Muskrat Falls Friday Trash Dump #nlpoli

The provincial government waited until late Friday afternoon to issue a bulletin that Emera had registered the Nova Scotia interconnection with the environment department for review.

That’s weird because Friday is usually when you release news you want to bury.  Friday is normally a crap news day since people don’t pay attention to the Friday nights news. 

If you can’t kill the story,  you can at least be assured that after the weekend, the story will be significantly weaker than if it hit on Monday and had a whole week to build steam in the glare of cameras and media inquiry.

So if you were going to close a couple of fish plants, you’d do it on Friday. Premier Kathy Dunderdale could still look severely stressed in the media clips – we are talking edge of a stroke stress here – but still the story would likely have less fuss than if it had been released on its own on Monday, 8:00 AM.

But the electricity line to Nova Scotia – a supposedly huge part of the Muskrat Falls development  - is not the news you’d like to bury. 

Well, at least you wouldn’t think so, especially since by the time it hit the wires, the fish plant story was already owning the front end of the news cycle.

So if releasing it on Friday afternoon is odd, then the actual wording of the announcement is odder still:

Maritime Transmission Link (Reg. 1618)
Proponent: ENL Maritime Link Inc.

The proponent, ENL Maritime Link Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emera Newfoundland and Labrador Holdings Inc., is proposing to design, develop and operate the Maritime Link Transmission Project between the Island of Newfoundland and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The transmission link is a 500 MW, +/-200 to 250 kV high voltage transmission system that includes the following elements and associated infrastructure: transmission corridors, subsea cables, shore grounding facilities, two converter stations and adjoining substations, two transition compounds and other potential infrastructure as required. The three main geographical components of the project are:

1. Newfoundland component - In southwestern Newfoundland, a new transmission line between Cape Ray and Bottom Brook along an existing transmission corridor and Bottom Brook to Granite Canal in a combination of existing and new corridors.
2. Cabot Strait component – Crossing the Cabot Strait, two subsea cables spanning approximately 180 kilometres from Point Aconi (or Lingan), Nova Scotia to Cape Ray, Newfoundland (exact location to be determined).
3. Nova Scotia component - In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a new transmission line (approximately 50 kilometres in length) parallel to the existing transmission corridor centerline between Point Aconi (or Lingan) and Woodbine.

Project construction is scheduled to begin in 2014 and first power planned for delivery in late 2016 or early 2017.

The undertaking was registered on December 1, 2011; the deadline for public comments is January 6, 2012; and the minister’s decision is due by January 14, 2012.

Notice right off the bat:

• No Nalcor.  The thing is registered by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emera. 
• No Muskrat Falls.  No Lower Churchill at all, in fact.
• No room.  There is a single 500 megawatt line.  That won’t much – if any – capacity for exporting power beyond Nova Scotia.
• Construction isn’t tied to Muskrat at all.
• The construction dates anticipate first power received in 2016.  That doesn’t match up with likely Muskrat timelines given the continued delays in that project.

Go to the registration document and a few more curious things show up.

Like, for example, the Maritime line on the island of Newfoundland isn’t going to run out towards Clarenville as the Nalcor documents suggested.

It’s going to start at Granite Canal, an existing Nalcor generating site on the south-western part of the island.  It’s not far from the big hydro plant at Bay d’Espoir. And it’s close enough to the former Abitibi generating facilities that Nalcor got as a bonus courtesy of the 2008 expropriation.

Here’s a section of one of the maps provided in the registration documents:

And remember that curious absence of a reference to the Lower Churchill in the notice?  Well, there are a few mentions of the Lower Churchill in the registration documents.  One of them notes that the Maritime link will allow surplus LC power to flow to Nova Scotia but…

The Maritime Link will have no direct connection to the Labrador-Island Transmission Link, which is a project being developed by Nalcor Energy, as the proponent, along with the Lower Churchill Hydroelectric Generation Project. The Maritime Link has a separate utility due to the fact the Project will  serve as a complete and independent connection between Nova Scotia and the existing electrical system. Project Registration on the Island of Newfoundland, will operate independent of the Labrador-Island Transmission Link, and is the only transmission facility which will connect the two provincial grids. [Emphasis added]

Yes, friends, it is separate and independent.

And that’s interesting in light of the announcement last week of industrial benefit opportunities for Nova Scotians on a project  - Muskrat Falls – in which they have no direct involvement apparently.

Anyway, the details of the Maritime link suggest that Nalcor intends to keep all the Muskrat power in the province, if it gets built.  They’ll meet their commitments to Nova Scotia using the huge amount of surplus power in the central Newfoundland hydro-electric system. 

That stuff is all bought and paid for or seized so there’s basically very little cost associated with it.  That would explain how Nalcor would plan to meet its obligation to Nova Scotia under the term sheet and any deal they sign with Emera.  The Nova Scotians can get free power because Nalcor will ship it out of stuff that is basically next-door to free.  Meanwhile, they will force people in Newfoundland and Labrador to pay for Muskrat Falls entirely.  They’ll justify their rate applications to the public utilities board on that basis.

Since the Maritime link can happen without the Lower Churchill, Emera is likely looking to lock Nalcor into a guarantee to deliver on its free power commitments regardless of what happens with Muskrat and the Lower Churchill.  That would explain the delays in negotiation.  Emera has Kathy Dunderdale over a barrel and would be foolish not to press their huge political and negotiating advantage.

Emera filed its paperwork on November 30.  The provincial environment department controlled when it accepted the documents and issued the bulletin.

Given the information the documents contain, it’s no wonder provincial officials dumped them out there with the trash on Friday. 

Now wonder that Kathy Dunderdale looked sick in her media scrum about OCI’s plan to close a couple of fish plants. Her pained and stressed expression likely had nothing to do with a few hundred jobs lost in the fishery. 

She’s got much bigger problems with the Muskrat Falls project and the mess that Danny Williams started and then left for her to clear up.

- srbp -

Traffic for the start of December #nlpoli

How do you know Peter MacKay lied about the helicopter flight? 

When PMSH stepped in to defend him he said nothing about the “training flight” story MacKay started with.

1. Stupid politicians and their staffers
2. Offshore board slags CBC
3. Habeas corpus for kids
4. Adult conversation
5. Muskrat Falls plot points
6. More of the same
7. In case you missed it, MF political panel version
8. Rush job
9. The Muskrat Morass deepens
10. With friends like these, Muskrat Falls version

- srbp -

And so it begins (fishery restructuring version) #nlpoli #cdnpoli

News today that OCI will permanently close two of its fish plants is merely the start of it.

The hurricane of change that is sure to follow will make the 1992 cod moratorium seem like a gentle breeze.

- srbp -

The value of education, redux #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The most recent report from the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada shows that Grade 8 students in Newfoundland and Labrador score among the lowest in Canada for tests of mathematics and below the national average score for English.

Education minister Clyde Jackman, a former teacher himself, has tried to shift attention away from what the results are:  yet another reminder of the dismal state of the province’s educational system.
None of this is surprising.

As SRBP noted in August 2010, the province’s population consistently scores poorly in national evaluations of reading comprehension and mathematics scores.

Reading and writing is a challenge. 

Almost half the adult population of Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t have a literacy level that would allow them to “function well in Canadian society.”  

Basic math skills are an even bigger problem. 

Almost two out of every three adult Newfoundlanders and Labradorians don’t have the skill with numbers and mathematics – they call it numeracy – to function well in Canadian society. 

Numeracy is actually a far greater problem because it involves not just an ability to add, subtract, multiple and divide.  Numeracy also involves logic and reasoning, probability and statistics.

The problem is not a lack of money.  The provincial government spends significant amounts on education.   Ask any provincial Conservative and that’s about the only bit of informational they will cite that rings true.

Other politicians want to spend even more money on education.  In a  demonstration of the findings about problems with logic and reasoning, these well-intentioned souls advocate policies that would not produce the desired result.  In fact, evidence suggests that the ideas like free university tuition would make worse the issue of access for people from low income families.

The problem is not that we don’t spend enough.

The problem is  that we do not recognise there is a problem in the first place.

Clyde Jackman’s response is typical.

Nor do we collectively seem to appreciate the extent to which education is the foundation for future success both individually and collectively. 

Social  progress.

Economic development.

Improved health.

Innovation.

All come from improved education.

The third order problem is that what changes or reforms we have pursued in the past decade have been the wrong ones, driven entirely by the wrong motive.  The collapse of the educational system in 2005 under the Conservatives to a series of five super educational districts was entirely an exercise in bureaucratic consolidation of power.

The current school districts are too large, as former education minister Philip Warren noted in 2008.  Additionally, the 2005 reforms took the community out of education.  The reforms that Warren and his cabinet colleagues initiated in the 1990s aimed at increasing local control of education and of giving parents a greater level of involvement in education.

Recent changes to the school system in the metropolitan St. John’s area are an example of the pernicious, deleterious effect the 2005 school board re-organization has wrought. Education bureaucrats in the government department and the school district concocted a plan among themselves, discarded an earlier understanding with parents and then engaged in a cynical manipulation to force their pre-conceived outcome on those directly affected by their decisions.

It is no accident that all of this took place in an environment in which political leaders and their associates took every effort to stifle debate, ruthlessly attack those who dissented and pushed attention instead toward crusades that were, in truth, little more than political Punch and Judy shows.

Some of those who fought most zealously for the political theatrics are now shifting their stories, trying to ignore their own past involvement in making the mess. Others have not. They all still rattle around in the Echo Chamber.

The state of education in our province, like the state of our politics, is a sign of the extent to which we have turned away from the values that we once shared as a society.  We have lost sight of what is valuable and lasting and replaced it with the superficial, the trivial.

The first step to changing that is to recognise there is a problem.

And with yet more evidence that the provincial education system is failing, the problem is getting harder and harder to ignore.

- srbp -

The politics of quackery #nlpoli

Comedian Dara O’Briain has a routine someone has posted to youtube in which he lambastes advocates of ideas that have no foundation in facts.

He lampoons the irrational.

On that latter one, O’Briain could be lampooning the provincial New Democrats, and specifically Dale Kirby.

Kirby presented a brief to the Hebron development review commission this week.  His comments included a call for a change to offshore work schedules to two weeks on the rig and four weeks of payment for not working.  Kirby also called it “reckless” that the oil companies are allowed to use the S-92 helicopter to fly workers back and forth to the rigs. He said the helicopter was “dangerous”.

In an interview with CBC’s St. John’s Morning Show, Kirby repeated his comments about the offshore shift system. Kirby said that he and his colleagues had seen research that such changes would be marvellously beneficial to workers, to offshore safety and to offshore production. 

Kirby specifically referred to an increase in incidents of unspecified kinds in the third week of a three week work rotation.  He also claimed that a shorter work shift would attract more women to the jobs.

You can read Kirby’s presentation to the Hebron review hearings. Note that he makes no reference at all to any independent evidence to support his claims. He merely talks about the changes in North Sea oil industry rotation schedules.

When pressed by Morning Show host Anthony Germain on the issue, Kirby didn’t cite any specific examples of anything.  He shifted to a claim that somehow “we” owed it to workers.

Germain persisted with another specific reference to the research Kirby supposedly had.

With Germain having now given him three opportunities to give something concrete, Kirby then got to the truth:  this is an area where someone needs to do research. 

That’s why Kirby didn’t refer to any concrete evidence.  There isn ‘t any.  All Kirby did this past week was push a political line that is devoid of any intellectual or other integrity.  It’s just a pile of ideologically driven garbage.

It’s quackery.

Rather than hear from credible witnesses, the Hebron review commission wound up hearing from a witchdoctor, homeopath, horseshit pedlar, to borrow a phrase from O’Briain.

Kirby’s attack on the S-92 is basically the same. It’s another round of political ghoulism. The helicopter has been in use around the globe.  There has been one local tragedy and other incidents of one type of seriousness or the other.  There’s plenty of evidence around to allow one to compare incidents globally with this aircraft with those locally. 

You can the S-92 with other types of helicopters.  You can even collect the information to compare the period from initial use to the same point in its flight history for other types of helicopters.

Kirby didn’t do any of that.

Dale Kirby, education professor at the local university, with absolutely no experience in aviation, offshore safety or anything else offered his entirely unsubstantiated opinion about things he – quite obviously knows nothing about.

Horseshit pedlar indeed.

Kirby didn’t do that because his presentation had no need of facts, evidence or anything that could be mistaken for substance. 

As for those other words Kirby tossed around, the wannabe provincial New Democrat leader couldn’t have given a better example of just how reckless, feckless and dangerous some politicians can be. 

Kirby’s approach to politics is nothing more substantive than a left-wing version of the average American Tea Bagger.  It thrives on misinformation.  It serves only to mislead. it is irrational.

And we can only expect more of it from the NDP over the next four years.

- srbp -

Stupid politicians and their staffers #nlpoli #cdnpoli

National Defence has had its fair share of total boobs who wind up appointed as minister.

Perhaps worst of all was the numpty who mandated that all Canadian Forces kitchens should use real maple syrup.  Of course, the maple syrup he mandated came from the part of Quebec he represented, but that was the extent of his concern.

Rare have been the ministers whose combination of intelligence and ability led to sound decisions and the sort of grown-up behaviour that the men and women of the Canadian Forces deserve.

The latest contestant in the “Biggest Dickwad of a Minister” sweepstakes would have to be Pete MacKay.  As it turns out, a very senior officer in the air operations centre warned against using a search and rescue helicopter to winch the minister out of a vacation spot on the Gander River.

He’s a sample from The Star’s story on the military advice the minister’s political staff ignored:

“If we are tasked to do this we of course will comply,” Ploughman continued. “Given the potential for negative press though, I would likely recommend against it.”

The “Ploughman” in the quote is Bruce Ploughman, then a colonel and these days a brigadier general.  Ploughman – originally from Newfoundland – is chief of staff for the military command responsible for deploying Canadian soldiers, sailors and aircrew around the globe.

According to his official biography, Brigadier General Ploughman is a highly experienced maritime helicopter pilot with tons of experience on the management end of the military. He’s also commanded the Canadian air wing in Afghanistan.

Smart guy.

Someone you might listen to.

Listen to, that is, if you weren’t the defence minister or the staffers who insisted on using a helicopter for the minister’s personal business.
From the looks of the Star story, it seems that the experience air force staff officers tried a number options to see if a bit of delay or apparent difficult would lead the pols from finding another way to get Pete out of the woods.

If that’s the case, then the officers were much smarter than their political masters.  The idiots insisted and – as a result – the whole mess has proven to be embarrassing for MacKay and the federal Conservatives.

- srbp -

With friends like these, Muskrat Falls version #nlpoli

Federal natural resources minister Joe Oliver answering a question from Liberal Gerry Byrne during Question Period on Wednesday in the House of Commons.

Byrne wanted to know why the federal government was now talking about some equivalent form of financial support but not the loan guarantee originally promised.

Gerry Byrne (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte): Mr. Speaker, as of today the Conservatives are in formal default of their promise of a Muskrat Falls loan guarantee.

After over a year of analysis, a financial equivalent is being floated instead. Offering a financial equivalent is a refusal to assume any future risk for the project. It is not a true loan guarantee and is not what was promised. In contrast, a true loan guarantee would not cost the federal treasury a nickel as long as the project was technically and financially and economically viable.

Will a loan guarantee be offered, yes or no?

Hon. Joe Oliver (Minister of Natural Resources): Mr. Speaker, the Muskrat Falls project will provide significant economic benefits to the Atlantic region and will substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We have reached many milestones in this process, including the New Dawn agreement with the Innu of Labrador, and appointing a financial adviser to ensure taxpayers' interests are respected.

We will work together to ensure there is a guarantee. There will be a guarantee –.

The default Byrne was on about appears to be the deadline in the agreement with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador on the loan guarantee.

But Oliver’s wording is curious.

He says there will be a “guarantee”.

Not a loan guarantee.

Just a guarantee.

And the federal government appointed a financial advisor to make sure that taxpayers’ interest are “respected”.

Hmmm.

Some how none of that sounds like what we in the persuasion business would call “good”.

- srbp -

The Muskrat Morass Deepens #nlpoli

Kathy Dunderdale, Ed Martin and their supporters have a basic problem.

In 30 seconds, opponents of the multi-billion project can give a simple, coherent, and unassailable reason why they oppose the project.

In 30 minutes or 30 days or 30 weeks or even 30 months, the provincial Conservatives and Nalcor haven’t been able to provide a thorough, coherent argument why people should back their deal.

Take the consumer price for electricity as a case in point.

Your humble e-scribbler opposes Muskrat Falls because the people who own the resource should not have to pay the full price for development plus a profit for the companies involved while customers outside the province will get the electricity at a discount.

Then-natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale put the cost of Muskrat Falls power on the table this time last year  - November 22, 2010 - and your humble e-scribbler put it right there so people would not forget it:

…in terms of when we bring that on in 2017 that’s the cost in 2017, $165, or excuse me it’s $143 a megawatt hour.

That works out to a range of between 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour and 16.5 cents per kwh.

That’s not the final consumer price, incidentally.  That’s the cost to generate electricity from Muskrat Falls.  What consumers in this province will pay on the electricity bills will be something higher than that.

Last April, now-premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed that Muskrat power would cost taxpayers in Newfoundland and Labrador at least 14.3 cents per kilowatt hour.  And then she added the point about exports:

Mr. Speaker, Nova Scotia needs power. They need power and they can provide it to themselves for 10 cents or 11 cents a kilowatt hour. They are not going to buy it from us, Mr. Speaker, for 14.3, so we have to go into the market and sell at what the market can bear

Nova Scotians weren’t going to pay that much for electricity in April and that is still their position.

On Wednesday, local news media reported comments by Emera officials to the Nova Scotia legislature’s natural resources committee on October.

Andrew Younger (Lib. Dartmouth East): You undoubtedly are aware that people are talking 14, 15, 16 cents a kilowatt hour, and I do understand that doesn’t mean that’s what you pay on the bill because there are lots of other things and it averages in with the other sources but is that the sort of . . .

Chris Huskilson, CEO, Emera: Well that won’t make it. That kind of number won’t make it.

MR. YOUNGER: Why?

MR. HUSKILSON: It’s too high, so it has to be lower than those kinds of numbers.

MR. YOUNGER: That’s good.

MR. HUSKILSON: We won’t bring forward something that is not going to make it.

Huskilson knows he won;t have to worry about those sort of prices.  The working agreement between Nalcor and Emera guarantees Emera a 35 year supply of electricity in exchange for the $1.2 billion cost of a transmission line from Newfoundland to Cape Breton.

Former Premier Roger Grimes has called that free electricity and, in essence, it is.  Even if you spread that $1.2 billion over the 35 years, the cost to Nova Scotia – even though it is entirely notional – works out to something like 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

Emera can buy electricity beyond that base amount.  They will pay around nine cents per kilowatt hour for it under the working agreement.  Even with the anticipated inflation escalators, Emera wouldn’t pay anything close to the real cost of Muskrat electricity ever.

Ever.

This is a sweet deal for Emera.  They get to do business in Newfoundland and Labrador, with a profit guaranteed by the province’s public utilities board.

But on top of that, Emera will get what Chris Huskilson told the legislative committee a couple of times:  35 years of electricity at a fixed price.

No escalator.

Fixed.

Emera officials used that term quite a bit:

• “Rate stability - it has a long-term fixed cost to it.”
• “To go over the advantages of Lower Churchill, it’s 35 years of clean, renewable energy at a fixed cost.”
• “No, in the long run it does stabilize rates because when it comes in, it’s a fixed contract for 8 per cent to 10 per cent of our load for 35 years, so that will have a stabilizing influence on prices.”

Nova Scotians have a fixed price for 35 years.  That’s almost as good as Quebec scored on Churchill Falls in 1969.

In practical terms, even if you accept that 3.5 cents per kwh for the guaranteed block of power,  inflation will reduce the cost of Emera’s electricity to almost nothing over time.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, on the other hand, will always have to pay to cover the full cost of the project and guarantee a profit besides that for the companies involved.

Their costs will go one way:  up.

Go back to that starting comment:

Your humble e-scribbler opposes Muskrat Falls because the people who own the resource should not have to pay the full price for development plus a profit for the companies involved while customers outside the province will get the electricity at a discount.

It won’t even take 30 seconds to read.

The rest is explanation.

Now try and find Nalcor’s explanation of what the people in the province will pay for electricity. 

Good luck. 

They’ve avoided it like the plague.

- srbp -

Related: 

• The view from Flower Hill
• Dundernomics 101:  how to lose money
• Undisclosed risk:  financing the Lower Churchill

The November Traffic

What were people reading at SRBP in November?

1. The Zazzy Substitution, political version
2. Nalcor’s own studies back NG as Muskrat alternative
3. We all can’t be wrong
4. Suck it up, buttercup
5. The orchestra pit theory of political news
6. Muskrat Review Muddle and Nalcor Competence
7. Working stiffs and lazy ones
8. Always remember the fifth of November
9. How interesting…
10. Dunderdale in tweet debate with opposition leader… or was she?

- srbp -

All is well! #nlpoli

Nalcor and Emera announced on Tuesday that they’d agreed to put off the deadline on finishing a deal for the electricity line between Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia to the end of January 2012.  The companies issued a news release.

“We are making good progress on the agreements,” said Ed Martin, President and CEO of Nalcor Energy. “However, we need more time to complete the volume of work required. Our relationship with Emera remains strong and both parties are committed to a quality outcome. These are important agreements and we’ll take the time to do them right."

All is well.

It will just take more time.

Like we haven’t heard that before,  (April 1999)

Mines and Energy Minister Roger Grimes today announced that negotiations between the province, Quebec and the utilities are continuing based on the framework outlined on March 9, 1998 and that no decisions have been made that would vary the configuration of the Churchill River Power Project from the March 9 announcement.

and before (November 1999),

We have made significant progress. We are committed to working with affected Aboriginal groups and ensuring a thorough environmental assessment for this project. We are committed to ensuring value from our resource. And we are committed to getting the best deal for the people of this province.

and before (November 2000):

We are confident a viable deal remains to be done. While the project would likely be reduced in scope, is there anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador, the country, or indeed North America, who would argue that the generation of a much needed renewable, green power source and the creation of jobs is not something we should aim to achieve?

Plus ca change.

- srbp -

More of the same #nlpoli

The whole thing is easy to figure out if you just look at it.

October 13, 2011:

Tuesday night proved to be a “holy f***, that was close” moment for the people running the Liberal Party and for people, like John Efford, who want to run the party.

Now that the danger has passed they want to get right back to the old ways of doing business that put the party in his current sorry state.

November 22, 2011:

Of course, the real message in this job competition is even more stark:  the Liberals have told the universe that they are not thinking for a second about rebuilding or the future or anything so grand.  They just want to flesh out the staff chart or hire on a defeated candidate who needs a job.

So what did the party do with the chief of staff job?

Well, he didn’t get defeated but the new chief of staff in the Liberal opposition office is an ex-candidate in need of a job. From VOCM:

VOCM News has learned that Kelvin Parsons is the new Liberal chief of staff.

The Liberals placed a job ad with close of applications at 5:00 PM on Friday.  Yvonne Jones made the decision by Monday evening.  There’s no way anyone can run a proper competition, weigh the candidates and make a sensible, fair decision that fast even if the process itself was the wrong one in the first place.

The fix was in from the start. 

The job ad was just window dressing.

- srbp -

Missing deadlines #nlpoli

Nalcor and Emera announced on Tuesday that they would miss the November 30 deadline to reach an agreement on building an electricity line between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

They will now take until the end of January 2012 to get it done.

But that’s not the only significant deadline they’ve missed.

The agreement with Ottawa on a loan guarantee had some key dates in it as well:

The Parties agree that time shall be of the essence in this agreement and will be bound by this agreement including the following timelines, unless otherwise extended by mutual agreement: on or before August 31, 2011 – announcement of the terms of this agreement; on or before November 30, 2011 or 8 weeks following access by the Government of Canada to the projects’ data room and detailed analyses and representations by credit rating agencies – agreement on term sheet for engagement with capital markets; and on or before financial close – completion of formal agreements for provision of the loan guarantee.

Translation:

• August 31, 2011:  the terms of the agreement.  They met that deadline.
• on or before November 30, 2011 or eight weeks after the federal officials get access to the Lower Churchill financial details:  an agreement on a term sheet to take to the financiers.
• before financial close:  completion of formal loan guarantee agreements.

Monday’s curious statement from the federal government and two provincial governments didn’t talk specifics about the agreement. It just said that they get together and talk about things every now and then.  It also said that the three governments “will work together going forward on a guarantee that will be completed in a timely manner while ensuring that all due diligence is performed.”

But they didn’t put any firm dates on anything.

And they didn’t release an amended agreement with new dates, which is, in itself, as odd as the other deal released on Monday which also lacked signatures and dates and stuff.

It’s odd – you see – because if things have really been moving along so well then Nalcor should be able to work on the details of the loan guarantee with the federal officials.  They should have been able to give the federal officials access to the financial information.  After all, this project is supposed to be well along in the planning such that you’d figure Nalcor has a pretty firm idea on the financials for the whole project.  The Nova Scotia link is just one part of the project.

Now this could be nothing much at all.

Or it could be that something else is rumbling below the surface.  For example all those extra industrial and job bennys for Nova Scotia could be a sweetener to try and get more than a loan guarantee out of Uncle Ottawa. 

Think about it for a second. 

With the economy threatened by a foreign-induced slowdown, the federal government might be looking for a place for some specific stimulus that would stretch – inevitably – into central Canada.

They couldn’t put federal backing beyond a loan guarantee into a project that benefits one province.  But a huge project that will benefit at least two provinces?  Well, that’s a horse of an entirely different colour. 

There’s even a mechanism in the form of the Lower Churchill Development Corporation, still left out there with enabling legislation on the provincial books.  The Lower Churchill Development Act sets out a financial arrangement between the federal government and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.  It always seemed odd that the current crowd running the place ignored this 30-odd year old agreement.

But still,  even if that part wasn’t going on in the background, it is rather odd that the all-important loan guarantee didn’t get a more concrete endorsement than it did, especially for a massive project that is supposedly surging ahead despite all criticism and doubts.

- srbp -

Adult conversation #nlpoli

An unaired promo for VOCM’s afternoon talk show, as imagined by Donny Dooley.

Sorry for people on mobile devices who can’t get this.  Apparently it might not work for you.

- srbp - 

In case you missed it, MF political panel version #nlpoli

All three political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador support Muskrat falls unequivocally.

You can tell because all three party representatives on CBC’s On Point panel – Shawn Skinner, Siobhan Coady and Lana Payne – expressed their support for the development.  They all parroted Nalcor talking points verbatim and without question.

And they are fundamentally wrong. 

Siobhan Coady and Lana Payne in particular simply got the future energy pricing question and financial viability dead wrong. They either haven’t read the critiques or they don’t understand what the project is about.

It’s that simple.

- srbp -

Rush job #nlpoli

Updated 1425 hrs 29 Nov 2011

There’s something about the memorandum of understanding released on Monday in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador that looks rushed.

Maybe it’s the fact that the copy that the Nova Scotia government released is not signed. [Gov NS killed the link and replaced it with this one]

Maybe it’s the fact that there is no contact information at bullet five where there’s supposed to be a main contact person for each of the provincial governments.

Maybe it’s the fact that the document indicates the governments signed it in St. John’s, but the big release came in Cape Breton.

Maybe it’s the reference to the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Anyone know what that is?

Maybe it’s the fact the two provincial government releases don’t really match up with themselves or the agreement when it comes to describing what the document is about.

For the Nova Scotians, this deal gives the province access to industrial benefits from the whole project, not just the Maritime link.  The Newfoundland and Labrador version tries to present the whole thing another.  That sort of inconsistency suggests the thing was rushed for some reason.

The Nova Scotia news release states:

It provides Nova Scotia companies with an opportunity to compete for all components of the development with preference for Newfoundland and Labrador on the first two projects and equal access to jobs for Nova Scotia workers on the Maritime Link.

The Newfoundland and Labrador release states that the:

…Memorandum of Understanding identifies the employment and business benefits for each province associated with the construction phase of the Lower Churchill Project.

But it doesn’t.

The memorandum doesn’t identify benefits.  There’s no indication that Nova Scotians get such and such an amount of work and so on.  That’s the sort of detail in the July 2010 benefits “strategy”.The MOU merely sets out the general way in which Nova Scotia companies can bid on the projects.

The first clause states that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador will direct Nalcor to “provide Nova Scotia contractors, service providers, consultants, and suppliers with open, timely and transparent access to procurement opportunities and activities in relation to the projects.”

That’s curious.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador release states that the tendering and hiring policy set in July 2010 will rule all:

The protocol requires that the province first honour commitments made to Aboriginal groups through any signed impacts and benefits agreements. After these commitments are met, first consideration for employment will be given to qualified residents of Newfoundland and Labrador. For construction of the generation projects, qualified residents of Labrador will be considered first, followed by qualified residents of Newfoundland.

But if that’s the case, Nova Scotians can’t really get the “open, timely, and transparent access” to contracting opportunities the memorandum indicates they are supposed to get.

The memorandum doesn’t clearly establish that the 2010 benefits strategy for Newfoundland and Labrador will prevail over the memorandum.  It just notes the document already exists.  The memorandum comes because the two provincial governments “share an interest in adopting a framework for appropriate industrial and employment benefits from”  the whole Lower Churchill project.

So the memorandum appears to replace or modify the earlier policy. That’s easy enough because the policy is just a direction from the provincial government to its Crown corporation. 

The memorandum can’t replace or modify the agreement with the Innu Nation, though, unless there’s another agreement no one has released.  That one would have signatures from the Innu Nation,  the federal and provincial governments on it to indicate they had changed the benefits agreements they negotiated.

And if you doubt that this memorandum changes the Newfoundland and Labrador benefits, note what the Nova Scotia government news release makes abundantly clear.  After noting that the Lower Churchill brings significant industrial benefits to the region, the release notes that the: “MOU ensures Nova Scotians will have access to these opportunities.”

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Oh Deeyuh Update:  Seems someone at the Government of Nova Scotia found it uncomfortable to have people trucking to their website to see what appears to be an unsigned agreement.

They killed the pdf linked in this story and put in a new one.

Notice that the new one is missing the signature blocks.

Well, maybe that’s because the first version had blank spots where the names were supposed to go but no signed copies.

And, if anyone captured the document you might notice that the date was 2010.

All very rushed, so it seems.

Offshore board slags CBC #nlpoli

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board is taking CBC Newfoundland and Labrador to task for its coverage of an incident last week in which a supply ship struck a semi-submersible platform offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

The online version of one CBC story about the incident is available on the cbc.ca/nl website.  You can find the story with the comment mentioned in the letter in the video of the Here and Now Friday night broadcast.

The CBC line set up an attack on the board by labour/NDP spokesperson Lana Payne in the comment that immediately followed the reference the board took exception to in the fourth paragraph.

The letter is available on the offshore board website.

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The Mother Corp Returns Fire Update:  here.

Muskrat Falls Plot Points #nlpoli

On the week the memorandum of understanding between Nalcor Energy and Emera on the electricity transmission link between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and labrador is due to expire, take a look at the sequence of completely unrelated  - coughbullshitcough -events.

First,  Nalcor’s Ed Martin thinks the date will slip by with no final deal.  That’s what he told David Cochrane of CBC’s On Point over the weekend.

Second, the Nova Scotia government announces a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador on guaranteed work commitments for Nova Scotians related to Muskrat Falls.

It provides Nova Scotia companies with an opportunity to compete for all components of the development with preference for Newfoundland and Labrador on the first two projects and equal access to jobs for Nova Scotia workers on the Maritime Link.

Discount electricity and jobs. 

Sweet!

Question to consider:  does this understanding do anything that isn’t already covered by interprovincial free trade agreements?

Note the string of media contacts at the end.  That’s how you know this is a sooper dooper important announcement.  Well, at least for political spin purposes.

Third, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador does not release the Nova Scotia deal on its own website, as of 1445 hrs Monday.

Fourth, what the provincial government in St. John’s does issue a joint statement with the federal government and Nova Scotia that reaffirms their collective commitment to Muskrat Falls.

Fifth, according to his Twitter feed, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy has been in New York within the past few days.  Money hunting for Muskrat or pre-Christmas shopping trip for the family?

Let’s hope it’s the latter.  Wall Street likely won’t have much loose cash floating around as Europe smoulders in advance of a major economic debt firestorm

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The Thick Plottens Update:  At 4:20, Newfoundland Daylight Savings Time, the provincial government finally released some official mention of the deal with Nova Scotia on benefits and contracting for the Lower Churchill project.

It’s a very different release from the Nova Scotia one in many respects.

For one thing, there’s only a comment from natural resources minister Jerome! Kennedy. He says, in part that “our government is committed to ensure that the maximum amount of work associated with this project occurs here in the province for the benefit of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.”

Since the thing won’t be built in –for example – Ontario – it is hard not to have the work done here with the exception of things like turbines and the actual electrical cables.

Stay tuned for a more detailed commentary on the deal itself, as released by the provincial government late on Monday afternoon.

Habeas corpus for kids #nlpoli

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matthew 25:40, Authorised Version

Open line show host Randy Simms had an interesting idea last week.

Speaking with child, youth and family services minister Charlene Johnson, Simms suggested that in cases where the department takes custody of children, it ought to appear before a judge within 24 hours to justify its action, at least temporarily.

Johnson didn’t really have a direct answer for Simms.  In fact, she didn’t offer a good reason why the province’s child protection laws shouldn’t include such a provision.

Instead, she relied on the talking points officials in her department prepared for her to use in every case.  The officials in her department always act in the best interests of the child and that these things are complicated.

Neither of these actually rebutted Simms’ suggestion.  They’re just stock lines Johnson got from her officials.
And when Simms persisted in talking about cases of families torn emotionally – sometimes without good foundations -  Johnson fell back on the old chestnut of bureaucrats:  “if only you saw all the nasty cases that I can’t tell you about because of privacy, then you’d understand why you are wrong.”

Johnson’s argument is based entirely on the patronising, condescending attitude of the technocrat. We know better.  And if only you knew what we knew, you would agree we are better able than anyone to make decisions about everything.

It is an arrogant point of view.  And it is one that constantly shields the bureaucrats who use it from any pangs of human emotion  - like say compassion or guilt – over the [sometimes disastrous consequences of] their decisions.

They can never be wrong.

By definition.

Whatever they do is right.

Always.

Even if it is wrong.

And any sort of oversight, like say having to justify to a judge the decision to forcibly remove children from a home would  - basically - be wrong.  Such a situation would  leave the decision to an inferior being or at the very least a being in an inferior [position] to oversee something they are not equipped intellectually and morally to comprehend.  Only the officials have all the information.  Only they know what is going on and, as Johnson, said a couple of times, her officials always do what is in the best interests of the child.
Not what they believe or think is in the best interest.

What is in the best interests.

And so the judge simply isn’t properly qualified to make such decisions.

What Simms was arguing for was a child’s version of what adults in common law countries have enjoyed for a couple of centuries.  Used to be that the king’s agents could snatch people and throw them in a dungeon. The same sort of thing happens these days in some countries.  They call it being disappeared, pretty much a literal translation of the Spanish used by the families of people the Argentinian junta decided were dangerous.

The idea evolved that people ought to be able to apply to a judge for an order that compelled the state officials to show that any person they held in custody was lawfully there.  They had to produce the body, so to speak.

Under the Constitution Act 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that everyone “has the right on arrest or detention…(c) to have the validity of the detention determined by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.”

Now the lawyers out there will right away be squirming at the notion that a child taken into custody under laws about the child’s safety and welfare are not the same as laws about arresting adults who may be guilty of crimes.

But just think about Simms’ idea for a second. What he was basically saying was that when the state and its officials decide to intervene in a family, they ought to have their information ready to go at the moment the child is taken away.

Within 24 hours of an intervention, child welfare officials should be able to stand in front of a judge and present the evidence they used to justify their actions.

The most recent version of the province’s child protection laws allows provincial bureaucrats to take custody of a child without a warrant if they believe the child is in danger.  They have 24 hours to tell the  parents of what the officials have done and why.

The officials also have 24 hours to apply for a warrant from a judge but the hearing for that warrant doesn’t have to happen for up to 30 days after the government officials take custody of a child.

On the face of it and in light of the repeated failures of the province’s child protection system, it seems reasonable that the law should provide not only clear direction on how state officials could take custody of a child but also give some restraint on that power.

Judicial oversight within 24 hours would seem to be a suitable restraint.

It would seem to be a reasonable idea, given that the provincial legislature these days operates more as an arm of government rather than the place where government itself has to justify why it wants any sort of powers at all.   The same people who rubber stamped the expropriation fiasco in a single afternoon in December 2008 passed the child protection bill in the matter of a few hours of debate in the legislature 18 months later. Legal measures that affect rights – whether property or personal – don’t often get the sort of scrutiny they should in this province.

So couple a government that comes equipped with a seemingly endless capacity for self-serving rationalisation with the ability to give itself whatever powers it wants without much hindrance, and you can see that Simms’ idea for judicial oversight might be worth some consideration.

Call it habeas corpus for kids, but really the principle at stake is one that applies to us all.  The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable.

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Edited to add missing words [in square brackets] and delete redundant ones.

Traffic before the Santa Claus Parade #nlpoli

1. The Zazzy Substitution,  political version
2. Suck it up, buttercup
3. A chance.  A choice.
4. Bedtime for Bozo… err, Bonzo…  errr, Rob
5. Court docket now online
6. Inadvertent fiscal black humour
7. The Origin of Information Species
8. Hebron Development Public Review, quick thoughts
9. Hebron benefits less than touted
10. Nalcor’s own studies back NG as Muskrat alternative

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The Origin of Information Species #nlpoli

The Globe and Mail has decided to launch a new website that will give subscribers financial news and opinion and analysis pieces that aren’t available to other readers.

The Globe isn’t alone in heading down this road:

Publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times have had success with putting financial news behind a pay wall. The move toward digital subscriptions goes beyond niche content as well: in March, The New York Times Co. launched a metered website for its flagship paper. That system allows readers a certain number of free articles per month before readers are prompted to buy a digital subscription. In October, the company instituted a metered system for another paper it owns, the Boston Globe.

The Globe’s management hasn’t figured out how they will operate the paying part of the service.

This isn’t the first time the Globe and other media outlets have tried to lure readers to pay for content over and above the free material or the stuff they get with a subscription.

The rationale for the move is familiar because it’s the same one that has been at the heart of these sorts of efforts by conventional media outlets in the past:

The media industry has been looking for ways to maintain readership, as well as revenues from both subscribers and advertisers, as more readers access their content beyond the traditional newspaper and on websites and mobile devices.

The challenge facing conventional media – the big information aggregators like television networks/channels and newspapers – is that their usual audience is looking all over the place for information. People don’t rely on the big exclusively on the Big Ones any more to find out things they want to know.  They look in lots of places and increasingly those places are online.

You can get a sense of what that looks like in the introduction to Making it in the Political Blogosphere:  The World’s Top Political Bloggers Share the Secrets to Success, a new book on political bloggers by Tanni Haas.

There are about 1.3 million political blogs out there, as Haas notes in the introduction.  The people who write them run the gamut of types and interests. They write original news stories, comment on stuff other people have written, advocate for their causes and do all the other things you’d expect of political blogs.

And they are not just talking to themselves:

The incredible growth in political blog writing is mirrored in the number of people who read them. While an impressive 44% of all Americans have read political blogs,
tens of millions do so daily. Studies show that political
blog readers spend more time reading blogs than do readers of any other kind of blog (five blogs a day, up to 10 hours a week) with many political blog enthusiasts spending several hours daily in the blogosphere.  [From the introduction;  footnote numbers removed]

All that blogging – for one type of online information type -  hasn’t replaced the conventional media entirely.  They have fragmented the audience, as it were, spreading the same eyeballs over many more sources.

Political blogging though, has had a particularly significant impact, at least according to Haas.  “Studies have found that political blog readers consider such blogs more trustworthy sources of information than they do any other mainstream news media, including online and online newspapers, television, and radio.”

While some of the bloggers that Haas interviews are making a considerable amount of money from their online publishing, the majority of those 1.3 million bloggers aren’t making much – if anything – for their work. 

But they are having an impact.

They are having a substantial impact.

And yes, very much as advertised, putting the ability to publish in the hands of those with something to say has made a truly profound difference in the universe. 

Telegram editor Russell Wangersky tries to claim the opposite in a recent column.  He talks about the demise of a single website that’s been around for 13 years. Then Russell notes the number of blog writers who stopped writing. Then he pulls out this comment:

Here’s a sample of five active blogs from a daily media site, listing the last times they were updated: Nov. 15, 2011, Oct. 27, 2011, June 29, 2011, Feb. 18, 2011 and Nov. 28, 2010.

He could easily look at the blogs on the Telegram and see a spotty publishing record.

But so what?

Just look at Newfoundland and Labrador and you’ll see a blog world that is thriving.  For every one that bites the dust after a spotty publishing record measured in weeks or months, there’s another one that has sprung up about writing or parenting.

That’s the same thing you see across the globe.  If only a fraction of the number of blogs that start every day are still publishing one, five or 10 months after they started, there are plenty of people around who start new ones. It’s a bit like fish spawning:  billions of eggs at the start, but even with predation, disease and just plain bad luck there are millions that survive.

While Russell is often right about a lot of things, on the impact of the Internet and self-publishing, he’s just wrong.  Haas’ book  - complete with the statistical evidence he cites – is one source of evidence.  The other is the Globe and Mail’s, Boston Globe’s and New York Times’ persistent efforts to publish more material in more places and offer all sorts of premiums and advantages. 

These bastions of the old media wouldn’t be constantly changing, as they’ve been doing for the past decade, if it wasn’t for the competition.  A significant chunk of that competition is coming from the online information sources that Haas is writing about or even the quirky ones like the website Wangersky starts off with.

Think about it this way.  That website – The Obscure Store and Reading Room – lasted 13 years.  Considering the Internet is not even a couple of decades old, that’s an amazing accomplishment.  There are newspapers in this province that have barely lasted 13 weeks or 13 months from the time they started, let alone 13 years.

The Obscure Store grew out of a small  - a niche – print publication that likely struggled to stay afloat.  The Internet gave that obscure publication access to an audience it could never have reached otherwise. The Internet offered free distribution and the Internet offered a format that was infinitely flexible.  Its author didn’t have to worry about cutting down to 750 words once a week or bulking together  a bunch of small items to pad out the same space.

And in the political blog world, the authors – like opinion columnists in a conventional media outlet – don’t have to also meet the constraints of the newspaper’s editorial board.  Sure some have proven to be quite brave, but in a world of stiff competition and tight profit margins, people who have money and who don’t like a columnist or a story can successfully squeeze a conventional media outlet where it hurts most – in the ad revenue department.

The more significant result, though, is that many of those online information sources – especially the blogs Haas is writing about -  have taken not just readers from the Big Ones. They’ve also taken eaten into something far more significant:  influence. News junkies probably don’t even notice any more the number of stories that wind up in the conventional media after they started life online. 

But that happens.

A lot.

And then think about the number of stories that the online information sites take and develop with considerably more depth and detail than the conventionals could.  They can offer analysis, for example.

It’s no accident that the Globe’s premium site will hold out analysis as one of its main drawing cards.

The Internet and the ease with which people can distribute information and opinions profoundly changed the world.  It changed who controlled access to information and ideas. 

And while some people find it easier to share family photos on their facebook page now instead of their blog, there are a whole mess of other people for whom blogging is the way they can make their ideas available to people who – quite obviously – value them and who wouldn’t get them otherwise.

You can tell those online writers have an impact. 

You can tell because all those conventional news media outlets with their editors who know what they are looking for and what skills they’d like to see brought to a job keep trying to find what it takes to compete with all those websites that supposedly aren’t living up to expectations.

You can read all about that in the Globe and Mail.

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