Seven Habits of Spectacularly Ineffective Politicians #nlpoli #cdnpoli

“Run government like a business” is an old line. 

Some people use it as a rallying cry for success and innovation. 

Others think of it as a recipe for disaster.

Regardless of which side of that argument you come down on, you can sometimes find value in applying ideas from one sector to the other. 

Take, for example, a list of seven habits attributed to business leaders who screw up published online at forbes.com recently.  It’s a variation on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People except you learn positive lessons from the negative experiences that illustrate the bad habits. 

Included in the forbes.com column are some warning signs as well.  Those are indicators that while your business leader might not have the full-blown bad habit, he or she is headed in that direction.

And bear in kind:  some of the companies cited in the article were successful for a period of time or appeared to be quite successful. Over the longer term, though, things weren’t quite that good.

So what would happen if you took the seven habits of what forbes.com called unsuccessful business executives and applied them to politicians? Let’s have some fun:

Habit # 1:  They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment.

Think of this as the idea that they can do no wrong, that everything they think or say is genius and that they crap brilliance every minute of ever day.

Unlike successful leaders, failed leaders who never question their dominance fail to realize they are at the mercy of changing circumstances.They vastly overestimate the extent to which they actually control events and vastly underestimate the role of chance and circumstance in their success.

The rules only apply to other people.  They don’t apply to us.

They live in a bubble.

Sound familiar?

Of course it does. 

Warning Sign  #1:  A lack of respect

You won’t even need to think too hard to come up with an example of a politician who consistently shows an utter lack of respect – and sometimes outright contempt – for other people and their ideas.

While those other links are to a couple of Danny Williams’ defining characteristics, that lack of respect thing is one Kathy Dunderdale leads in.  She loves to claim that her opponents are stupid or incompetent and usually that’s the sum total of her argument.

Habit #2:  They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests.

Warning Sign #2: A question of character

House of Assembly spending scandal.

And if you want something creepy, you can always go back to the Old Man’s 2007 claim:

I think I represent in my own heart and soul the hearts and souls of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

It’s hard to think of a statement in which someone confuses himself with the whole.

Habit #3:  They think they have all the answers.

If anyone can think of a time when Danny Williams ever took advice from someone else and acknowledged it publicly, then by all means share the story with the rest of us.  Did he ever take disagreement with his pronouncements well?

If you want a Dunderdale example, consider her approach to Muskrat Falls.  She  and her team of geniuses  have all the answers. So far Dunderdale hasn’t heard a single criticism of the project that makes her doubt the wisdom of ploughing ahead with the project.

And, in any event, all the critics are picking at little things in their predictably partisan way so what would they know?

Warning Sign for #3:  A leader without followers

Habit #4:  They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them.

Think about the bizarro need to call people who wrote letters to the editor just to sort them out or blast them as traitors.

Let’s not forget the periodic expressions of concern about the handful of people who didn’t love Hisself unconditionally.  In the Straits after the by-election he sniffed about how much he had done for people and yet they didn’t vote for his hand-picked candidate.

The Old Man may not have relentlessly eliminated anyone but the Yes-Men and Yes-Women but he was overly concerned with dissent.

Warning Sign #4:  Executive departures

Think Beth Marshall in Health,  Florence Delaney or the executive level churn in the public service under Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale. 

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image.

Poll goosing.

Public comments about having to spend 50% of his time dealing with counter-spinning negativity.

Micromanaging an access to information request to withhold copies of his public speeches.

Clinical example of this habit.

Warning Sign #5:  Blatant attention-seeking

This Hour Has 22 Minutes in a Hurricane

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles.

Muskrat Falls.

Warning Sign #6:  Excessive hype

Pick an example.  There are too many to list since 2003.

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.

Danny Williams:  the Ultimate One Trick Pony.. 

Prime Ministers.

Oil Companies.

A lawyer from GFW.

Randy Simms.

If Danny Williams wasn’t lacing into someone for something, he just wasn’t having a good day. 

Warning Sign #7:  Constantly referring to what worked in the past

Anybody recall that offshore oil agreement thingy?

- srbp -

Whose camp is it anyway? #nlpoli

Leo Abbass, mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

Regular readers will know him already.

Quoted this time by Voice of the Cabinet Minister about a controversial work camp a company wants to build in his community.  VOCM linked the camp to Muskrat Falls, and so did Leo, according to the version on the story they had on Tuesday:

The Mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay says in order for work to continue on the Muskrat Falls project, a work camp has to be built in his town.  The proposed camp by the Shaw Group on Kelland Drive has come under scrutiny by area residents who think the 300 person sleeping and eating facility should be built elsewhere. Others, meanwhile, think local residents are not being given fair job opportunities. Mayor Leo Abbass says the attention that this work-project is receiving online seems to be based on what he calls 'the mixing of issues'.

He refers to one note on Facebook which says that the person was shocked that these jobs were being offered to outside people before they were offered to local residents. He says the expertise is not available in his town, and engineers and technicians have specialized skills and they will be brought in for this project. 360 members have joined a Facebook page opposing the development, which would require town council to amend its development regulations.  Abbass says public submissions will still be accepted until January 12th, and he hopes a public meeting scheduled for Thursday on the matter will help clarify the confusion. He says he thinks people are jumping the gun on what this project is all about. He says the grief that he is hearing right now about this work camp seems to based on what he calls 'a lot of misconception out there'.

Problem.

The work camp has nothing to do with Muskrat Falls, according to no less an authority than the people proposing the multi-billion dollar debt scheme.

“Nalcor not involved with proposed Kelland Drive camp” is the title of a post by vice president Gil Bennett on the Nalcor blog.

I assure residents that Nalcor Energy is not involved in this proposal by Shaw Group. Their proposal is not a requirement for the Muskrat Falls Project.

Bennett also outlined the local benefits scheme for Muskrat Falls.

On Wednesday, VOCM was still running the story connecting the camp to the Muskrat Falls project.

And they were still mentioning Leo Abbass who was also making the same connection.  The Wednesday version:

A public meeting will take place tomorrow night to discuss the construction of a controversial work camp in Happy Valley- Goose Bay. The local town council is proposing to amend its development regulations, which has residents worried that the 300-person camp would be built too close to homes. The camp will provide food, services, and shelter to engineers and technicians working on the Muskrat Falls project. Happy Valley-Goose Bay Mayor Leo Abbass says having a work camp in town is better than the situation in Labrador City and Wabush. He says contractors in Lab West have been buying up living spaces, a move which further tightens the housing market.

He says the work camp project in Happy Valley-Goose Bay will help alleviate the possibility of contractors buying existing properties, and then using them to house their workers. The proposed work camp has generated a fair bit of opposition from area residents, who have set up a Facebook page opposed to the project.

Leo has a bunch of problems, evidently, not the least of which is squaring his version of what the camp is about with what the Muskrat Falls people are saying.

One of the ways of doing that might be for Leo to have town officials look at any municipal regulations that would hinder growth in the town.  Leo could also talk to his provincial government buddies about shifting their regulations that hinder development of affordable housing.

If Leo and his council want to avoid the housing nightmare they have in Labrador West, then some regulatory changes would be far easier than backing a work camp for a project that the work camp apparently isn’t connected to in the first place.

- srbp - 

More on the polling controversy #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Susan Delacourt, from The Star, December 30:

Canada’s polling industry could be in for a shakeup in 2012, after some major knocks to its reputation in 2011.

Regular readers will recall the controversy from the federal election and from the fall provincial election from the series on polling and politics.

The Delacourt article mentions concerns voiced by pollsters themselves,  including comments by Ipsos chief executive Darrell Bricker.  He complained about the polling firms themselves and the media and how they report polls.

Delacourt also has some observations by Nik Nanos:

The MRIA [the industry association in Canada] does have a code of conduct and does audit polling firms to see whether they meet its “gold-seal” standard, says Nanos. But he’d like to see MRIA being more active in investigating members, and when it finds problems, Nanos believes the association should be publishing details of the polling transgressions, either on the website or through periodic bulletins.

The SRBP series included the MRIA standards. One of the tidbits that didn’t make it into the series was the standards contained in an FAQ produced by Newspapers Canada in 2008.  The broadcast media don’t have any industry standards at all as best as your humble e-scribbler could find, let alone anything close to these standards for newspapers. 

When I publish an opinion poll, what do I have to include?

If you publish a "real" opinion poll that is - not an unofficial "streeter" - you are required to include certain information if you are the first person to release the information or if you publish it within 24 hours of its first release.

You must include:

• the name of the sponsor of the poll
• the name of the organization who conducted the poll
• the date on which or the period during which the poll was conducted
• the population from which the sample of survey respondents was drawn
• the number of people contacted to participate
• the margin of error, if applicable

As newspapers, you must also include:

• the wording of the survey question
• instructions on how to obtain a written report of the survey results.

If I sponsor an opinion poll, are there any additional requirements?

If you sponsor a public opinion survey, you must, after the release of the survey, provide, on request, a written report that contains the following information:'

• the name and address of the sponsor of the survey
• the name and address of the person or organization that conducted the survey
• the date on which or the period during which the survey was conducted
• Information about the method used to collect the data from which the survey results were derived, including:
• the sampling method
• the population from which the sample was drawn
• the size of the sample
• the number of people asked to participate in the survey and the numbers and percentages of them who did not participate in the survey
• the number of people who refused to participate in the survey and were ineligible to participate in the survey
• the dates and time of day of the interviews
• the method used to recalculate data to take into account the results of participants who expressed no opinion, and any weighting factors or normalization procedures used in deriving the results of the survey
• the wording of the survey questions and the margin of error

A sponsor may charge up to $0.25 per page for a copy of the report.

That’s a pretty comprehensive list of information.  Following this standard would go a long way to correcting many of the problems with media reports of polling, including their own polls.

Too bad newspapers don’t follow the standards at all.

- srbp -

Christmas Goodies #nlpoli #cdnpoli

A couple of provocative articles turned up online over the holidays.  Now that everyone is getting back into the work-a-day groove, check them out.

Energy consultant Tom Adams took a hard look at Muskrat Falls and gave it a failing grade.  Adams doesn’t limit his comments to the MF project alone.  He also takes a look at the current rate structure:

The prevailing electricity rate structure for service on the island also suggests that the government is not serious about seeking the lowest cost options for meeting the province’s energy needs. The sale of power during the winter is highly subsidized, with the financial losses recovered by overcharging the rest of the year. Although this rate design is normal utility practice in far too many jurisdictions, given the cost structure for the power sector on the island where two thirds of the power is supplied by hydro-electric facilities, this practice is particularly wasteful of public resources. It would be interesting to know how much potential energy from on-island hydro-electric facilities is spilled during the spring, summer and fall. The prevailing rate structure encourages electric heating, where the power to drive those electric heaters is derived from oil. Using the oil directly for heating would be about three times as efficient as using the oil indirectly through electricity. If the government was really serious about mitigating the high economic and environmental costs of oil-fired generation, why would such a wasteful pricing methodology be allowed to persist?

How much gets spilled, Tom?  Crap loads.  The island is also in a situation where huge amounts of hydro currently spill because of deficiencies in the interconnection  between the main part of the island and the bit where a goodly part of the population lives.

As for the pricing structure, that’s the result of a chronic lack of policy direction from the provincial government and weakened oversight by the regulator. It’s the same climate that spawned the Muskrat Falls monster. 

When you are done with that, take a look at the second biting online commentary by CBC’s John Furlong.  He’s the host of the Fisheries Broadcast and one of the most seasoned journalists in the province. That gives him an impressive background which, of course, is the polite way of saying “he’s seen it all and he doesn’t swallow the bullshit”.

An example:

The union might not like it, the people in Marystown might not like it, and the people in Port Union might not like it, but it's time to lay down the over-heated rhetoric, be in the vanguard of this change and do something constructive.

You can tell Furlong is hitting the target by the vicious personal attacks on him from the anonyturds in the comments section of the CBC website.  This is his second sharply worded opinion piece.  it really livens up the CBC website.  Here’s hoping they make more use of him.

- srbp -

SRBP at Seven #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The Sir Robert Bond Papers turns seven years old today.

The purpose remains simple enough, as described in the first anniversary post:

While much has changed in the past year, the core goal for the Bond Papers is still the same: to contribute to an informed discussion of public policy issues. It started with the offshore and in the first few weeks that proved to be the issue that dominated.

Since then, there have been posts on everything from the fishery to alleged spy planes flying through Newfoundland and Labrador, Titan missiles and economic development. Some posts are light-hearted and humourous. Others have been deeper and wordier. Whether they succeeded in being funny or serious, as the case may be, is best left to its readers.

On the fourth anniversary, in 2009, your humble e-scribbler posted draft whistleblower legislation. 

In 2011, the anniversary post went by the wayside in favour of the daily fare:  Muskrat Falls financial problems.

This morning, your humble e-scribbler started a new short series on democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

All are typical of what this corner of the Internet has become in the last seven years.  SRBP is not just about adding to the voices out there.  It’s about getting at the layers underneath.  It’s about explaining the why behind arguments and beliefs.

SRBP has also become about advocating for new initiatives.  When the province’s most popular politician Danny failed to deliver his promise of whistleblower protection, your humble e-scribbler delivered it.  Look through the archives and you’ll find all sorts of policy ideas for the fishery, the economy and education and early childhood development.

And in some areas, your humble e-scribbler has been telling you things you won;t find anywhere else.

SRBP was an immediate opponent of the Abitibi expropriation.  It was fundamentally wrong, as a matter of principle.  The government never told the full story of why the expropriated the hydroelectric properties in central Newfoundland.  Finding out that the government botched the whole thing and expropriated environmental cesspools made it only more stupid than it was at the beginning.

After a brief examination, your humble e-scribbler also became a firm opponent of Muskrat Falls.  In the year since Danny Williams announced the scheme, more people have joined the ranks of the critics and opponents.  As more people learn more, they invariably realise the project is wrong.

SRBP’s critique goes much further than just picking at bits and pieces of one small part of a much larger problem with the current administration’s policy.  Your humble e-scribbler has already proposed an alternative way to manage the province’s electricity resources that will genuinely work in the public’s best interest.

As SRBP enters its eighth year, the ultimate judge of its success or failure is you, the reader. There are many thousands more of you today than there were seven years ago.  You send e-mails, make comments on posts or in some cases, pull your humble e-scribbler aside for a quick chat.

Politicians used to make angry phone calls in 2005 to gripe about a comment or opinion.  In 2007, the Old Man took to threatening your humble e-scribbler publicly.  In 2011, his successor gave the ultimate compliment to those of us who toil online by singling us out in her year-end interviews.

All of that speaks to the fact that people are interested in what they read here.  As long as they keep coming and as long as your humble e-scribbler can keep going, the Sir Robert Bond Papers will be here.

Thank you for your support. 

Thank you for your interest.

And to each of you, every wish for a happy and prosperous and healthy New Year from your humble e-scribbler.

- srbp -

The question of democracy in Newfoundland and Labrador #cdnpoli #nlpoli

“A democracy only works really well,” according to Kathy Dunderdale, “when people are asking questions.”

Opposition Leader Dwight Ball told a Western Star interviewer that “my job is to ask questions with substance…”.

Not to be outdone in the spate of year-end interviews, New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael tied the health of democracy to asking questions:

If our natural resources standing committee ... were operating like a House of Commons committee or like the committees in Nova Scotia, we’d have a fully open discussion on Muskrat Falls.

Not surprisingly, all three party leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador agree on what constitutes democracy in the province.  They lead parties that agree on everything but the fine details. 

Not surprisingly, the three leaders discuss democracy solely in terms of what happens in the provincial legislature.  The only disagreement they have, such as it is, centres on the questions the opposition parties ask.  The NDP want more time to ask questions.  The Liberals want to ask better questions and the Conservatives claim variously that there is enough time for questions as things stand or that the quality of them is low anyway so more time wouldn’t make things better.

In one sense, democracy is about questions.

It is about people who want power – like Kathy Dunderdale, Lorraine Michael and Dwight Ball – asking the rest of us in the community to support them at election time.  We support them with the one thing that we all have in common:  our individual vote. Everyone in the community has exactly the same kind of vote. And it is our individual vote that is the foundation of everything else that happens in our democracy.

In between elections, democracy is about those people who get enough support to form a government asking “May I” when they want to do something. That’s essentially what they do in the House of Assembly.

They pose the question to the other members of the House, whether from their own party or the other parties and individuals who won enough votes to sit in the legislature. 

You’ll find that quite literally in the procedure.  The Speaker will “put the question” on a motion, a resolution or a bill to the House and ask the members to vote.

Ask a question. 

Vote on an answer.

Decision made.

All starting from the fundamental question put to individual voters at an election to chose individuals who will represent those voters in the legislature.

Things weren’t always that way.  But starting almost 800 years ago, in those countries that follow the British parliamentary tradition, people started to place limits on what the government could do without the agreement of the people ruled by the government.

The 1689 Bill of Rights brought together many of the features of our modern democracy that we often assume have always been around and that people have always accepted.  Freedom of speech,  freedom to stand for and to vote in elections to the legislature and the need for the legislature to meet regularly are all contained in the 1689 Bill of Rights. They survive today: some changed, some the same.

At the core of the whole thing is choice.  People chose their representatives to sit in the legislature.  We select those representatives to stand in for each of us every day between elections.

We do not elect a government.  We elect people to the legislature, to the House of Assembly.  Out of those people, we get a group to run the government.  And those people running the government must come back to our direct representatives for approval for what they want to do, especially when it comes to spending public money.

There are two other ideas that go along with choice and who gets to chose.  One of these is that choices must be based on information.  The legislature’s day-to-day business is built around debate and the exchange of information. 

The other idea is that the information and choice must be in public.  The legislature has space for people to sit and watch what happens.  News media and others can report on what happens.  The legislature keeps an official record – Hansard – that people can read.

Seen from that perspective, those political comments about questions and the legislature don’t look all that good or convincing.  Looking at some recent history, one can find a host of examples  – from the spending scandal to the Abitibi expropriation fiasco  - that show the bad things that happen when politicians operate in secret. 

You can also see that the Premier’s excuses for keeping the legislature closed simply don’t make sense.  If she feels that her current job is a “rare privilege”, then Kathy Dunderdale needn’t remind herself of that fact every day, in secret, in her office. 

She can show up in the legislature and demonstrate that she gets the point:  if you want power in this province, the you have to stand up in the legislature and ask “May I?”

The purpose of the House is to subject those with power to public examination and to the test of debate, discussion and disclosure.  The Premier and her colleagues should want the legislature to be open as much as possible.  They should want to tell us about their plans, present their case and convince us all that they have good ideas.

How very odd it is, then, that the Premier admitted at the end of last year that she and her colleagues don’t have any thing ready to present to the House.  This is the case despite the fact they’ve been in office since 2003 and the Premier herself has held her job for more than a year.

At other times, Dunderdale has said that she kept the legislature closed because the House was dysfunctional.  The opposition parties were weak. Who will hold them accountable for what they say, she wondered. 

The answer is simple:  the ordinary people of Newfoundland and Labrador will.  If the opposition political parties are as weak as Dunderdale claims, then they won’t be able to hide away from public scrutiny either.  Exposing yourself to examination works both for those with power and those who want it.

The fact that the Premier and her colleagues avoid the House as they do and denigrate the legislature as the Premier does, she demonstrates nothing less than contempt for the people of the province.

To be fair, though, none of the parties in the House can really escape blame on this point.  All parties have  helped to create the current climate. Dunderdale controls how often the House sits.  But the other parties went along unquestioningly with the special ballot laws that undermine the right of individuals to stand for election.  Some even openly suggested making this a one party state.  Perhaps that explains why they slipped things through the House with a nod and a wink and stood idly by as their colleagues abused the fundamental rights we have enjoyed. Now they may not see it that way. They may believe that what they have done is absolutely right in every respect.

But they were not right.

It is not okay.

The attitude and actions of politicians in the province in recent decades are why the state of democracy in our province is, itself, in question.

- srbp -

Effective Speechmaking

Scan down the list of recommended blogs and you’ll see a link to Max Atkinson.  He’s a British academic whose made a sideline career out of being a communications consultant.

While many of you have likely never heard of him, Atkinson has had a significant impact on modern speech making through his writing and consulting work. Much of what people now take for granted or what they consider to be established fact actually came out of Atkinson’s research over the past 30 years or so.

Dig into Atkinson’s background a bit and you will inevitably come across reference to his success with Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown. Before that, though, Atkinson gained public notoriety when he appeared on a British television program called “World in Action”.  They hired him to coach an inexperienced political activist as she delivered some public remarks at a Social Democratic Party conference.  She earned a standing ovation for her four minute speech.  Once the program aired, Atkinson’s phone started ringing with calls from other politicians who wanted his help.

The program is 27 minutes long.  Atkinson posted a good quality copy of the whole thing to his blog in 2010 as well as a youtube version which is broken into segments.  The picture quality on the segments isn’t that good. Bear in mind, though, that the thing came from a video tape made 25 years earlier.

Here’s the last bit with the actual speech, as delivered.

If this is all the time you have, that’s fine.  But if you want to get the full effect, go back and take the time to watch the whole thing.  You’ll find the impact of the speech is much greater.  You can spot some of the techniques employed.

The segment is about winning applause.  If you watch the whole thing, you’ll see how to deliver an effective speech.

Enjoy!

- srbp -

A challenge for Premier Dunderdale #nlpoli #cdnpoli

“In any thriving democracy, sound public policy can only come through informed debate and discussion.”

”Beginnings” , SRBP, January 3, 2005.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale thinks that at least some of the opposition to Muskrat Falls comes from picking at “snapshots” of the project instead of looking at the big picture. 

Truth is the three political parties in the province all support her project.  The NDP are all in.  The Liberals are just quibbling over minor details.

The Premier also spent a fair chunk of time in her year-end interviews talking up her critics online and running down the debate skills of her opponents in the legislature.

The people of Newfoundland and Labrador deserve to hear the Premier’s detailed, passionate argument in favour of the multi-billion dollar Muskrat Falls.

They also deserve to hear a detailed, passionate argument her plan.

Since they aren’t going to get that from the province’s political parties, here’s the simple solution:

The Premier can debate your humble e-scribbler.

In public.

One night only.

Book a big enough hall, sell tickets and open the thing to the news media and to online coverage.

We can sort out the date, time place and format.  We’ll find a moderator.

Proceeds from  the event will go to the charity of the debaters’ choice.  Your humble-e-scribbler will give his share to the Arthritis Society.

The Premier can take all the time she needs to get ready but since she has her own deadlines to meet, we should be able to get the thing done before Easter. 

The Premier is backed by the mighty forces of Nalcor.  She has the army of bureaucrats in the Confederation and all the communication coaches, debate trainers, technical experts and pundits she can hire.

Your humble e-scribbler has himself, a couple of buddies and the Internet.

The Premier should have no problem at all.

All she has to do is accept the challenge.

- srbp -

The Last Weekly Traffic Report for 2011 #nlpoli

1. The reality of her world
2. Making the world safe for sexism
3. Monkey Cage Round-up
4. The Top Ten for Eleven
5. Undisclosed risk
6. Familiar Furrows
7. The Scribbler’s Picks for 2011
8. Tory angst might be well founded
9. The Zazzy Substitution
10. The Wheel of Fish

- srbp -

Familiar Furrows #nlpoli

Kathy Dunderdale spent most of her time in year-end interviews lamenting her critics.

No accomplishments.

No vision thing.

Just a lot of carping.

Lots of grousing about her critics and even a reference to the problems free speech in the legislature are causing her.

She said she kept the House of Assembly closed because it was dysfunctional, and a waste of time, and everyone else was useless.

Can’t ask proper questions, dontchya know. Kathy-approved intelligent questions.

Now, as the Telegram’s James Macleod puts it, the story is a little different:

Dunderdale has said repeatedly that there’s a simple reason for leaving the House closed: the government had no legislation to pass.

All that and the glories of Muskrat Falls, even though she  - herself – spends more time griping about everyone else rather than explaining the whole thing to people.

It is all just so boringly familiar.

The relentless negativity, that is.

Follow that second link if you haven’t already.  It will lead you to a quote from the Old Man Hisself circa November 2009:

But Williams said he's not going to stick around forever "to beat a dead horse" if a deal cannot be sealed, nor will he sign a bad deal [to develop the Lower Churchill] for the sake of getting one done while in office.

Hmmm.

In an interview with CBC to be broadcast Friday evening, Williams says he left office suddenly in late 2010 because he couldn’t handle the criticism anymore. 

His skin got thin again, apparently.

When Williams left office he said it was because he had just inked a deal with Nova Scotia to develop the Lower Churchill that was by no means a give away.

And as for that promise about no deal just to get out of the job?

Well, let’s just say that Harvey’s has salt for sale by the bucket load down at the waterfront. 

Buy lots.

You’ll need it.

- srbp -

The Scribbler’s Picks for 2011 #nlpoli

National Political Story:  The Conservatives finally won a majority government in 2011.  They turned out to be not-so-scary after all for enough Canadians.


Provincial Political Story:   OCI’s unilateral start to changing the fishing industry beats anything else.  What they have started will have a profound effect on the province well into the future.

Many the politician is scared shitless of the whole thing.  You can see the fear in their eyes every time they speak of it.

None was more fear-filled than Kathy Dunderdale who tried to claim in one year-end interview that all she could do was facilitate discussions among other people.  Yeah, right,  as if Kath and her fellow pols of all political stripes haven’t been intimately involved with creating the current mess or won’t be affected by the sea change that is coming.

Try the SRBP post “The Wheel of Fish” if you want to read some of this corner’s observations.

High Point for the Scribbler:  The 15 Ideas series. Start here.  Close second:  The series on politics, polls and the media starting with the Echo Chamber which goes back to a 2006 series that changed the way many people look at politics and the news media.

Recurring Theme to Remember:  You can’t slide a single sheet of paper between the three political parties on most issues.  The Tory leadership fiasco at the start of the year is as good a place as any to start your review. Try “A Hugh Shea for our time” from January.

What Theme  Keeps Repeating Like Greasy Fish and Chips?  Irresponsible government spending. Start with “The Four Horsemen and government finances”.  Notice how familiar the issues are.  Regular readers will recall that SRBP flagged the Tories’ spending habits in 2006. 

A story that will drag into the New Year:  The death throes of the provincial Liberal Party.   “The Zazzy Substitution”  will get you started.  Don’t worry if you haven’t been paying attention.  There’ll be plenty of opportunities to catch up over the next couple of years.

- srbp -

The reality of her world #nlpoli

Some people are trying to make a controversy out of Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s recent comments that public sector unions should “expect a more modest increase” than the salary rises they’ve been used to from the Conservatives since 2003.

Look at “the reality of the world”, Dunderdale admonishes everyone.

Well, a look at the world she lives in  - as opposed to the one people imagine exists - reveals a great deal.

Revelation One:  As labradore has noted repeatedly, the provincial Conservatives are responsible for expanding the public service both in absolute numbers and as a share of the provincial labour force.

In his most recent version, labradore notes both the size of the public sector: 25% of the provincial labour force.  Then he adds Revelation 2: the growth in the total value of the pay packet.  Since 2006, the total public sector pay cost has gone from about $1.9 billion to about $2.65 billion by January 2011.

Revelation 3 really puts it in perspective. Scan down through David Campbell’s commentary in the Globe on December 28 and you’ll find plenty to knock your eyeballs out about the growth of the provincial economy. Take the bits rom labradore and put it together with this on the relative position od the public sector pay envelope compared to the national average:

In 1998, the average weekly wage in the public administration sector in Newfoundland and Labrador was more than 22 per cent below the national average. Now it is 3.3 per cent above. That is a monumental shift in wages over a short 11 year period. A similar, but less pronounced story is found in both the health care and education sectors.

Most of that increase came since 2006.

So for anyone who is still harbouring any misapprehensions, understand that the provincial public sector has been driving the provincial economy for the past decade.  Thousands of more employees making – collectively – hundreds of millions more year over year and you have the growth since 2006 focused on the northeast Avalon. 

Now add to that the sources of provincial government revenue, as laid out in the annual provincial budget Estimates. You start to see the role that taxes on individual incomes and consumption play in fuelling the explosion in government spending since 2006.

Mining taxes and royalties produced about $167.5 million in revenue in 2010.  Personal income taxes brought in $888 million and sales taxes brought in another $791 million. Even gasoline taxes brought in more than mining royalties ($168.45 million) in 2010.

The forecast for 2011 did include an increase in mining royalties and taxes to $343 million. But even with that, two of those three taxes will still produce well over double the amount for the treasury than will come from rent companies pay for the privilege of exploiting the province’s non-renewable mineral resources.

When you look at the reality of things, Kathy Dunderdale and the Conservatives can’t afford to chop into provincial spending without putting a gigantic chill in the local economy.  As much as Dunderdale likes to admit that she and her colleagues have been irresponsible in boosting public sector spending to unsustainable levels, they haven’t left themselves any real manoeuvring room politically.

Now this might seem a bit harsh to Kathy’s delicate sensibilities, but the reality is that Dunderdale can’t do anything but provide the public sector with some lovely increases in their coming contract negotiations. 

When Kathy Dunderdale says public sector unions should expect more modest increases, we should understand she is probably speaking relatively.  Compared to their last contract when they got an eight percent jump followed by three successive years of four percent, public sector employees should probably look for something like four years of four percent. or four percent followed by three over the subsequent years.

But any serious confrontation?

Don’t count on it.

The Tories don’t have the nuts for it, pea or otherwise.

- srbp -

Undisclosed risk (September 12, 2007)

[Editor's Note:  This is a post originally scheduled for publication in September 2007.  For some reason, it never appeared. Here it is, as originally written.  Note that some of the links may not work].

Take a look at the energy plan consultation document released in November 2006.

Try to find any reference to changing the province's generic oil royalty regime.

You won't find one.

The Top Ten for Eleven #nlpoli

1. Tory angst may be well founded (January 2011)
2. Humber West post mortem (February 2011)
3. Connie leadership rigged? (January 2011)
4. Watton to carry Liberal banner in Humber West (January 2011)
5. From 61% to 44% since August:  NTV poll shows Tory support slides further (February 2011)
6. HMV (March 2011)
7. Rick Hillier?  Tim Powers?  No thanks say NL Tories (January 2011)
8. Anyone seen John Hickey? (March 2011)
9. Connie Leadership 2011:  Brad and Circuses  (January 2011)
10. Patronage, pure and simple (March 2011)

- srbp -

Monkey Cage Round-up

From The Monkey Cage, some recent posts that also tie to local politics and events:

• Media “consumption”. A recent post by John Sides at the Washington Post discussed a study into how much radio news people reported they listened to with the amount they actually did.  Two things to take away from Sides in the WP:  First, there can be a huge discrepancy between what people report and what they actually do.  As a result, pundits and analysts may have a hard time connecting advertising, news coverage and other sources of political opinion to voter attitudes and behaviour.  Second, think about the technology used to collect the data.  They used a small cellphone that recorded ambient noise.  The researchers then compared the information to “radio and television programming in the participant’s media market to identify what, if any, programs they had listened to or watched.”
• The Partisan use of Public Money:  A new study published in the American Political Science Review established an undeniable connection between a recorded incident of political direction from the White House with changes in government contracting:  “Vendors in Republican districts labeled vulnerable [by the White House] experienced contracts an estimated 272% larger than those in their unmentioned counterparts.”  Yes, folks, in some parts of the world this sort of thing is actually considered to be wrong. In other places, political direction of capital works spending is considered “normal”.
• Tax rates and Corporate Investment:  “Utilizing dynamic tests for up to 19 OECD countries from 1980 to 2000 and isolating the impact of time-varying factors on FDI [foreign direct investment] inflows, I find no empirical relationship between corporate taxation and FDI inflows. Using a number of different tax rate variables, control variables, and estimation techniques, I find no relationship between corporate tax rate changes and FDI flows.” 
• Nonvoters:  The phrase “absentee ballots and early voting” caught your humble e-scribbler’s attention given the law suit the local Dippers have launched against the provincial special ballot laws.  Those “special ballots” are not really special but rather a way to allow people who will be absent from the province during an election to vote. Do a bit of digging, though, and you’ll find the original New York Times commentary on the differences between people who vote and those who don’t vote in elections.  That discussion gets to be especially interesting around these parts given that elections since 2003 are characterised by relatively low voter turn-outs (when compared to previous elections in this province.)
• Politics and polls:  “No one set of polls drives how Americans think nor how “the media” reports on politics. Neither does a single politician reap a unique advantage from polling. The signal is too diffuse.

The overall effects of polling are often neutralized in the cacophony of private and public surveys and the swirl of other media and campaign tactics. There are tremendous problems with American politics today; polls are not the cause.

- srbp -

Making the world safe for sexism #cdnpoli #nlpoli

Year-end political columns and features do nothing if not go for the easy and predictable when it comes to picking the top political story.

Jeff Simpson, for example, known to many as the poor man’s George Will, picked women in politics to lead off his Christmas Eve column:

This being Christmas weekend, let’s give thanks for some encouraging developments in Canada in 2011.

First off, women in politics. Three women became premiers – Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador, Alison Redford in Alberta and Christy Clark in British Columbia.

The venerable Canadian Press ran a story on women in politics as well for Christmas week.  Surely this is something not seen since maybe the 1970s.

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak looks forward to a shift in dynamics when provincial and territorial leaders gather next month in Victoria.

For the first time ever, three other women will join her at the male-dominated meeting: Kathy Dunderdale of Newfoundland and Labrador, Alison Redford of Alberta and Christy Clark of British Columbia.

“The three seas are guarded by women,” Aariak said with a laugh.

Flip around the newspapers and broadcast media and you are likely to find more examples.  These two just stood out for being among the the firs.

And not long after those comments both Jeff and CP went to exactly the same spot..

Canadian Press:

“I think it will be very exciting to come together as a group with more women at the table,” she said in an interview. “And I think they will contribute valuable information.”

[Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy] Dunderdale agreed.

“I know it’s going to be different because women do approach it differently,” she said in an interview.

Women simply don’t experience life the same way as men, Dunderdale said.

“So that gives you a certain insight, a certain perspective.

“And certain issues that are extremely important to you.”

And Jeff:

… women often have a nose for issues that men miss, or they see the same things through a different prism, and that difference is useful and important. Political life is better with more women running or helping to run the show.

Women see issues men don’t see.  They see all issues “differently”.  As Dunderdale put it “certain issues” are extremely import.  She then chose employment insurance and how it is unfair to some types of workers, incidentally, but more on that later. Yes friends, women are more socially aware.  They focus on the softer issues.

And, darn it all,  politics is just “better” with women in it.

The only thing missing from these insightful journalistic comments is the open admission that the offices smell better,  that the chicks make great coffee when you ask them to bring you a cup and cabinet meetings are better because sometimes the babes will even bring cookies they baked themselves.  The boys will have to watch their waist lines and their cholesterol counts now that women are in higher places.

So let’s deal with the obvious. 

Women do see the world somewhat differently from the way men do.  Then again, so do black men and women, aboriginal people, and immigrants.  White middle-class men from St. John’s will have a different experience than their counterparts from Quebec or Edmonton. 

But when you get beyond these most general of generalizations, so what?

Well, not much.  The differences in politicians come now as they always have, in the individuals themselves.  Women – as a group - are not inherently any better at politics or any more sensitive to certain issues than are men. 

Kathy Dunderdale, for example, hasn’t been any better at promoting a more civilized, inclusive, and open form of politics than any of her male predecessors.  She is every bit as arrogant and condescending as her predecessor ever was. She just has less than a tenth the reason to behave so ignorantly.

Dunderdale may see issues differently than someone like Jerome Kennedy – a man – but that is because she seems to have difficulty grasping many of them, very much unlike Kennedy. That doesn’t come from the fact that Dunderdale is a woman and Kennedy a man. Finance minister Tom Marshall  seems to have as limited a grasp on public finance as Dunderdale does and, as you likely concluded from his name, Tom is one of the guys in the room.

Kathy Dunderdale is certainly just as committed to secrecy and keeping the legislature as dysfunctional as her predecessor.  Dunderdale’s had a year in office. Most people in Newfoundland and Labrador who read that CP article are likely dumfounded to find out that Dunderdale has some sort of personal stake in employment insurance reform. 

So far she hasn’t said much of anything about it beyond a news release issued last summer.  Eight years in politics and not a peep other than mentioning that people who receive regular benefits need fewer hours to qualify for parental leave benefits under the Employment Insurance system than others.

What has actually been remarkable about women premiers is that the average Canadian doesn’t seem to have noticed at all.  You just did not see letters to the editor and calls to open line shows gushing about the historic first of Kathy Dunderdale, the first woman premier of her province.  A few reporters and Dunderdale supporters have tried to play it up, but for the most part Dunderdale as the first elected woman premier is a non-issue.

Not an issue.

Sure people noticed.

They couldn’t help but notice, especially if they followed Dunderdale’s staged campaign events that posed her as the Great Nan, heir to the Great Dan.

But the ordinary Joes and Janes didn’t play up the “first woman” angle themselves beyond maybe a comment or two in passing. 

24 hours tops, after the election.

Gone.

Part of that may well be due to the fact that people are a wee bit more evolved that the crowd in newsrooms these days.  They understand that it was only a matter of time before we had women premiers.  It’s a numbers game.  Get more women in politics over a longer time, eventually one of them gets the top job.

A goodly chunk of the reaction in Newfoundland and Labrador likely had to do with the fact that Dunderdale slid into her job a year ago. People are used to her.  The novelty of her chromosomal structure wore off long ago.  And to be brutally frank, it was never an issue anyway.

If someone wanted to make an issue, they might note that Dunderdale  got her job on a man’s coattails, hand-picked by a man to succeed him.  What’s more, the provincial Tories could have run a cardboard cut-out and they would have been swept back into power. They sure didn’t run their campaign as if she made a difference.  The “Dunderdale2011” thing was more about cutting and pasting than the use of a campaign built around the party’s strongest marketing appeal. 

The Tories do Big Giant Head campaigns so naturally they ran lots of shots of a Big Giant Head.  But they ran a stealth campaign with Dunderdale:  a photo op here and there and not much beyond it. There was no wave of Dundermania.

Truth be told Kathy could have frigged off to Florida with Susan Sullivan and no one would have wondered where Kathy went.  That’s what actually happened after the election, incidentally, and – you guessed it – no one cared.

Unlike reporters and political pundits, Canadians apparently don’t really give a toss about whether their politicians are women or men.  People are just interested in how well the politicians do their jobs.

That’s pretty much how it should be.

- srbp -

Best Political Blog – Final Round of Voting is On!

Okay gang, that was just the preliminary round.

Now we are in the finals, along with Fighting Newfoundlander, Gritchick, Impolitical and Dawg’s Blog.

Some of you may have skipped voting last time.  Maybe you got confused by Bong Papers and thought you were in the legalised marijuana blog category.

Nope.

It was just a typo.

Now you can vote for the Bond Papers in the final round.

As always, vote early and vote often.  That’s not just a joke.  Once a day will be sufficient.

Here’s the link:

Vote Sir Robert Bond Papers.

- srbp -

Euphonium Christmas

- srbp -

Connies grinch consumers on Muskrat review #nlpoli

Anyone who thinks the governing Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador are interested in anything but ramming their megadebt Muskrat Falls deal down the public throat, well, those fine people are just not paying attention.

From Friday’s Telegram, public utilities board chairman Andy Wells:

"Now we have to have the report by end of March and, of course, that's an order from the government and we shall do that," Wells told The Telegram Thursday.

"The public consultation is going to very restricted. I don't know whether we will be holding a technical conference. The consumer advocate role will be substantially restricted. There is not sufficient time."

"In order to meet the March 31 deadline, we have to start writing our report in mid-February. What we really are looking at is two to three weeks of work that we thought would require three months."

Talk about undisclosed risk.

- srbp -

Happy Full Metal Jacket Christmas

- srbp -

T’was the week before Christmas… #nlpoli

And all the loyal SRBP readers who haven’t voted in the Best Political Blog category can still do so.

Click here.

When you are done there, you might sample these top 10 posts from last week as selected by the readers themselves:

1. Federal Liberals fear SRBP
2. Nalcor and the Muskrat alternatives
3. Penashue – the third smack
4. Muskrat Falls PIFO
5. Political party finance:  much more to read
6. All I want for Christmas is a paradigm shift
7. Undisclosed risk:  putting the plan into action
8. Memorable Christopher Hitchens
9. Amen, brother, amen.
10. More Muskrat Fun:  HQ, NALCO and PEI

- srbp -

Muskrat Falls: the PUB review story #nlpoli

The Telegram has the best account of the unsuccessful effort by the public utilities board to get an extension on its review deadline for Muskrat Falls.

The whole thing is worth reading, right down to the bit where natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy disputes the role of the consumer advocate in the PUB process.

Then read the Telegram editorial:

But Kennedy seems to have missed the point of the PUB’s letter to him concerning its ability to do the review, because board chairman Andy Wells wasn’t actually asking for time — he was telling the government the time was needed.

The Telly-torial writer then makes a neat transition from a talk of the reason for the delay – Nalcor can’t cough up information on time - to a discussion of Nalcor’s and Emera’s problems coming up with information full-stop.

That difficulty in providing information in response to simple, obvious questions is pretty much the main reason for the growing opposition to the project. 

- srbp -

Amen, brother, amen #nlpoli #cdnpoli

nottawa asks a good question about politicians, university professors and journalists and discovery of a fairly obvious point about public life in Newfoundland and Labrador since 2003.

- srbp -

More Muskrat Fun: HQ, NALCO and PEI #nlpoli #nspoli #cdnpoli

The Ghosts of Hydro-Quebec and NALCO:  A pair of readers fired off separate e-mails to point out an alternate  explanation for the “anything cabinet decides they can do” clause from the energy corporation legislation than the tack SRBP took.

They both pointed to comments made over several years by different politicians about making the local energy corporation act like Hydro-Quebec.  In the province those same pols love to hate, HQ gets involved in all sorts of public works.

The HQ spending supplements what the provincial government is doing and, as some of those pols noted, helps to keep a raft of what is essentially provincial government spending from the prying eyes of the Equalization cops.  The result is that Quebec gets to collect more Equalization than it might otherwise get if they transferred the HQ cash into the provincial treasury and had it counted as provincial government income for the purposes of calculating Equalization entitlements. To paraphrase one e-mail, you can also bitch at the same time about Ottawa not doing enough for your province as you collect all this extra money.

Those readers are absolutely right.  Some politicians had that as part of their goal for the energy corporation.  Usually they tied it with nationalising Newfoundland Power to create One Big Crown corporation.

Just to refresh people who might not have followed the whole discussion going back five years, the SRBP view is that Nalcor was essentially supposed to be like the old NALCO.  That was a failed Smallwood-era plan to use one giant corporation that controlled all the province’s natural resources to broker development.

NALCO with an R tacked on the end might not be able to control all resources but it would be able to assume an increasingly stronger role in economic development.  You can look at the exploration program and incentive grants created under the 2007 energy plan let Nalcor use its financial power to foster a leading relationship with smaller, cash-strapped local companies.  The fibre optic deal has Nalcor and the provincial government as the larger partner in the deal.  Even offshore, Nalcor’s exploration program can be seen as a way to step into areas where the private sector isn’t interested at the moment and where Nalcor can assume a dominant role.

Basically, though, the Equalization dodge and the One Big Corp idea aren’t incompatible with the idea of having the energy corporation assume a NALCO-like role in the economy.  The two ideas fit together rather neatly.

In a related story, federal New Democratic Party leadership contender Thomas Mulcair showed up in Prince Edward Island garnering supporter for his campaign.  Part of the story in the Guardian included this rather curious reference by a prominent Island Dipper:

"Tom supports policies which are good for P.E.I. including federal support for the Lower Churchill development which will give us a third electric cable and support for a moratorium on hydraulic fracking."

What Joe Byrne seems to be talking about is actually not a Lower Churchill project at all.  It’s a plan to run another line from the mainland to PEI.  There’s an SRBP post on it from January 2011 when the conventional media reported the federal government wouldn’t fund the project as a green initiative.

Other than that, the only time anyone talked about PEI and the Lower Churchill in the same breath was in 2005.  Back then a British Columbia company was looking at the idea of running a cable to PEI  directly from Labrador.  If memory serves, Nalcor was also thinking about the same option.  Apparently it never got to the point where anyone discussed it officially with the people running Prince Edward Island.

Of course with the Emera deal, there’s no reason to run another bunch of underwater lines to PEI. 

However, if the Islanders are happy to pay outrageous prices for electricity, the gang at Nalcor would be happy to speak with them.  They have just the thing you are looking for.

- srbp -

Federal Liberals fear SRBP #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Well, not just the Sir Robert Bond Papers but all bloggers.

Idiots.

- srbp -

Undisclosed risk: putting the plan into action #nlpoli

The provincial government is dropping $11.3 million to string fibre optic cables from Goose Bay to western Labrador.

The federal government will plunk in $3.0 million with $9.7 million from Bell Aliant.

Of the provincial total, Nalcor Energy will cover $8.3 million.

Just do the math, though.  The provincial government has 47% of this project.  Both the federal and provincial government shares combined cover a majority interest in the project.

If that doesn’t hit you funny, it might be striking you a bit odd that an energy company is suddenly getting involved in telecommunications.  Here’s the quote the people who put the news conference together made up for the Nalcor representative:

“This is one of the many benefits that Labrador will see from the Lower Churchill Project,” said Gilbert Bennett, Nalcor’s Vice-President, Lower Churchill Project. “Nalcor is investing in this project to ensure that critical infrastructure required to build and operate the Muskrat Falls development is in place in Labrador.”

“This is one of the many benefits that Labrador will see from the Lower Churchill Project,” said Gilbert Bennett, Nalcor’s Vice-President, Lower Churchill Project. “Nalcor is investing in this project to ensure that critical infrastructure required to build and operate the Muskrat Falls development is in place in Labrador.”

Not that Nalcor is bullshitting the public or anything,  but of course, they are bullshitting. Nalcor has been on a heavy marketing campaign for Muskrat Falls for several months now in all sorts of ways.  If they gave money to put new public toilets in a town somewhere, the news release would credit the whole thing to Muskrat Falls.

So yeah, on the crudest level, this is just another version of Nalcor’s publicity efforts for Muskrat Falls. 

On another level, this is part of a trend the provincial Conservatives have been pushing since 2003.  A key part of the whole effort has been to allow Nalcor – a state-owned, politically directed agency – to use public money to assume an increasingly larger role in the provincial economy.

Weird as it might sound for a Conservative government, that’s part of what is going on here.  You can understand it better if you look at what the party does as opposed to importing labels or ideologies from other places.  Progressive Conservative is just a label.  In practice, the political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador aren’t ideologically based at all.  That’s why people can jokingly refer to the Danny Williams Tories as the first NDP government the province ever had and not really be making a silly joke at all.

This sort of project is why the province’s ruling Conservatives inserted clauses in the energy corporation legislation in 2007 that allowed an energy company to do anything the cabinet wants it to do. It was a pretty dramatic change from the old law that governed the provincial hydro corporation.

In fact, this clause was so far away from one one would expect for an  energy corporation that most people likely blew it off as being just a meaningless oddity.  The whole thing stands out, though, because the clause survived through some pretty significant revisions from the first version of the energy corporation laws in 2006  to the ones that currently govern the corporation dating from 2007. 

Cabinet obviously meant for the new corporation to take on anything at all.  They didn’t need a way of funnelling provincial government money to the private sector.  They already have dozens of ways to do that.  They also didn’t need to do this for Muskrat Falls. They’ve been running Churchill Falls, for example, since the 1970s with good old copper telephone lines. 

Muskrat Falls wouldn’t be the only new industrial venture that could use fibre optic communications.  There are some new mining businesses likely to start in Labrador soon that could claim a far bigger interest in these cables than Nalcor.

And for what it’s worth, Muskrat Falls might not even happen.

What’s going on here is a continuation of the policy laid down by the Conservatives early in their mandate.  They want to assume greater and greater control over the provincial economy.  Today,it’s fibre optic cables.  Tomorrow, it might well be another administration of any partisan stripe getting Nalcor into fish processing or marketing.

As your humble e-scribbler put it in 2006:

Williams' new Hydro corporation returns to an older model based on government subsidy and government dependence. Beyond the attractiveness to some businesses of relying on whatever contracts they can secure from the new Hydro corporation, the political and financial muscle of the state-owned company will likely make it considerably more attractive an investment than a private sector venture, since it will always carry with it a government guarantee of its operations and expenditures. The end result will almost inevitably be a weakening of the local private sector.

Weakening the private sector is one result.

Another is ensuring that local taxpayers pay the full financial cost and then some. Under the Electrical Power Control Act and the public utilities board legislation, the utilities board must set provincial electricity rates to ensure the financial viability of the provincial energy corporation.  The company can never lose.

It’s that same combination of powers, incidentally, that Nalcor is using to finance the Muskrat Falls project.  Local taxpayers will be forced – by law – to pay whatever rates Nalcor needs to ensure it recovers its costs, makes a profit and maintains its credit rating.

It was an undisclosed risk in 2006, but then again, that’s what the Lower Churchill is all about.  It’s what a 2009 Emera deal was all about. Heck, it’s what the provincial Conservatives have been all about since 2003.

No wonder they dropped it out there a couple of days before Christmas.

- srbp -

All I want for Christmas is a paradigm shift #nlpoli

Here’s the difference between a province that is successfully tackling the challenge of labour shortages compared to one that is hopelessly adrift.

Saskatchewan is open to people from anywhere.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, meanwhile, the emphasis in every discussion seems to be on keeping local people in or figuring out – as with apprentices – in how to lure them back. 

Check that article from the Telegram – first in a series – and notice how fast they turn to talking about a labour shortage. That’s really code for “there won’t be enough of ‘us’ to get the work.”  Part of that sentiment goes unspoken, namely that letting more of “them” in would be, at worse, undesirable socially and culturally or at best an admission of some sort of ethnic failure.

In Saskatchewan, they don’t spend any time fretting that all this prosperity will mean a loss of the old.  They don’t seem to be quite so bothered dividing the world up into “we”s and “they”s.

All we need in Newfoundland and Labrador this Christmas is a massive shift in headspace for some people.

- srbp -

Unsound financial management – the Dunderdale acknowledgement #nlpoli

It’s not hard to find the toad of truth in the swamp otherwise known as the ruling Conservatives’ record on public spending since they took office in 2003.

You can find it because since 2009 they like to admit every now and then that their spending habits are “unsustainable."

As nottawa reminds everyone, Premier Kathy Dunderdale has now acknowledged that:

“[o]ur spending at the rate that we've been doing over the last eight years — and it has been very necessary for a number of very good reasons to do that — is not sustainable in the long run.” [CBC online story]

But when Mark claims that “[u]p to now, Tories (and others) have disagreed with that assessment” he is not exactly right.

In 2009, Paul Oram was the first Tory cabinet minister to acknowledge publicly that “unsustainable” thing.

As your humble e-scribbler noted at the time, those words must have received the blessing of the Premier’s Office since cabinet ministers under Danny Williams couldn’t break wind without permission from Hisself’s posse.

Fnance minister Tom Marshall.chimed in with an unsustainability admission.*

And then they just kept up the same old habits.

It’s not surprising therefore that the public sector unions just won’t react to Kathy Dunderdale’s comments that the unions must not expect big wage increases in the upcoming round of negotiations.  Local CBC has been pounding away for a couple of days trying to make a story out of this but so far they’ve come up with zip.

The unions know the sad Tory record of saying one thing and doing another.  They also know that the Tories are still in a pre-leadership phase.  Danny’s gone.  Kathy’s a fill-in. 

If they thought about it for a moment, they’d also know that the local economic boom the Tories like to praise themselves for is actually a function of public sector spending.

That’s right.

It isn’t oil.

It’s a massive increase in the number of public servants since 2003,  fantastic wage increases, and unprecedented increases in  public spending. Roads and buildings are just part of it.

That unsustainable public spending is what has been sustaining the provincial economy. Under the Tories, the provincial economy is considerably more fragile than it’s ever been before. 

Any effort by the Tories to get their spending under control – to get it to sustainable levels - will put a chill through the place.  That will inevitably lead to a chill in the local economy.  The chill won’t just hit St. John’s where most of the public servants and the construction industry lives.  The chill will be felt everywhere and that will put a chill on the Tories’ political standing.

All that is the answer to Doug Letto’s questions in his essay on the “massive obstacles” Kathy Dunderdale is facing:

Can she and the government say no? Consistently?

No.

And no.

And everyone knows it, including Kathy.

Muskrat Falls, incidentally, is nothing more than the best example of a party addicted to unsustainable public spending.  The project will increase the public debt to new record levels but that is irrelevant to the province’s Tories.  They want all those jobs to keep the economy humming.

You can easily find the toad of fiscal truth in the swamp of Tory financial mismanagement since 2003. The truth is – as Kathy admitted herself – their spending is unsustainable.

The part Kathy didn’t say is that she won’t be able to do anything but keep it up.

- srbp -

* Changed wording to clear up sentence meaning in the context of the post.  Original post had wording left over from earlier draft.

Muskrat Falls PIFO #nlpoli

Q:  When is an independent review not independent?

A:  When the project proponents control the timetable for completing the report.

Or, as voice of the cabinet minister reports:

The provincial government will not be granting the PUB another extension for its review of the Muskrat Falls project. Last week, Natural Resources Minister Jerome Kennedy moved the deadline from December 31st to March 31st. But Kennedy says he is not even considering the second request by the PUB to extend the deadline to June 30th. He says the report needs to be completed so it can be debated in the House of Assembly.

- srbp -

PIFO = Penetrating Insight into the Fracking Obvious

Penashue - the third smack #nlpoli

Turns out that his campaign spending was the third smack troubled Tory cabinet Minister Peter Penashue took.

First, there was the story that Penashue porked out his campaign manager with an appointment to the offshore regulatory board, something for which his campaign manager was spectacularly unqualified for.

Then there was the story that Penashue had personally called federal employees in his riding to assure them their jobs were safe from cuts or relocations.

Now it turns out that, during the federal election,  Penashue was the top spender in the province.  He shelled out $115,000 compared to only $37,000 spent by his main opponent, Liberal Todd Russell.

Why is this a smack, you ask?

Well, for starters, Penashue is likely to be a source of continuing political controversy, nay even scandal.  He won the seat by only 79 votes despite spending $60,000 on advertising alone.  That means Penashue is a lot less secure in the seat than he might otherwise seem.  People who are insecure tend to do things like his first two smacks that will leave him open to further political scandal. The more he tries to shore himself up, the more likely he is to shag up.

And then there’s the question people will be wondering about, given the way politics tends to go in the Big Land.  People will wonder how you spend $60,000 on advertising in Labrador.  And for the rest of the cash, people will wonder what else Peter spent his cash on given the way politics goes in the Big Land. 

Three stories in such a short space of time?

Count on more.

- srbp -

Memorable Christopher Hitchens (II) #nlpoli

“The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.”

- srbp -

Nalcor and the Muskrat alternatives #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Nalcor’s capital works submission to the public utilities board for 2012 included a last-minute addition of an upgrade to the power lines that connect the Avalon peninsula to the rest of the island. The submission is dated September 22.

That’s really important because the Bay d’Espoir/Exploits generating complex has a large surplus of electricity.  Nalcor can’t get that electricity to where it’s needed because the existing lines across the Isthmus of Avalon are at capacity.

The problem is actually a bit more complex than that.  As Nalcor’s supplementary capital works submission puts it:

The heavy loading on the eastern portion of the system is coupled with the incentive to provide least‐cost power to customers by minimizing Holyrood production and maximizing production from hydroelectric resources located in Bay d’Espoir and west. Constant monitoring of the load on the eastern portion of the system is therefore required. Thermal load limits on the lines must be strictly enforced to avoid unacceptable line sag and/or potential conductor damage. Further loading pressures will be placed upon the Bay d’Espoir East system with the addition of the Vale processing plant at Long Harbour and has already occurred due to the loss of load and net hydroelectric generation increase attributed to the closure of the Abitibi Bowater paper mill in Grand Falls-Windsor. (pp. 1-2)

On top of that consider that the existing power lines are all part of the major island electrification projects completed between 1965 and 1968.

The estimated total cost of the new line would be $209 million.  The PUB submission anticipates work starting in 2012 with completion in 2017.

As it turned out, Nalcor and the PUB have deferred consideration of the new transmission line.  Both the Board and Nalcor are involved in extensive regulatory reviews, including Muskrat Falls.  And, as a December 6 Nalcor letter to PUB lawyer Maureen Greene notes, it “is our understanding that the Muskrat Falls Review is of high priority to government.”

There are a few things to note about this:

• Shifting priorities:  When discussion of this line came up a couple of years ago in questioning in a House of Assembly committee, Nalcor officials told the committee that it wasn’t thinking about upgrading the line because the Muskrat Falls project would take care of it.  Evidently something has changed.  That’s most likely…
• Muskrat Falls delays:  The public utilities board hearings are taking way longer than Nalcor expected.  Even if they finish by the end of the current fiscal year (March 31, 2012), anything beyond a complete blessing will cause further political problems for a project that can’t afford any more political problems. Or, it could be …
• Muskrat Falls will die:  Nalcor could also be hedging its bets against the project being canned altogether.  The capital works supplement includes this line in the rationale:  “Given that the Lower Churchill Project has yet to receive final project sanction…”.  Nalcor is apparently no longer willing to defer discussion of the line as they were a year or so ago.
• Muskrat Falls is a political project:  Since it started, the Lower Churchill has been driven by political demands to meet political needs. Nalcor’s reference in its correspondence to government priorities pretty much confirms that point for anyone who still believes Muskrat Falls is about delivering consumers the power they need at the lowest price.

As for the overall question of priorities, the PUB took pains in its letter acknowledging deferment of the new line that the project will require significant attention including a possible hearing.  The line is the most expensive single project Nalcor has brought forward since the company came fully under the PUB’s regulatory authority in 1996. The PUB letter states that – under the circumstances – the board couldn’t guarantee approval in 2012.

You might interpret that as a simple statement of fact.  But you might also read it as a reminder to Nalcor that if it needs to get this project done, the company might need to sort through its priorities again.

Don’t be surprised if Nalcor does just that early in the New Year.

- srbp -

Memorable Christopher Hitchens #nlpoli

“To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”

That line – from God is not great – would apply equally to politics in Newfoundland and Labrador since 2003.

- srbp -

Party Political Finance: much more to read #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The Telegram took a very light look on Saturday at the most recent figures on political contributions released by the provincial elections office a couple of months ago.

For some reason, the Telly singled out Aliant for its record of donations even though the telecommunications company is by no means the big story in the 2010 figures or indeed of the recent public record of party donations.

If you want a more detailed analysis, then check these posts from SRBP and labradore:

• labradore:  “A tale of two cities”.  Compares St. John’s and Halifax and patterns of political donations. (16 October 2011)
• labradore:  “The tradition continues”  (08 October 2011) The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Association likes to give money to the province’s Tories.
• labradore:  “A donation has been made on your behalf”.  Municipalities in the province make political donations to the governing Conservatives and the municipal politicians behind the use of public funds don’t seem troubled at the idea. (15 September 2011)
• labradore:  “The amazing, atrophying democracy (II)” 
• labradore:  “The amazing atrophying democracy” A district by district assessment of donation patterns, especially the districts where no one gave money at all. (07 September 2011)
• SRBP:  “The joy of political giving:  look for the union label” (07 September 2011)  Forget Aliant.  The single largest donation in 2010 was the 20K a Toronto-based union gave to the provincial New Democrats.
• SRBP:   “The joy of political giving:  if you want to build it, they will give”  (07 September 2011)  The province’s construction industry had a very interesting pattern of political donations.
• SRBP:  “The joy of political giving:  punch in the bake edition”  Contributions to the governing Tory party included the company that produces Republic of Doyle, and which gets quite a hefty financial contribution itself from the provincial government to help make the series.

- srbp -

The Hitchens Method #nlpoli #cdnpoli

There are plenty of people out there who pat themselves on the back for telling it like it is, for calling it as they see it.

You know they do it because they relentlessly point it out to you.

They are brave.

They are fearless in delivering their opinions.

They cannot stop telling you that.

You all know them.

Closer examination invariably reveals they are full of shite.

Not so Christopher Hitchens, as Paul Wells makes plain in his obituary for a man so wonderfully described during his lifetime as a public intellectual:

His method was simple:

1. Read everything.

2. Draw your own conclusions.

…

Expanding the range of his inquiry, digging deeper, engaging with the minds he admired most. Hitchens spent much of his life offering everyone his answers on any subject, but they would not have mattered so much if he had not also been such a ravenous asker of questions.

And the world would have been so much duller a place if Hitchens had not told us what he found out in so eloquent a way.

- srbp -

Dunderdale leads from the rear #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale wants everyone in the province to get involved in the fishery debate.  Doesn’t matter who you are.  Doesn’t matter what you want.  Get in and have your say on the future of the resource we all own.

CBC’s Azzo Rezzori says Kathy is staying out of the way. [Story starts at about 9:00 of this video link]

Others would call it what it is:  chickenshit.

In a scrum with reporters on Friday, Dunderdale rattled off all the penetrating insights into the obvious one can find about the fishing industry in the province.  The Telegram’s James McLeod has a neat account of it for those who want to catch up.

Yes, Kathy, we all know the problems.  And yes, we know the solutions because, yes, they’ve been talked about, discussed, debated and ignored for decades.

Yes, Kathy, we know people are using the fishery to their own ends.  Yes, we know lots of people are being manipulated.

What Dunderdale conveniently omits is that the provincial government has a role to play.  After all, the law in this province gives the provincial government considerable power to manipulate the fishery and the people who depend on it for their living.

What Dunderdale conveniently forgets is that successive administrations haven’t been shy about doing just that.  The one Kathy has been involved with since 2003 has been one of the most interfering and manipulative administrations in a long list of them.

What Kathy deliberately omits to mention is the process – the MOU – that the Tory administration started and then rejected because they were afraid of the political consequences. 

The costs don’t frighten them.  That was just a bullshit excuse the fisheries  minister used.  Kathy has more money sitting in the bank  - doing nothing  - than some of her predecessors got in total from their own means to pay for everything the government does.

Billions of dollars.

So when Kathy Dunderdale clucks about the tragedy of manipulating people and the tired attitudes about the need for everyone people to come together to find a solution, she is being worse than the worst kind of manipulative character she laments.

Kathy has the power to change things.

Kathy has the power to set things right.

Kathy refuses to get involved.

That’s not just chickenshit.

That’s immoral.

- srbp -