windsor Advertiser, Griffin raised several questions about government’s expropriation of AbitibiBowater assets including hydroelectric generators.

Sullivan gave radio listeners three reasons for the expropriation.  The first – and most important – is one that government used from the start: no one wanted to see the company walk away with “our resources”.  The line doesn’t hold up any better now than it did before.  The assets weren’t going to leave the province in any scenario and that’s especially true of the hydro generators which could only produce power in Newfoundland.

For many there has been a suspicion from the outset that there was more to the story than met the eye, much more than the nationalist chest-thumping and theatrics surrounding the expropriation bill.

New information points to an answer to the nagging question of why the provincial government expropriated the hydroelectric assets, including Star Lake which never supplied power to the Grand Falls paper operation. It’s an answer that harkens back to the failed Hebron negotiations in April 2006.

In a February 13 interview with Business News Network’s Howard Green, Abitibi chief executive David Paterson said the provincial government moved to expropriate AbitibiBowater’s assets in Newfoundland only after the provincial government lost out in the bidding for Abitibi’s interest in one of its hydro projects. [video link]

“We hadn’t said we were going to sell the assets,” said Paterson, “other than we had a deal on a joint venture power dam and our partner [in that project] was going to buy us out…”.

Paterson said the provincial government  - presumably Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro - had bid for the AbitibiBowater interest in the joint venture but had been outbid by the partner.  He said the provincial government had been “blocking the transfer” to what Paterson described as an existing investor in the province.

“and now they’ve expropriated them as well,” said Paterson.

Ironically,  Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro is reportedly handling the compensation talks with all the companies whose assets were seized. Paterson told the Globe and Mail on 17 December: “[It] basically consists of Newfoundland telling us what they are going to do and we have to comply.”

The description of the partnership sounds like Star Lake, a joint venture between Abitibi and Enel North America.  The Star Lake partnership came in response to a call for proposals in the early 1990s from Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro for a small hydro projects that would displace some of the generation at Holyrood. The project sold power directly to Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro.

Star Lake was expropriated in December 2008.

To date neither the provincial government nor the companies involved have answered any questions about the expropriation. Earlier this month, the province’s natural resources department refused to answer a series of questions on the expropriation posed by Bond Papers. The questions included ones that went directly to the issue of Star Lake: 

1. Why were all the hydro assets expropriated under Schedule C and the various licenses and permissions terminated (Schedule E)?
2. Why was this done in December?
3. Why was Star Lake included when it was a response to an NL Hydro RFP?

If Abitibi wasn’t planning to sell its other hydroelectric assets in the province, the company may have been looking to sell its power directly to the Vale Inco project at Long Harbour. All that stopped, as would the possibility of selling the hydro assets to Vale Inco, one the privately held generation was seized by the provincial government in December.

This also puts a different light on one of the curious lines in the provincial government’s news release on the Long Harbour project:

The company has also agreed that it will pay the island industrial rate for its power supply, surrendering its option to have a better rate should other industrial customers obtain a better rate for whatever reason.

Once government seized the Abitibi assets and all the company’s water rights, Vale Inco didn’t have a choice. The existing assets were gone as were three projects which together could have supplied Vale Inco’s power needs. There wasn’t any way to develop an alternative to NALCO’s government-enforced monopoly position.

The notion of seizing assets after a failed negotiation isn’t new, either. In 2006, the Premier public vilified the partners in the Hebron talks when negotiations collapsed.  He talked openly about the need for legislation which would allow government to seize properties containing commercially viable oil finds if the finds were not developed within a certain period of time.

-srbp-

Romanes eunt domus

Somewhere in the cupboard, your humble e-scribbler has a coffee mug with the words “Illegitimi non carborundum” on the outside.  Inside there’s a translation of this supposedly Latin phrase: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

The only problem is the phrase isn’t Latin at all. It sounds like Latin but according to those that know these things, the phrase is just one of those things that got passed down and transmogrified over the years.

That source of all knowledge – Wikipaedia – has a typically lengthy entry on the whole thing.

The phrase cropped up again in a scrum on Thursday, with a new variation: “illegitimati”.  Same difference.  It’s still mock Latin.

At times like this, it is worthwhile to go back to Monty Python.  A little proper Latin and a properly funny Latin lesson to correct the phrase that translates as “People called Romans they go the house.”

More offshore R&D cash

The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear an appeal by oil companies into a court decision on research and development rules set by the offshore regulatory board.

That means more money for research will flow in Newfoundland and Labrador from Hibernia and Terra Nova.  White Rose already operates under the new rules that fix a percentage of revenues to be spent on research and development.

The decision will also affect the Hebron field when and if it is developed.

Under the provincial government's agreement with the Hebron partners, $120 million is earmarked for R&D activities.

Despite that spending commitment, Ruelokke says the R&D rules will still apply to the project.

"It'll be bound by whatever our guidelines require."

If the R&D formula works out to be more than the Hebron agreement target, more research and development spending will be required.

-srbp-

Hydro towers likely to confront cabinet in retreat

The provincial cabinet may be retreating to Corner Brook for a couple of days but they won’t be able to retreat from a number of controversial issues, including their plan to sling hydro lines on 40 metre tall towers through a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The plan apparently came as surprise to tourism operators in the region.  They’ve got serious reservations about the scheme.

“Stand almost anywhere in the park and, given this proposal, the one thing that would catch your eye is a 50-foot transmission tower,” said [Todd] White. “I can’t sell that.”

Letter to the Editor update:  from Greg Knott of Norris Point -

Gros Morne National Park is widely considered around the world to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet and should be preserved as is, at all costs, to protect its visual and environmental integrity for all generations around the world to enjoy ... forever.

 

-srbp-

Auto sales in NL off big time

According to DesRosiers Consultants, automobile sales in Newfoundland and Labrador dropped 34.2% in January 2009 compared to January 2008.

That’s the biggest drop in the country.

Saskatchewan faired best with a seven percent drop when comparing January to January.

-srbp-

Paranoid delusions and the pain of loss

The usual crowd on voice of the cabinet minister’s night time show are in a lather over Konrad Yakabuski’s column in the Thursday Globe and Mail suggesting the expropriation of AbitibiBowater’s hydro assets was part of a Machiavellian plot to guarantee low cost power to Vale Inco for its Long harbour project.

Abitibi hydro – 116 MW.  Vale Inco need – 100 MW starting in 2012.

Now there are a couple of things right off the bat. 

First, the world can always be reinvented to fit the paranoid delusion of the moment and the tinfoil hat brigade thrives on paranoia and delusion.  In this case, they loved the Globe for featuring a border war with Quebec despite the facts to the contrary about the border issue.  It’s a pet cause of theirs and they felt vindicated that the Globe had supposedly paid attention to them and what they think is the truth.

Once the Premier stated that there really wasn’t an issue, the same crowd decided – as they now argue – that the evil Globe is just trying to stir up controversy and undermine their local hero. 

Why they pay so much attention to one newspaper is a mystery.

Second, there was no apparent shortage of electricity on the island.  The closure of the Stephenville mill  in 2005 freed up a bunch of megawatts and there is some extra capacity around in the system for the foreseeable future anyway. There are several small hydro projects in various stages of planning all of which could have been developed, if needed, to meet the demand at Long Harbour.

Beyond that it is just too much to imagine that any government would deliberately throw one crowd out of work in order to put another bunch somewhere else to work.

Yakabuski is right that the Crown expropriated the most valuable assets of the AbitibiBowater operation at Grand Falls-Windsor.  The really valuable one in the long run is the hydro generation both from existing projects and the ones on the planning books. The provincial government expropriated not only the mill-related generation but also seized Star Lake which was built to supply power directly into the electricity grid on the island.  They also cancelled all AB’s water rights thereby preventing them from establishing any generating capacity that wasn’t controlled by the hydro corporation.

Yakabuski’s musing really comes apart on the matter of timing.  Once the workers voted down the second restructuring proposal and the company announced the mill would close, the mill was gone. Expropriation simply allowed NALCO to scoop up all the hydro assets, establish a near complete monopoly on electricity generation and do it all for little or no cost. Expropriation didn’t cause the mill closure; it was – at best – a by-product.

The letter that seems to have prompted Yakabuski’s column has to be seen in a wider context as well. There are a great many people in central Newfoundland who never believed for a moment the mill would ever close.  They believed, apparently, that it was all a bluff or that the government had some sort of magical plan that would make all the hurt go away.

Its author poses a series of questions that really should be seen through the lens of that shock. Many people in central Newfoundland are looking for answers for what, to them, must appear to be an impossible outcome of this whole process.

People naturally come up with all sorts of possible explanations for really bad things and this letter must be seen in this light. Great plots make for good fiction but they are usually not the stuff of the real world.

In the real world, bad things happen for perfectly understandable and far less complicated reasons.

-srbp-

NL new home starts forecast to drop by 17.4%

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is forecasting that new single home starts in Newfoundland and Labrador will be down 17.4% in 2009 from 2008. Re-sales of existing single family dwellings is expected to drop 14%.

-srbp-

That’s what that noise was…

The giant pop was the bubble that was protecting the province from the global economic meltdown as it burst.

Former finance minister Tom Marshall:

“We have a horrible, global economic slowdown, which appears to be much more severe than people expected,” said Marshall. “We’re seeing job losses everywhere and firms going bankrupt or teetering on bankruptcy. How protracted this recession will be, I don’t know, but it looks like it is going to be severe.

“When times are good, you run a surplus. When they are bad, you run a deficit and spend money. When consumers aren’t spending and businesses are not investing and exports are down, government has to step in and start spending and creating employment. That’s what we’re doing and I’m glad we’re doing it.”

Of course, since Marshall ran cash deficits in the good times, so there’s something there that doesn’t add up.

-srbp-

Recycled “stimulus”

There is an unprecedented, historic level of money in yesterday’s provincial government pre-budget spending announcement that is recycled cash from last year or money previously committed.

That’s pretty clear if you read comments by former finance minister Tom Marshall in the province’s other daily newspaper, the Western Star:

There will also be $16 million to finish off the new long-term care facility in Corner Brook.
The province is going to spend $50 million in health equipment and another $40 million on maintenance and repairs of current facilities, though Marshall did not have a breakdown of how much of those monies will be directed to Western Health.The new law courts under construction in Corner Brook will receive $7 million so that project can be completed in the coming year, while Sir Wilfred Grenfell College will be getting a share of the $9.4 million the province will spend on new residences at the Memorial University campuses in Corner Brook and St. John’s. The total cost of the Grenfell residences will be nearly $5 million, while new accommodations at the larger campus will eventually cost $67.5 million.

Leftover work from last year, including jobs on the Lewin Parkway and the off-ramp at Humber Village, will be among the $70.7 million o be spent on the province’s roads. Schools throughout western Newfoundland can expect to see some of the $30 million announced for repairs and maintenance  in K-12 schools.

It isn’t clear at this point how much of the money is actually new nor how much will actually be spent.

-srbp-

Freedom from Information: The “secret” inland fisheries review

Former Provincial Conservative cabinet minister and retired supreme court judge Bill Marshall has been conducting a review of the province’s inland fish and wildlife enforcement program but there have been no news releases about the project. 

The only reference to the review on the government’s website is in a question last fall from opposition House leader Kelvin Parsons on December 17, 2008, the last day the House sat before Christmas:

Mr. Speaker, after receiving information from a concerned citizen, our office submitted an Access to Information Request regarding the William Marshall review of the Inland Fish and Wildlife Enforcement Program. Executive Council withheld most of the information and we were forced to appeal to the Information and Privacy Commissioner. He recommended the release of the information in accordance with the legislation, yet government is still hiding these documents. It has been eight months and this issue is still not resolved. [Emphasis added]

I ask the minister: Why is government withholding significant amounts of information related to the Marshall review?

The information on the review turned up when your humble e-scribbler started searching the Internet for any references to the subject of what initially appeared to be a  routine decision by the province’s information commissioner on Monday. 

The inland fisheries program falls under the justice department but for some reason the access to information requests was handled by the government’s central bureaucracy.

In the decision, information commissioner Ed Ring summarised the initial access to information request as follows:

Under authority of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the “ATIPPA”) the Applicant submitted an access to information request dated 18 April 2008 to Executive Council (the “Department”), wherein he sought disclosure of records as follows:

“I am requesting under the Access to Information Act information related to [author’s name] review of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Enforcement Program. This request includes:

- the budgeted amount of the review.
- travel and entertainment expenses by [the author]
- all documentation related to this review.”

The identity of the applicant and of the individual conducting the review were withheld by Ring in keeping with the privacy sections of the province’s access to information law.  Both are revealed in the transcripts from the House of Assembly.

There is no indication of the scope of the review or of when it started. The Executive Council withheld large portions of the record citing several sections of the access law. The opposition office appealed the Executive Council’s decision to withhold the sections.

Executive Council also withheld information on the basis that the review was not completed.  Justice minister Tom Marshall gave that reason as his answer to the question posed in the legislature.  The applicant did not seek a copy of the final report specifically nor did its request – as quoted by the information commissioner – relate solely to the report.

Ring rendered his decision Monday, noting the excessive delay in responding to the opposition office appeal was due in large part to problems getting a response from the Executive Council official responsible for co-ordinating access to information requests.

Part of the delay was apparently due to a staffing change at Executive Council.  However, between August and October, the information commissioner’s office had little success in getting the new co-ordinator to respond to efforts to resolve the appeal informally.

In his decision, Ring accepted that some of the deletions in the documents sent to the applicant were legitimate.  Others were not.  Reference in an e-mail to the fact that cabinet had reached decision on an unspecified matter was deleted in its entirety citing the section of the act that requires information be withheld if it can revealed advice, deliberations of cabinet or policy recommendations.

In other instances, entire paragraphs were deleted from documents on the grounds they contained personal information.  Ring noted that the privacy section of the legislation  - section 30 - could have been satisfied by merely deleting the names of certain individuals or other specific information.

The most curious part of Ring’s decision comes in a discussion of something referred to as “non-responsive records.” Ring noted:

Finally, the Department has identified some records as not being responsive to the Applicant’s request. The Applicant’s request was very broad, and access was sought to “…all documentation related to this review.” It appears to me, that some of the information that was considered non-responsive and thus not provided to the Applicant could fall under this broad request, in that it might be considered to be related to the review. For example, any information that was provided to the author or discussed between government officials as a result of the review is, in my opinion, responsive to the request, and should therefore be provided to the Applicant (subject, of course, to any appropriate exceptions).

Neither the access to information law nor the government’s access to information policy manual contain a definition of  “responsive” or “non-responsive” records.

The terms come up frequently in reference to access requests but they appear to be inventions of government officials. They have no legal meaning since they are not in either the access law or the regulations.  However, they are so common-place that everyone has come to use them.

For example, a Telegram inquiry about purple files used in the Premier’s Office in preparing for media interviews yielded the official response that there were “no responsive records.” The Telegram learned of the files when a reporter received a copy of an e-mail from a government communications official asking for purple files to be prepared for the Premier. The premier himself confirmed that such files were routinely prepared for him as part of interview preparation:

"When I am provided with a personal file it's an information file to get me ready for an interview with the press," he told reporters at the news conference. "It is not the down and dirty on you or you or you or anybody else."

In the inland fish review case, it really isn’t clear how Executive Council officials could identify documents or information that related to the review and yet were “non-responsive” to a request for “all documentation.” On the face of it, it seems that officials have invented entirely new categories of documents and information that serve only to further stymie efforts to access information under provincial law.

-srbp-

Math problems at provincial finance

That 60 cycle hum you hear is not the turbines spooling up on the Lower Churchill.

Nope.

That noise would be the intense spin – torque would be a better word – the provincial government is putting on its infrastructure announcement this snowy Wednesday. 

The reason for the announcement:  the provincial pollster – CRA  - is in the field.  With the nurses taking a strike vote and with a certain amount of anxiety out there about how bad the budget will be, the government party must have felt the need to make it appear that something good was happening in the budget to keep those polling numbers high.

Note the word “appear” in that sentence.

This is all about appearance.  If the provincial government actually wanted to do something, then the legislature would be called back and the new budget would be introduced.  They could run with it tomorrow since the thing is settled and has been for weeks. 

If it wasn’t about appearance, a bunch of cabinet ministers wouldn’t be sent to Labrador to announce things already announced.  The hospital in Labrador West is now officially the most announced project that never appears in provincial political history.  The Lower Churchill still holds the record for most costly non-project.

And if they had been really smart, then no one would have been proudly pointing out that all this was just re-cycling old news, as natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale did with CBC last night or one of the political gaggle did at the news conference in Goose Bay.

This budget announcement is apparently not about math.

We are told that infrastructure spending will be about $800 million.

We are told it is a record.

We are told that:

The $800 million the Provincial Government will spend on infrastructure in the 2009-10 fiscal year represents a jump of $285 million – well over 50 per cent – from the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Last year’s “unprecedented” infrastructure spending was valued at $673 million.  An increase of “well over” 50% of that amount would put infrastructure spending this year at $1.009 billion.

If $285 million – the size of the increase – is actually more than 50% of last year’s spending, then we have discovered something very interesting.  Despite announcing $673 million in “unprecedented” capital spending last year, the provincial government may have spent a not altogether unusual amount of somewhere around $500 million. That’s about 25% less than announced.

Based on that precedent, capital spending in 2009 will actually be around $600 million, not the $800 million torqued on Wednesday.

And it’s not like this is the first time something coming from provincial finance didn’t add up. Different figures keep appearing from Jerome Kennedy’s department all the time.  Like Equalization.  Numbers magically appeared all through that fiasco a couple of weeks ago that had never been seen before in public, including in the province’s audited financial statements.

Lucky for the finance crowd and their government publicity machine they can still hypnotise some people with the magic of PowerPoint slides.

-srbp-