How much is that Muskrat in the window? #nlpoli

So without much effort, the cost of Muskrat Falls, also known as the island infeed project, has gone from $6.2 billion to $8.9 billion.

That’s without factoring in labour costs.

Alberta is already starting to see skyrocketing costs and worker shortages:

Two years ago, the Alberta government forecast a shortage of 77,000 workers over the coming decade. Since then, that estimate has grown by nearly 50 per cent, to about 114,000 workers.

The Petroleum Human Resources Council says nearly 40,000 new workers will be needed in the energy sector by 2020 just to replace those who retire, plus 90,000 additional oilpatch workers.

No one has given any idea of what labour shortages are going to do to the Muskrat’s costs.

The only thing you can be sure of is that whatever estimates they’ve got now won’t come close to the real cost, if they go ahead with it in the likely labour climate.

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They who lived by the bullshit… #nlpoli

Regular readers of these e-scribbles will know that the quarterly Corporate Research Associates poll is cause for nothing if not a fair bit of derision.

They aren’t polls anyone should use to judge anything serious.  They are just a marketing device for CRA.

Nonetheless and despite seven years of solid evidence they are crap, the local media eat them up.  The local pols put great stock in them too.

Anyway, those who lived by the bullshit are now getting sliced up by it.  CBC, in particular, is pushing hard at the idea that Kathy Dunderdale’s numbers have taken some sort of meaningful drop in the most recent CRA marketing exercise.

“Premier’s popularity drops” says the headline. Down 16 percentage points since this time last year.  Sounds bad, except that the CRA poll numbers went from 64% in February 2011 to 51% three months later.  Since then, Dunderdale’s popularity numbers have basically hovered around there ever since.

So what’s the big deal?

There isn’t one.

Just like there hasn’t been a really big deal about these things for a long while.

But if you do want to notice something interesting, follow the link that CBC’s David Cochrane tweeted and look at the CRA poll from June 2004.  Danny Williams’ popularity was at 39%, just five points above Roger Grimes.

That’s when the last round of public sector restraint and “program review” came to a quiet end without any results. Danny, Kathy and the rest of cabinet ran from sound fiscal management like scalded cats. They started a spending spree that created the fiscal mess the current Premier likes to talk about but without any sign she actually will do anything about it.

And, dear readers, if Danny Williams didn’t have the balls to be fiscally responsible because it made him unpopular, you can understand why Kathy Dunderdale isn’t planning to change the government’s unsustainable spending either.

She will just talk about it.

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Shooting fish in a barrel #nlpoli

Okay.

So with the Premier babbling about cuts or not cuts, you could guess where the opposition parties would go during their second Question Period.

Yeah, well guess again.

Because something so obvious as a Premier who has no idea what she is talking about would seem like such an obvious, easy target that the opposition decided to go one better and show how clued out they are instead.

Liberal opposition leader Dwight Ball led off with a question about Muskrat Falls.

I would be remiss if I did not ask the Premier to allow a full debate and a free vote in this House.

If  - by some miracle – the Liberals actually had a policy on the scheme in the first place, having a debate and free vote on it might possibly make sense.

But since ball and his crowd don’t know whether they are punched or bored, further exposing their weakness with a debate is just plain dumb.

To make matters worse, his question is lamely worded.  it lacks forcefulness.  He should have just begged her pretty please with sugar on top and called her “Mommy” for good measure.

Remember that thing about demonstrating to the public that the opposition could be entrusted with government.  yeah, well Ball’s question raised doubts about his ability to be leader of the official opposition.

So Kathy gave him the wish to go down in history. There’ll be lots of time to debate, sez the Prem.

No kidding about the history thing. That’s what he said:

I think it would be nice for all of us to know where each and every one of us stood in history.

Then Ball switched to a lame question on natural gas that natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy knocked out of the park with ease.  to complete his self-immolation, Ball asked about pricing for electricity.

At no point did Ball give any indication he had a clue about the project at all.

But the Liberals weren’t done with that embarrassing opening.

Just to complete the show, they turned it over to Yvonne Jones.  Now just to give you context, Jones is campaigning hard to be the next federal member for Labrador.  All Yvonne sees is Labrador.  If it isn’t about Labrador she doesn’t give a crap about it.

So Jones wanted to know why the surplus power from Muskrat falls wouldn’t be available for projects in Labrador.

Of course it would, sez Kennedy.  And he’s right.  The Tories have said from the beginning that they wouldn’t be using 40% of the power.

Had Jones taken her head out of whatever bodily orifice she’s been storing it in, she’d also know that Muskrat Falls power is too expensive to sell anywhere else. This has been obvious for a year or more.  She’d also know that there are serious questions about whether the dam would be able to supply its minimum in the middle of winter, let alone have any to feed to industrial projects in Labrador.

Rather than try running on some of the numerous, well known weaknesses of the project, Jones decided to invent some slight against Labrador so she can fool someone into believing she is fighting for them.

Kennedy had no trouble telling her that when those projects came along he’d be happy to sell them the extra electricity from the wonderful, glorious project at Muskrat Falls.

Then  Randy Edmunds got up and tossed a set up question to Kathy Dunderdale about search and rescue and Burton Winters’ tragic death and the evil federal government that was somehow responsible for it. Having already successfully taken control of that issue, Dunderdale was suitable sad and pledged to do everything she could to make things right.

Edmunds then switched to the bullshit issue of all bullshit issues – Merv Wiseman’s workplace – and again Dunderdale put on her indignant crusader hat.  Which team is randy playing for again?  Not once but twice, he set Dunderdale up better than a Tory backbencher sucking for a promotion.

Andrew Parsons did ask a decent set of questions about skin surgery and got equally decent answers.

That was the semi-sensible interlude.

Jim Bennett then asked about a sooper sekrit agreement about the Marystown fish plant that supposedly involves the province, OCI and a company that no longer exists.

Fish minister Darin King talked about something else.

There endeth the Liberals.

Not to be outdone, NDP leader Lorraine Michael  decided to join in the fun.  To her credit, she did ask about Dunderdale’s budget comments.

But rather than point out the obvious confusion they Premier has, Michael asked a question fed to her by people who haven’t been paying attention:

What are government’s intentions with regard to potential loss of positions in the public service sector?

Dunderdale already said there won’t be layoffs and if any jobs do go it would only be through attrition.

Dunderdale didn’t waste time.  She just recited the basic ideas was a review of things to make sure it all worked properly.  Proper, responsible and all sorts of other good things,m Dunderdale said, even though she was in cabinet the whole while things got into a mess.

Michael went back to the same question again.

So Dunderdale noted that the NDP had talked about a one percent cut in their platform.  Dunderdale’s cut is only about the same amount and – in case you forgot – won’t involve any job losses.

having successfully set herself on fire with that one, Michael decided to go down the same blind alley the Liberals did.  She wanted to know about electricity prices and Muskrat Falls.  Jerome Kennedy recited the same, tired  - and inaccurate - numbers he’s used all along. 

The key thing for the government though, is that they twice got to allay public concerns about the costs of Muskrat Falls courtesy if incompetent questions from the opposition parties.

Noob NDP backbencher Geri Rogers then asked about housing.

Good topic.

She could have hammered away at the housing crisis in western Labrador caused as much by government incompetence at the provincial and municipal level as anything else.

That would make too much sense.

So Geri asked:

Mr. Speaker, when will this government create a housing division within government to deal with the critical need for affordable housing for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador as other provinces have done for their people?

That would be Newfoundland and Labrador Housing, an agency Rogers seems to have never heard about.

The minister responsible for that agency muffed the answer by talking about how much government had spent on housing.

Then Rogers recited all the initiatives from the housing corporation herself.  Had she not read her first question?  Or her follow on before she asked the first one?

The minister went back to the stats again, so Rogers countered with a question to the Premier.  Rogers wanted the Premier to organize a standing committee of the legislature to study housing.

And once the minister smacked that one out the window,  time expired.

On Day Two of the legislature, both opposition parties displayed a consistent and stunning display of the most fundamental incompetence anyone could imagine.

And for the government, as troubled as they are, Question Period was like shooting fish in a barrel.

It’s easy when the fish jump up and wrap their maws around the muzzle like that.

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Studies on mortality questioned #nlpoli

Studies that claim exercise reduces the risk of mortality can’t be true since the risk of mortality is absolute.

You can delay death, but it, like taxes and a Ryan Cleary climb-down, is inevitable.

You can read more on the original commentary on mortality research – with more links - in  The Monkey Cage.

No folks, Ryan Cleary’s penchant for stuffing his foot down his throat is not an international phenomenon yet. That was just a local colour addition by your humble e-scribbler.

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Checking Jerome’s Numbers #nlpoli

In the House of Assembly on Tuesday, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy said:

The Muskrat Falls Generating Station will cost $2.9 billion and the Labrador-Island Link will cost $2.1 billion. That is $5 billion, Mr. Speaker. Into that, there is built in 15 per cent contingency and escalation costs.

Before you go any further, understand that those numbers are not correct at all.

Jerome admitted that in the very next sentence when he said:

What we are doing, Mr. Speaker, in terms of the overruns and the final numbers, we will have them from Nalcor shortly.

And even that is not strictly true.  No one will have the “final” Muskrat falls numbers until the project is done and all the receipts are in.  What the minister was talking about is merely the latest estimated final numbers.

We won’t even chuckle at the idea inherent in Jerome’s first comments that the actual cost of the dam and line to the island could be less than $5.0 billion because it supposedly includes a mere 15% cost over-run contingency.

Let’s take the total for the dam and the line as $5.0 billion and say right away that they are wrong.

And we know the numbers are wrong  - i.e. out of date - because the minister said so.

We also know the numbers are wrong because Manitoba Hydro International did a recalculation. They put the cost for the dam and the line and all the other associated bits at $6.6 billion using both Nalcor’s method of calculating the costs and the one used by MHI.  This cost includes the extra thermal generation that the Muskrat Falls project includes, as well as fuel costs (oil) for all that thermal generation.

So right off the bat we have taken that $5.0 billion and added to it another $1.6 billion.

Jerome’s comments came in response to a question from Liberal leader Dwight Ball about interest costs.  According to Ball, Nalcor added those costs in response to a question that was part of the public utilities board process.

The interest costs were $1.1 billion.

Add that on and you have $7.7 billion.

Now you can add the line to Nova Scotia for a total of $8.9 billion.

Just so that you can follow the numbers for Muskrat Falls (Island Infeed), here they are in a table:

	Original Estimate	Updated	Comments
Dam and infeed	$5.0 billion	$ 6.6 billion	Updated uses MHI’s cumulative present worth analysis
Thermal and Fuel	Not included	Included above
Nova Scotia	$1.2 billion	$1.2 billion	Untested original estimate
Interest costs	Not included	$1.1 billion	From PUB-Nalcor
Total	$6.2 billion	$8.9 billion

 

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Dundernomics 101: The Cleary Factor #nlpoli

The gang at CBC shouldn’t feel sheepish.

They might have been the ones who pushed it most aggressively but  they weren’t the only news outlet that started talking up budget cuts and restraint based on what Premier Kathy Dunderdale told them.

Here’s part of what the Premier said to CBC’s Debbie Cooper:

“We're looking at a three-per-cent reduction right across government,…”

The Telly picked up a similar idea:

“It’s time to rein in our spending on infrastructure particularly,”

The Premier even repeated the same basic comments in the House on Tuesday afternoon before she scrummed with news media:

We have asked all our departments to look for at least 3 per cent in reductions, and yes, there are exemptions

All CBC did was take the Premier at her word, just like they recently took the word of a federal member of parliament about his view of his own pension.

They also – quite logically – concluded that the Premier was looking at cuts of more than $200 million. That would be three percent of the $7.5 billion or so in last year’s provincial budget.

Turns out when it comes to what they say, Ryan Cleary and Kathy Dunderdale are the same person.

On Tuesday, Kathy Dunderdale said the amount to be cut would be less than $100 million and that most of the big areas of government spending – health care and education, justice, and social assistance – were all “ring-fenced” and so they’d be immune from any cuts.

Now on a budget of $7.5 or $8.0 billion,  you can get $100 million in “savings” just by how you round your numbers.  That’s because you are looking at something like a cut of one to one and a half percent. 

Not three percent.

But half that or maybe less again

And just to make sure you can’t miss the point, note that Dunderdale herself flippantly dismissed the amount to be saved.  On Tuesday, she told reporters that maybe officials might go to six conferences instead of 10.

You just can’t reconcile what Kathy Dunderdale told Debbie Cooper and what Dunderdale said 24 hours later unless you come to one conclusion: Dunderdale simply didn’t know what she was talking about on Monday.

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He said. She said. “Expenditure review” edition #nlpoli

Starve reporters for real news and you can apparently make them believe anything.

That seems to be the case with the idea that Kathy Dunderdale’s Tories plan to actually cut public spending in the province in the coming fiscal year.

Unprecedented surpluses sitting in the bank. 

Forecasts for continued high revenues.

And now we are supposed to believe that the same people who could not control their own spending addiction, the same gang that created the current financial mess in the provincial government are now going to cut spending.

Right.

Here’s what Monday’s throne speech said:

Each department will undertake a structured review of departmental functions to identify opportunities to do things better. These reviews will be complemented by cross-departmental studies and ongoing reviews of the province’s Regional Health Authorities. The objective is to ensure all the Government’s personnel and resources are focused first and foremost on delivering high-priority services and achieving high-priority goals. This process will identify not only the current best practices for service delivery but also innovative approaches to deliver services more effectively.

“Review”.

“Focused”.

“More effectively”.

And if you don’t see those as being vague words, try this:

The objective is to ensure all the Government’s personnel and resources are focused first and foremost on delivering high-priority services and achieving high-priority goals.

One of the hallmarks of effective communication is saying what you want to say in clear language:  “we will walk five feet and then sit down.”

So read those Dunderwords and then compare it to these words from another Premier’s speech and see which one you would believe:

One of my first decisions was to reduce the size of cabinet by more than twenty five per cent. What’s more, in time we will attempt to reduce the number of seats in the House of Assembly to better reflect a province the size of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Many perks have been either reduced or eliminated, starting with the Premier’s office where the two government owned vehicles previously assigned to the Premier have been eliminated. We have significantly curtailed discretionary expenditures and non-essential out of province travel for elected members and senior officials.

We also cut 44 political positions that existed under the previous administration and converted many other positions from political appointments to public service appointments.

These staffing decisions have saved taxpayers more than one and a half million dollars. We believe that a strengthened public service will ensure that individuals are being hired on their merits as opposed to who they know in government.

In addition to the decisions we have already taken, all departments have been asked to bring forward expenditure reduction proposals which can be implemented in the short term to make an early start towards our new fiscal goals. I can assure you that everything is under review, from cell phones to government vehicles.

As well, we have deferred all non-essential capital expenditure items.

Short term spending reductions, however, will not be sufficient to address the size of the deficit problem. On a go-forward basis, we will implement our election blueprint commitment to review every government program and eliminate any that are considered ineffective and inefficient. This commitment will be delivered through a comprehensive program review exercise.

We will use criteria to evaluate programs, similar to those now being employed by the federal government as they attempt to free up funds for their priority programs. These criteria will include the public interest, efficiency, affordability, value for money, and the role of government. The review will also look at overhead and capital costs in government.

This comprehensive review will use the expertise of the civil service, and we will also use external resources to consider the systems and structural issues from a purely independent perspective. We must ensure that the changes we make to government are the best and most efficient changes possible. The results of this review will be forwarded to cabinet for action.

No shortage of “do” words” there, words with plain meanings:

• cut
• reduce
• eliminate

That was Danny Williams in January 2004.

The cuts, such as they were, lasted until the first polls showed his crew were very unpopular.

Just like Brian Tobin in 1996, curiously enough.

Program review lasted until the polls started dropping.

By the end of 2006, Williams’ conservative finance minister was gone, replaced by a fellow who never met a buck he wouldn’t spend especially if it belonged to the public.

Then the spending spree started for real.

And that program review?

It quietly vanished never to be heard from again.

Rather than cuts to the public sector, the province witnessed unprecedented growth and unprecedented rates of growth in public spending, across the board everywhere. 

And rather than cut jobs, the current Tories are the government that brought you the world in which 25% of the labour force draws a public paycheque.

So if Danny Williams couldn’t cut anything even after saying it in plain language, what makes anyone think that Kathy Dunderdale and the rest of her crew are even saying “cuts” let alone thinking about doing them?

Give your head a shake if you do.

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New partners and new supplicants #nlpoli

After the throne speech, the leaders of the opposition parties get to have their say in the legislature.

Just as the throne speech sets the government’s agenda, so too can the replies set the agenda for the opposition parties. They could be committed to biting at the government’s heels and demonstrating, as one former opposition leader put it, that the public could toss out the incumbents and trust the Opposition with the government at the next election.

Liberal leader Dwight Ball, the official opposition leader, offered a few “thoughts as we collectively work together to secure a brighter future.”

The rest of his speech covered health spending,  search and rescue and a handful of other topics all of which fit with the government’s agenda very neatly.  Any differences – on things like the fishery, for example -  were more cosmetic than substantive.

So with Ball basically pledging to be a partner for the ruling Tories, what of the New Democrats and Lorraine Michael?

Well, Lorraine talked as though she didn’t have a caucus.  There were plenty of references to what Lorraine had said before.  There are a great many “I”s in the NDP team.

But most telling of all, was Lorraine’s reversion to her old approach, of the supplicant going to authority to beg favours:

What we are asking for, Mr. Speaker, is very, very basic.

What they are “asking” for.  Not what they are working for.  Not what they will push for and not what they will do when they form the government.

No, as they did during the election, the NDP want to ask for things from those in power.

So with the Tories pledging to stay the course,  they can count on a new partnership with the Liberals as the NDP come on bended knee to ask for something or other.

Anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador will have to look somewhere other than the House of Assembly if they want new ideas. 

As for those clamouring for democratic reform, they could put a dozen new committees in the House.  Since none of the elected members seem to have any idea what they should be doing with them, democratic reform will have to come from somewhere else as well.

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New Energy? Same Old Stuff #nlpoli

After more than a year in office and the better part of six months after the last election, the Dunderdale Tories delivered their second throne speech opening a new session of the province’s legislature.

For a bunch that are supposedly anxious to break with the past, they spent a lot of time talking about how much things haven’t changed.

Get beyond the very long-winded introductory material that took every back to the middle of the 19th century, you will find a paragraph that includes a series of sentences that all began with “This is the Government that…”.

At the end, they are talking about a set of routine changes to the public tender act and the access to information law.  The latter is now two years overdue, having started in March 2010.

The speech then made an interesting reference to how the current administration spends public money.  At least one reporter heralded this bit as proof the Dunderdale Tories are serious about fiscal restraint and getting spending under control.

Yeah, well, that isn’t what’s in the speech.

The speech talks about “a long-term, multi-year approach”.  Then it talks about how the government is “determined to achieve efficiencies” and  “to maximize the value of every public dollar spent”.

Not exactly anything concrete in that.

Then they repeat the commitment we’ve already heard:

Improving Newfoundland and Labrador’s debt position even more in the next 10 years to achieve the same per-capita debt as the Canadian average is a goal the province can reach through discipline in spending and the allocation of a significant portion of surpluses to debt reduction…

Sounds marvellous, doesn’t it?  No doubt someone could easily be fooled if they didn’t read the paragraph before that.  That’s where the government pledged they would stay the fiscal course:

to ensure we continue to live within our fiscal means.

Continue?  They haven’t been living within the public’s means as it is, so continuing would not be good at all.
And that debt thingy is a bit of old Tory verbal bullshit.  This is the government that like to claim they’ve reduced the public debt.  This is the government that included the claim about debt reduction in the throne speech:

Already, it has reduced the province’s burden of debt by more than a third from a high of $12 billion to an estimated $7.7 billion at March 31.

Problem is that the claim just isn’t true. 

It’s false.

A total crock of crap.

The gross public debt – the bit that determines the annual burden of servicing the debt – is more than $12 billion.  What the speech refers to is net debt, an accountant's calculation of assets and liabilities. 

This is the government that took every surplus and simply socked the money in the bank.
 
This is the government that put a tag on it to spend on the Muskrat Falls dam.

And that’s all they’ve done.

Take it altogether and you have words in the speech that might fool some people into believing it means spending control in the future.

But since this is the government that hasn’t been able to control its spending since at least 2005, this is the government that merely pledged to deliver more of the same.

Then they pledged to spend money on health care.  There’s a novel idea.

Then there’s a mention of a three year old change to child protection laws that is only just now finishing up.
Then there’s a reference to more of the same education and employment subsidy programs that have been in place for years as well as more spending on K-12 education.

When you get beyond that bit, the speech mentions a new poverty reduction strategy, as if the current one is finished.

There’s a reference to economic diversification but no sense of what the current administration understands that to mean actual changes to current policy.  On the contrary,  while so many parts of the province have grown more dependent on government spending, the throne speech uses exactly that – the references to Grand Falls-Windsor and Stephenville - as examples of how the government intends to move in the future.

And after all that there’s the obligatory recital of the Muskrat Falls project.

Nowhere in the throne speech is there a single significant new idea of any kind.

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…fairness and balance for all the people of our province… #nlpoli

Excerpts from remarks by Clyde Wells, Leader of the Opposition, in the House of Assembly, in reply to the Speech from the Throne, March 10, 1988:

…We will vigorously oppose that which should be opposed.  We will criticize that which should be criticized.  We will examine and question everything.  It is our duty and our function.

Finally, we will approve the worthy and the proper.

Above all, we will discharge that great responsibility that all oppositions in the British parliamentary system have:  to make sure that government fully and completely accounts to the electorate for the expenditure of taxpayers’ funds, for the use of taxation authority, and for the management of the public affairs of this province, and we will not waver in our duty to ensure that they fully discharge the total responsibility with which they have been entrusted when they were given the awesome powers of being a government.

They are awesome powers but they are not theirs.  They are only holding them in trust for due exercise for the benefit of the people of this province and we will not waver in discharging our responsibility to make sure that the government does just that.

In doing so…we will act honourably.  We will neither unduly impede nor will we unduly facilitate, which, from an Opposition point of view, is worse than unduly impeding, … [If] you  unduly facilitate and you fail to fully and properly discharge your responsibility to be fully critical of the government and examine in detail what they are doing, you allow the government to do anything it wishes, the government deteriorates in quality …We will do so with respect for the function and responsibility of the government, we will acknowledge their good intentions, but we will expect similar acknowledgement and respect from government in return.

…the ultimate purpose of Opposition actions ought not to be to get them on the government side of the House.  As well as achieving that, our purpose is to ensure the betterment of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, to bring about a situation where the able are working productively and the unable are cared for and are included in the activities of the life of this province, where the old can feel secure and comfortable and the young are preparing for and are optimistic and have a reason to be optimistic about their future, where everybody is participating, where everybody has equal opportunity.

We will be taking steps to ensure that there is fairness and balance, always fairness and balance for all people of this province in all governmental actions and in all governmental expenditures wherever they live, without regard to the political stripe of their MHA…

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Sound Advice #nlpoli

Some people don’t like John Furlong’s ideas.

Here’s his latest one – on the fishery, again – but it is equally applicable to just about everything in the province these days:

Let's talk about every single issue that needs to be talked about and let's stop living in the problem and start living in the solution.

Sensible, rational ideas.

But just watch how fast people start screaming that Furlong should be strung up.

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Can we believe anything he says? #nlpoli

Climb-down Cleary is at it again.

Not surprisingly, Noob Bloc NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary is furiously sucking back his latest effort to tell it like it is.

First, it was seals.

Take a position in 2008.

Repeat the position.

Then abandon it.

Now, it’s pensions.

Apparently, he really doesn’t think his pension should be larger, as he said, plain as day on Friday.

"Would I deserve a pension of $28,000 after six years? Probably not … It should be more than that," the St. John’s South-Mount Pearl MP.

You can hear the whole interview from CBC in their first story on Cleary’s latest cockup.  [Audio file]

A couple of days later and Ryan is claiming his opinion on Friday was not his opinion at all.

His opinion is now something completely different:

MPs deserve fair compensation, but should we qualify for a pension after just 6 years in office?

In my opinion, the answer is no.

And we can all rest easy because, for Cleary,

My focus is not on my pension, but on everyone else’s.

Now there’s something you can find comfort in. After all, it’s not like Ryan doesn’t have a distressing habit of saying one thing one minute and then something entirely different a minute later.

Your humble e-scribbler was dead wrong when this guy won his seat.  Ryan Cleary the politician is an accident that couldn’t wait to happen, over and over and over again.

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Our plastic history, utter contempt version #nlpoli

On Friday, the Telegram’s Brian Jones takes issue with fisheries minister Darin King:

Fisheries Minister Darin King’s tantrum this week against the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ (FFAW) union is the latest example of this government’s extremely bad behaviour.

Jones warns of the dangers of contradicting the current administration:

These days, suggesting differently will entail not only a public lashing by the minister in charge, but a pulling of government funding.

What’s particularly fascinating is that Jones’ column treats King’s comments and the implications of them as if they had not been the way the Conservatives have ruled the province since 2003.

All that has happened is that Williams’ pigheadedness (and that isn’t entirely a criticism) and short temper has been replaced with an utter and thorough contempt.

Yes, Brian, Danny never continually displayed utter and thorough contempt for anyone  who disagreed with him, for the provincial legislature, for free speech, openness, transparency and accountability, other people’s accomplishments, the facts…you get the idea.

Darin is punitive, vindictive, callously petty, or authoritarian according to Jones.

Danny was just pigheaded.

Potato, potato..

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$#*! politicians say, pensions edition #nlpoli #cdnpoli

If you could get Noob Bloc-NDP member of parliament Ryan Cleary for what he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth, you could wipe out the Greek national debt instantly.

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Electricity prices round-up #nlpoli

In Quebec, Arcelor Mittal mines is looking to hang onto its industrial discount electricity rate of 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour even though the company didn’t delivered on its commitment to build a second pellet plant in the province.

The Parti Quebecois wants to make sure that the company processes as much of the ore it mines in Quebec rather than take it out of the province with a minimum of processing.

For those who may have missed it, this is where Churchill Falls electricity goes:  discount electricity inside Quebec for residential and industrial consumers.

Ontario Power Generation will spend $600 million to have a consortium including SNC Lavalin refurbish Ontario’s nuclear generating stations.

In addition, the province has more than 2,000 MW of electricity from wind power either in production or in development.

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Countering Nalcor Negativity #nlpoli

In a speech to the St. John’s board of trade this week, Nalcor chief executive Ed Martin dissed natural gas as a possible alternative to his expensive Muskrat Falls scheme.

According to the Telegram’s Wednesday edition – not online  - Martin told the business audience that a 2001 study said there wasn’t enough demand on the island to justify a pipeline.

Sort of. 

The 2001 study was premised on gas as a commercial development.  As such, the study anticipated that any development would be by one of the existing oil companies.  

They never considered that the provincial government would have cash enough to build a plant on its own, obtain the gas to develop it and charge the domestic market for whatever gas they used.

That’s basically what Nalcor is doing with Muskrat Falls.  At a cost of 21 cents per kilowatt hour, Muskrat Falls isn’t economically feasible.  The local market simply couldn’t take a new source of electricity that had a wholesale cost for electricity twice the existing retail cost of electricity in the market. The only way they can make Muskrat Falls work at all is through a complex series of deals and arrangements among interrelated companies that are all part of Nalcor and the provincial government.

So if Ed Martin wanted to be straight with his audience, he would have to compare apples to apples.  And on that basis, natural gas is a lot cheaper than Muskrat Falls.

Plus, if Martin had wanted to give a full explanation using past studies, he’d have noted a 2005 study that put a price tag on development.  Take the two together and you get a different picture from the one Martin  - selectively – painted.

Second, according to the Telly, Martin told the audience that the oil companies had first dibs on the gas and they were re-injecting it to help oil production.

Again, Martin knows that he only gave his audience a fraction of the full story.  White Rose has gas available today.  They aren’t using it all to produce oil.

But here’s the really important part:  it’s our gas.  The provincial government can claim any quantity of gas it wants for payment of royalty in-kind. 

Martin concluded, as the Telly reports, by insisting he and the gang at Nalcor weren’t dissing gas because they wanted to build a dam.  They were pushing the dam because it was the right decision.

Two things come readily to mind.  First of all, if that was so, Martin wouldn’t have to say it.  The fact he has to insist that Nalcor isn’t biased suggests that he and his company and the other Muskrat Falls proponents have an enormous credibility problem.

And, second of all, they have a credibility problem because none of the project’s proponents can present a simple, concise and truthful account of why Muskrat Falls is better than the alternatives.  Ed Martin’s presentation - with the same omissions and selective use of information we’ve seen from people like Wade Locke  - couldn’t have made that any plainer.

After all, Ed Martin’s lengthy speech about natural gas isn’t what his vice president told the joint environmental review panel.  As SRBP noted last year that “Nalcor dismissed natural gas as ‘purely hypothetical’ since the major oil companies have not identified a ‘viable business case’ (p. 20).  Nalcor hadn’t considered natural gas at all.

They didn’t study it.

All this other stuff that Martin told the board of trade about natural gas? Well Nalcor  started saying that only after people like your humble e-scribbler started pointing out that natural gas actually was viable and cheaper than the big dam in Labrador.

- srbp -

The Old Boys (and Girls) Club #nlpoli

The always provocative and informative labradore posted a chart on Wednesday showing the number of days the House of Assembly sat in each session since Confederation.

The information to make up the chart came from the legislative library,  the group of people who provide information and research for the members of the legislature.

That period marked by the black band is the period in which the House typically sat for the greatest number of days. It runs from 1972 to 1996.  For the 22 years before that and for the 16 years after that period, the legislature hasn’t sat more than 60 days a year.

There’s more.  Since 1996 or so, the House has also sat for fewer days per week when it is in session.  The members decided that they didn’t want to have a session on Friday mornings as the rules used to require.  They decided to cancel the Friday sitting and add an hour to three of the other four days.  Same number of hours, they explained, so there was no loss to the amount of time.

They just left out a couple of details.  One of the biggest ones is that they chopped off a Question Period on Friday morning.  That meant that the opposition parties had one fewer chance during the week to grill the government party.  It also meant that House lost a day on which to debate legislation.  While they theoretically had the same number of hours in total, the members actually cut off the amount of effective time they had for discussion.

They made a few other changes as well.  Once upon a time, not so very long ago, members of the legislature would ask for information from government departments.  They got them through something called Questions on the Order Paper.  Departments were obliged to deliver the information, free of charge, and without much – if any – deletions or omissions.

The idea behind that was that the members of the legislature had an inherent right to inquire into what the government was doing with public money and how they were doing it. The legislature is supposed to be about more than a place for rackets and speeches. It’s supposed to be a place where the members found out stuff.

After all, the legislature is not the government.  It is the place where the government goes to get permission to do things with the people’s money.  They get the permission from the men and women the people elected to keep an eye on things. That’s the idea at the heart of democracy based on popular sovereignty.  Power  - the right to make decisions - comes from the people.

In any event, all that’s as maybe.  In the late 1990s, the government and opposition cut a deal among themselves.  Instead of asking questions on the order paper, the opposition agreed to submit access to information requests, which they would pay for out of the money they got to run the House.  The government could then censor the documents as if the members of the House had no right to information other than what the ordinary punters could get.

Everyone had less work to do, the government could keep more information from the public and – don’t forget – they all agreed to give themselves extra cash to hand out in their districts as they saw fit and without receipt.

No one objected.

Not a one.

No one did anything to change any of it until 2006 and even then, the only reason they changed was because some of them got caught breaking the law.  Even then the only thing that changed out of the convenient deal was the slush fund.  All the other parts stayed in place. 

It’s that sort of general understanding among the political parties - the back-room agreements among da b’ys - that helped create the current state of the House of Assembly.

What will be interesting to see in the new session that starts on Monday is whether the sort of easy relationship among the members will carry on.

- srbp -

Hebron review complete #nlpoli

The review panel appointed by the offshore regulatory authority to review the Hebron development issued its report on Tuesday with a set of 64 recommendations attached.

Among them (bolding added):

• Helicopter safety should be the top priority of the C-NLOBP. Guided by the rulings of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Transport Canada, the Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Agency, the C-NLOPB Chief Safety Officer must ensure that the Category A helicopters operating in the NL offshore comply with existing and revised regulations.
• The derrick equipment set module should be constructed in the province. This is a $100 million project that can add considerably to the local benefits from the project. The government has agreed that the Proponent may build the utilities and process module (UPM), which constitutes two thirds of the topsides tonnage, outside the province. The Proponent should therefore make every effort to assure a facility is found to build the derrick equipment set locally and that local suppliers are trained and exposed to the UPM  requirements so that they have the skills for ongoing servicing and maintenance.
• The Benefits Plan for Hebron needs a specific schedule of types and numbers of skilled labour required for construction. The Hebron Diversity Plan needs to set more aggressive targets over and above existing percentages already in the general workforce. Training the workforce, growing the apprenticeship program and reaching new levels of diversification for our province should be attainable outcomes of the Hebron Project.
• Procurement information from the Hebron Proponents needs to be fully disclosed and continually updated. The prime contractors’ tender calling processes and the Proponents’ need for skilled labour should be more clearly articulated to the industry, labour, and government.  Benefits monitoring, labour preparedness and industry growth largely depend on lead time, planning and accurate information.
• First consideration and fair market pricing should be specifically defined. Evidence before the Commission and in material associated with prior commissions and panels shows multiple interpretations of these terms. The proponent and the industry have very divergent  interpretations. The Accord Acts and the C-NLOPB Benefits Plan Guidelines and associated legal rulings have been carefully analyzed by the Commission. The C-NLOPB should revisit the history of the evolution of the interpretations and provide new guidance.
• Model testing for new design characteristics of the proposed Hebron GBS needs to be completed prior to final sanction and rationalized against the same ocean weather parameters as installations currently in operation. The Grand Bank and the Continental shelf are subject to extreme conditions for waves, wind and ice. While advances in knowledge and engineering are important and new variables might be acceptably applied, historical evidence of successful and safe structures operating in extreme weather conditions provide an important standard for comparison.
• Produced Water processing for the Hebron Project must conform to current international regulations to mitigate environmental risks. Produced Water associated with extracting and processing heavy oil, the type found in the Hebron project, is both greater in volume and impurities than the produced water associated with the sweet crude of other NL offshore projects.
• The environmental questions surrounding sea bird mortality on the NL offshore should be the subject of a publicly transparent process leading to the undertaking of necessary research amongst the Canadian Wildlife Service, industry partners and the wider seabird research community. A review of the previous intervention by environmentalists has revealed that the same outstanding questions remain unanswered after twenty years of public
  hearings.
• The Socio-Economic Impact Statement and Sustainability Report needs to be upgraded in content and upgraded in importance within the Development Plan Guidelines. There is a requirement for greater socio-economic research. Two very important issues, diversity and skills training, are important within the short- and medium-term labour shortage, but also must be considered in terms of long-term sustainability. The C-NLOPB should have dedicated socioeconomic expertise. When viewed in terms of cumulative effects, including those stemming from prosperity and population increase, this project and all those preceding it significantly impact communities in the eastern and Avalon regions of the province.
• Research and Development/Education and Training Fund guidelines need to be more flexible to permit the approval of projects pertaining to the socioeconomic impacts of the project and considerations of sustainable development. At present, the guidelines are too influenced by pure or applied research that fails to recognize the research needed on socio-economic matters.
•  The C-NLOPB Benefits Plan Guidelines need to be rewritten to be more specific, including templates to outline the precise types and formats of benefits information that must be provided by Proponents. In reviewing the previous three oil and gas developments, the Commission observed significant inconsistencies in presented material which made evaluation of benefits very difficult. This will provide more measurable objectives for monitoring by the C-NLOPB and, and, in the long term, allow for better comparisons between projects.

- srbp -

Great Gambols with Public Money: Muskrat Falls version #nlpoli #cdnpoli

While she is telling others to stand by for tough budgets and tight times, Premier Kathy Dunderdale is planning to spend more than $3.0 billion in accumulated oil surpluses to build the Muskrat Falls dam.

Now that is no surprise to SRBP readers nor is it a surprise to people who’ve been paying attention to information disclosed as part of the public utilities board hearings into the project.

Nalcor boss Ed Martin confirmed it on Tuesday in a call to Randy Simms on VOCM’s Open Line.  Here’s the relevant bit of the Simms and Martin exchange:

Randy Simms:  Government of Newfoundland?

Ed Martin:  And the Government of Newfoundland will also be putting some equity in as well. They’ll transfer cash to us to put in as equity.

Simms didn’t ask how much, but the amount is right there in Nalcor’s answer to a question from the PUB.  CA/KPR-NALCOR- 20 includes a table that lays out the “Stakeholder Equity”. The only Nalcor stakeholder is the provincial government.

Note that it shows financing for the generating facility is 100% equity.  The amounts shown in the column “Plus Equity Contributions” adds up to $2.853 billion. That’s the cash transfers Martin was talking about.

On the other side, the ledger shows another $460 million in equity – cash, that is – and that represents 25% of the cost of the transmission line.

What’s most interesting is that Martin didn’t discuss 100% equity with Simms, even though the Nalcor submissions to the PUB discuss it repeatedly. Martin said:

The 60 / 40 is generally what it is going to be. That may end up being 57 /43 or whatever. But it will be around that.

60% debt.

40% cash, that is equity.

Still, it would likely be safe to start from the premise that Nalcor’s calculations and the provincial cabinet’s endorsement of this project is based on having very little public debt, except on the transmission lines.  That’s a pretty wild assumption, of course, given the provincial government’s miserable experience with delivering capital works projects on time and close to budget. 

Still, if they think they can do it, Nalcor and the provincial government might be tempted to believe they can get the whole thing for cash on hand with only a few hundred million in borrowing.  As Martin noted, Nalcor will use other revenue of its own – like from the equity stakes – to add more cash to the pile if need be.

That would also explain how they think they can keep electricity rates low.  Without much of a debt load to repay, they can just cream of any profits. If things are worse than expected, the provincial government just won’t make any money back on the project at all.  They’ll tell the punters that their great dividend from oil and gas is discount electricity.

You can see that kind of thing in Ed Martin’s closing remarks:

But any cash that goes into this project, any returns that come from it, are staying in the province and results in 100% ownership of an asset for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, essentially forever.

Sounds wonderful.

Sounds marvellous.

Sounds fantastic until you realise that  Martin knows that this project won’t sell electricity anywhere but inside the province. 

That means that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will pay for the Muskrat Falls project up front with their billions in cash from oil.

Then they will pay for all the electricity that comes from it, including the stuff shunted off to Nova Scotia for free.

In effect, the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will be paying themselves back for the money they borrowed from themselves in the first place.

In order to make that work and to keep the electricity prices at a rate people wouldn’t scream about, the provincial government and Nalcor plan to let the people of the province pay themselves back over the course of a half century.

Now you can understand that all this makes a bitter lie of the claim by project proponents that this project will have a revenue stream and pay for itself.  The only “revenue” is what the ratepayers will pay annually for their electricity.  As SRBP noted before, people will be forced to pay for the costs annually plus a profit because that’s the way the public utilities board sets electricity rates.

Don’t miss the point though - Muskrat Falls is not a revenue stream:  it is a tax on the people who own the resource in the first place.

One can scarcely imagine or a more cynical political gambol with public money.

- srbp -

.

And this surprises you because…? #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador is about what the social scientists – like political scientists, for example -  would call clientelism.

You may have heard it called patronage.  Regardless of the word you use, the purpose is the same:

That isn’t just about giving party workers government jobs.  It’s basically one element of a system in which citizens trade their status as citizens for that of being the client of a particular patron.  The patron gets political power and the ability to dispense benefits of some kind.  In exchange, the client gives the patron support.

In healthy democracies, the people govern themselves.  They vote to elect some of their number to oversee the government.  The citizens expect those representatives to deliver public works and services fairly to all on the basis of need. There is no question that the representatives work for the citizens and must be accountable to them.

For people who don’t live in healthy democratic societies, elections are a game in which they can “lose their vote”.  What that means is that they could bet on the loser and as such not have any right to anything. People in those societies do not expect to see schools and hospitals built or roads paved in their area because it is their right to receive them.  They expect them only because they voted for the party that won the election.

And, implicitly, they expect to be punished when they lose their vote.

There are no ideological or philosophical differences between political parties.

Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat.

Red, Blue, Orange.

All the same.

Elections become little more than a case of auctioneering votes.  Danny Williams himself raised the sale of votes to a new level in his now infamous begging letters to Ottawa. And what he was doing, in a sense, would hardly have shocked politicians from the Quebec of old that Williams was so fond of bashing. It’s doubtful he ever got the joke in that.

Patronage is how things have been in this province for a very long time.  The only difference since 2003 is that the patronage is as unrelenting as the general indifference to it.

Road paving?  Decided by a political staffer in the Premier’s office, an approach termed “normal” by the Premier of the day.  The money was allocated in arbitrary amounts according to what way the electoral district had voted. Blue districts got one amount.  Red ones got less.

The Premier of the day loses a by-election and bitches because people were not grateful for all the pork he’d delivered to them.

Whether we are talking about fire trucks or backbenchers handing out cheques from government programs, it’s all part of the same political thinking that in its most naked form delivered us the House of Assembly pork barrel funding scheme. Tories, Grits and Dippers all swam in the trough.  Some of the newer ones elected after 2003 went at it worse than the crowd who’d been there a while. And they were unapologetic.

These sorts of societies thrive on the myth of the strong leader.  They cannot govern themselves, so the story goes and as a result, they need some strong man  - or woman – to do their thinking for them.

So prevalent is this sort of thinking in Newfoundland and Labrador that people don’t see it as odd at all. The news media seldom raise an editorial eyebrow.

So safely entrenched is this approach to politics that cabinet ministers these days can be pretty brazen about it.  Here’s how Fairity O’Brien put it before the last provincial election, defending the government against accusations of patronage spending:

okay, so the question here in my district is, and I am only speaking for myself, do you want four more years of what you’ve just experienced in the last eight, or do you want to sit in the Opposition, or whatever it may be…

Or if that wasn’t enough for you, here’s Darin King, as reported by the Great Oracle in the Valley:

A cabinet minister is unapologetic for the rash of pre-election spending announcements coming from the government. The MHA for Grand Bank, Darin King, announced some money for health care recently. There has been a steady stream of news releases, most announcing money that had already been allocated in the budget, over the past several months.

On VOCM Open Line with Randy Simms, King said he is dedicated to bringing in as much money as he can to his district.

No one should be surprised, therefore, if the patrons decide to slap a vassal that is getting a bit uppity. The provincial government secured the silence of many the “advocacy” group these past few years with dollops of public cash for this program or that one.  The FFAW was no exception.

Now that things have gotten a little tense in some circles and the FFAW and the NDP are playing rough, Darin King the fisheries minister has decided to stop the FFAW’s funding, as CBC reports.

And what’s more, Darin is pretty clear about why:

“It’s very, very tough to build a working relationship with a group that continues to criticize,” King said.

Now on one level this is just political sookiness from a gang of politicians who’ve never had to govern through a really tough period in their lives. Not that you’d know that, of course, for all the whining, moaning, bitching and complaining they and their Old Leader used to get on with.

But fundamentally, what King is displaying here is all the arrogant sense of entitlement to power, position and patronage that he and his colleagues have had since Day One. King is displaying the customary attitude of his party since 2003 to free speech.

They don’t like it.

The Telegram’s Russell Wangersky had a timely column, as it turned out, in the Tuesday edition of what was once the People’s Paper. He reproduces a relatively innocuous comment from a reader who wanted the letter published but only without a name attached to it.  The writer feared he would face some sort of payback.  As Wangersky put it:

The perception the letter-writer has, though, is clearly that reasoned debate is not without clearly perceived consequences in this province. Would there be retribution? I honestly don’t know. But there clearly should be a discussion about the fact that such a fear exists, if nothing else.

The provincial government admittedly has a long reach here: many are employed by it or have family members employed by it. Many businesses depend on the provincial government for some or even most of their business.

The fear of retribution is not new: whether it’s a reality or not is hard to know for sure. I know businessmen I’ve talked to in the province — and I’ve said this before — who are willing to talk a lot about Muskrat Falls in private, but who will never speak publicly.

Eight years of quisling hunts and savage personal attacks on “traitors” take their toll.  Don’t be surprised if some members of the legislature may well be finding that groups that once welcomed them to meetings and events are now routinely disinviting them.  They represent the wrong party.

So Darin King cut off the FFAW’s government funding because they’ve been too critical publicly.

If this surprises you then you are either a hypocrite or a very recent immigrant to the province.  This is old news.

- srbp -