All the news that fits the frame #nlpoli

With a couple of discussions about the media and how it covers news, no regular readers of the various scribbles in this province would be surprised to find a column on the same subject from the Telegram’s Peter Jackson.

Go read it.  While you may disagree with Peter from time to time – and sometimes the disagreement is more often than not – Peter brings his considerable experience in newsrooms and that always adds to the discussion.

Right at the start, Peter very accurately describes what the basic problem is for people who toil thanklessly in newsrooms:  too much stuff to fit into the available time and space.  There’s no sarcasm in that, by the way.  They work very hard, no matter what some people think.  As a rule, they are trying to get the story right.  They want to be fair and they want to do what they think is appropriate in addition to meeting the business demands of making money so everyone keeps his or her job.

That said, Peter couldn’t resist tossing some straw into his mix:

The media, say critics, were duped by the Tories into covering their little distraction at the expense of more important news.

Yeah, well, umm, no.

At least, not from this critic.

They weren’t duped by anything.  The way the local newsrooms covered the Bennett story is a function of the way they tend to handle local political stories, especially in the post-2003 era.

Let’s take a look at what Peter says.  He deploys the stock argument about fairness and all that, plus the bit about not “editorialising” that very often crops up in discussions about how stories get covered.

Whether it was a distraction is beside the point. It’s news. In fact, the smoke screen angle is itself part of the story. The reporter can’t conclude as such without editorializing, but the people he quoted certainly can — and did.

The primary goal in all cases is fair and accurate reporting. Keeping a cool head. Otherwise, exuberance can lead some journalists to completely cross the line.

That basically gets us beyond Geoff Meeker’s point about whether or not to cover the story in the first place.  Your humble e-scribbler’s with Peter on this one:  the story is news. 

But now you get to a question that lives just an inch below that first one:  what is the story? 

All the bits that Peter Jackson recites – the call, the message, the kangaroo court in the House, the delay in raising the issue, Burke’s claim of being shaken, stirred or whatever – are all elements of the story. One you get beyond the choice to run the story, you have to figure out what the story is.

News stories tend to follow a pattern. The Big Idea, the thing they want you to remember, goes right up front.  Then you run down through the next most important thing until you get to the end.  That last paragraph is the stuff that first the reporter and then the editor have decided is expendable.  It might actually wind up being tossed between the newsroom and layout, incidentally, but that’s another story. 

The organization of the information in a good news story was always designed to engage the reader’s attention and inform him or her.  You could read the first bit and get the key information.  That imperative is even more important these days:  people don’t read stuff any more.  They skim.  So it’s a bit of a challenge to get a lot of them to last past three or four sentences.  Forget three or four whole paragraphs.

So in this one, would you consider the fact that Jerome made an accusation qualified as the top thing?  Pretty much yeah.  You can encapsulate the main details of the accusation in one sentence.  Try something like:

In the House of Assembly today, the Progressive Conservatives accused Liberal MHA Jim Bennett of trying to intimidate Advanced Education and Skills Minister Joan Burke on February 3.

House leader Jerome Kennedy may have been the person who actually made the accusation.  But no one should be foolish enough to believe that Jerome and Kathy and Joan and all the rest of the caucus didn’t have their talking points sorted out in advance. Your humble e-scribbler would run with the collective attribution for the accusation.

Besides, a news outlet has a obligation to fill in the gaps in knowledge so that people can situate a story in context.  That isn’t editorialising.  It’s informing readers.

Second sentence or paragraph?  Maybe what Bennett actually said along with the context:

Bennett called Burke’s office in early February because he was trying to get help for a constituent who needed transportation from the St. Barbe area to Corner Brook for chemotherapy treatment.

Frustrated that he wasn’t getting results from Burke’s staff, he left a message on a Friday saying if the issue wasn’t settled by Monday, he would call “Open Line,” and “there will be hell to pay.”

Bennett also said, “I will absolutely trash your minister and say what a bunch of idiots she’s got working in her department. You fix the problem and fix it today or there will be lots of trouble.”

That’s from the Telegram story on March 9, incidentally.  The structure we just used is essentially a variation on the “he said, she said” format some people like.  You’ve given all the necessary details of what the whole thing was about.

Interestingly, though, that information about what Bennett said and why (according to him)  is paragraphs four, five and six of the Telly story.

Here’s what they thought was more important.  The accusation was the second thing.  First was the sexed up version of the basic story as the Tories framed it:

Liberal MHA Jim Bennett was in the hot seat Thursday, after he was accused of threatening a government minister.

And before you got to what Bennett said, the Telly wanted you to know that the Premier thought it was ““absolutely appalling” and that the opposition House leader thought the Tories were grandstanding.

Now you don’t have to be a dupe or a partisan to write the Telly version of the story. You’d goose the story so that the drama – as forced as it was – might draw readers in. This could be what Peter referred to at one point:  “making grey stories a little more colourful, is integral to the business of journalism.” 

All legitimate points – journalism is a business as much as we might like it to be otherwise.

All news outlets get to decide a bunch of things about a story.  They get to decide whether or not to cover something at all.  And when they run a story, they get to decide what to do with it.  The people who put news together have lots of choices and they face lots of pressures.

There were plenty of ways the local media could have tackled the Bennett story.  The Telegram did it one way. They could have put a lot more information – facts – into their story at the front end that would have given readers a very different impression than what someone would have gotten if they didn’t make it beyond the third paragraph of the Bennett story.

Just think about it:  in the Telly version, you could have gotten three paragraphs in without knowing what Bennett said.  That information is important if you want people to be able to follow the simple formula:  “We report, you decide.”

Without it, you get to decide, but you could decide wrongly.

It all depends on the frame.

It all depends on what someone decided to tell you about a particular story. 

– srbp -

Living after them #nlpoli

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

In his latest post on Muskrat Falls, energy analyst Tom Adams argues that the provincial government wants to finance Muskrat Falls in a way that shifts the costs and the risks to future generations.

“This proposed financial model inappropriately mixes elements of a power purchase agreement (PPA),” writes Adams, “often used in some elements of the utility industry, and government subsidies to create what Jane Jacobs described in her book Systems of Survival as a “monstrous hybrid”. This monstrous hybrid imposes escalating costs and obsolescence risks on consumers over the next 57 years.”

Adams says that Atlantic Canadian governments have been especially prone to financing schemes that are described as innovative but that turn out to be disasters:

Usually, the purpose is to promote riskier investments than could be justified using conventional approaches. Sometimes, such as with the franchise model innovated by the New Brunswick government in the late 1990s to promote natural gas distribution, the innovation fails spectacularly. Except for industrial consumers, New Brunswick natural gas consumers now pay by far the highest gas rates in North America. The growth rate for the local distribution utility is below a rate that is financially sustainable.

What’s more, the project hasn’t received adequate review, Adams contends.

And, in the end, Hydro-Quebec controls power output from Muskrat Falls since it effectively controls the water flows on the entire Churchill river.

Read the full post – “Newfoundland’s Muskrat Falls Megaproject Fails Test of Intergenerational Ethics” – here.

- srbp -

S-92 incident: March 2012, Newfoundland offshore #nlpoli

From the offshore regulatory board, March 21, 2012:

The C-NLOPB has been notified that on approach to the Terra Nova FPSO,  Cougar Helicopters experienced a #2 Input Module Chip Light illumination. On deck the crew discussed the matter with Cougar's Maintenance Control Centre (MCC).  It was decided to shut the aircraft down and complete a restart.  After restarting the light was still illuminated.  An engineer will be dispatched to the installation to investigate.

The input modules are part of the helicopter’s drive system.  They translate the energy from the two engines into the main rotor.  You can see the bits labelled in this diagram of a section of the main rotor assembly from the UH-60 Blackhawk.  The S-92 is derived from the Blackhawk.

The sensor that tripped is designed to detect metal fragments in the input module connected to the Number 2 engine.  Metal fragments would indicate wear inside a set of gears that turn at incredibly high rates.  That would not be good. The system also includes a device to get rid of tiny fragments and “fuzz” that might give false positive readings.

Here’s a portion of a U.S. Army training presentation on the transmission’s warning systems:

This is not the first time S-92’s flying offshore have reported this type of indicator.  Here are some extracts from the CADORS system, as posted to a helicopter pilots’ discussion site in 2009:

Date 1/18/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0038
Event Declared emergency/priority
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description TSB Update A06A0005: CHI21, a Cougar Helicopter Sikorsky S-92A, with 18 passengers and two flight crew on board, was enroute from St. John's, NL to the Terra Nova FPSO oil production vessel when the number two engine chip light illuminated. …

Date 2/3/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0073
Event Engine malfunction - other
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description CHI22,S92, enroute St. John’s (CYYT) to – Henry Goodrich Oil Platform (CHEN) requested to return to CYYT due indication light at 1800Z, position 35NM southeast of CYYT(St. John's). Aircraft advised no emergency. At approximately time 1813Z flight requested ERS on arrival. Landed without further incident at time 1823Z. Pilot advised of engine chip light. TSB Case Closed
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 2/3/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0073
Event Engine malfunction - other
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE : TSB A06A0010: CHI22, a Cougar Helicopters Sikorsky S-92A, with 19 passengers and two flight crew onboard, was enroute from St. John's, NL to the Henry Goodrich oil platform and was approximately 35 NM Southeast of St. John's when the number two engine chip light illuminated (General Electric CT7-8A). The crew followed checklist procedures and reduced the #2 engine power to idle and elected to return to St. John's. The crew did not initially declare an emergency, however, ten minutes prior to landing requested ERS. The aircraft landed without further incident. After the aircraft landed, maintenance inspected the chip plug on the #2 engine and in consultation with the engine manufacturer, it was felt that the metal found on the chip plug was from the #3 bearing. This engine had a total of 42.2 hrs time in service since new. The engine was replaced with a new engine before the aircraft was returned to service.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 7/25/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0549
Event Declared emergency/priority
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE TSB: The number 2 engine had not failed rather a chip light had illuminated resulting in the flight crew reducing power for that engine.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 7/25/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0549
Event Declared emergency/priority
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE TSB: A06A0071: Cougar 33 (C-GSCH), a Sikorsky S-92, was outbound from St. John's to Hibernia. At approximately 75 nm from St. Johns the INPUT CHIP 2 light came on. The crew followed the checklist, reduced No.2 engine to IDLE, descended to 500 feet, and joined Route B back to St. John's airport. Once level at 500 feet the crew briefed the passengers and ATC. Approximately 5 minutes after the INPUT CHIP 2 indication the INPUT CHIP 1 also illuminated. The crew declared a "PAN" and continued in to St. John's at 500 feet. A Cormorant on exercises in the area (OUTCAST 903) joined the aircraft and escorted the flight in to St. John's airport. The crew flew a running landing onto Runway 02, then shut down the aircraft on the runway to prevent damage to the gearbox inputs. Upon inspection, the chip plugs in the main transmission and in the associated accessory modules were found to be contaminated. The affected components will be changed out, and the company and manufacturer are investigating the cause of the chip lights.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 7/25/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0549
Event Declared emergency/priority
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE TSB: A06A0071: Cougar 33 (C-GSCH), a Sikorsky S-92, was outbound from St. John's to Hibernia. At approximately 75 nm from St. Johns the INPUT CHIP 2 light came on. The crew followed the checklist, reduced No.2 engine to IDLE, descended to 500 feet, and joined Route B back to St. John's airport. Once level at 500 feet the crew briefed the passengers and ATC. Approximately 5 minutes after the INPUT CHIP 2 indication the INPUT CHIP 1 also illuminated. The crew declared a "PAN" and continued in to St. John's at 500 feet. A Cormorant on exercises in the area (OUTCAST 903) joined the aircraft and escorted the flight in to St. John's airport. The crew flew a running landing onto Runway 02, then shut down the aircraft on the runway to prevent damage to the gearbox inputs. Upon inspection, the chip plugs in the main transmission and in the associated accessory modules were found to be contaminated. The affected components will be changed out, and the company and manufacturer are investigating the cause of the chip lights.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 7/25/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0549
Event Engine malfunction - other
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE TSB: The number 2 engine had not failed rather a chip light had illuminated resulting in the flight crew reducing power for that engine.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 7/25/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0549
Event Diversion
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE TSB: A06A0071: Cougar 33 (C-GSCH), a Sikorsky S-92, was outbound from St. John's to Hibernia. At approximately 75 nm from St. Johns the INPUT CHIP 2 light came on. The crew followed the checklist, reduced No.2 engine to IDLE, descended to 500 feet, and joined Route B back to St. John's airport. Once level at 500 feet the crew briefed the passengers and ATC. Approximately 5 minutes after the INPUT CHIP 2 indication the INPUT CHIP 1 also illuminated. The crew declared a "PAN" and continued in to St. John's at 500 feet. A Cormorant on exercises in the area (OUTCAST 903) joined the aircraft and escorted the flight in to St. John's airport. The crew flew a running landing onto Runway 02, then shut down the aircraft on the runway to prevent damage to the gearbox inputs. Upon inspection, the chip plugs in the main transmission and in the associated accessory modules were found to be contaminated. The affected components will be changed out, and the company and manufacturer are investigating the cause of the chip lights.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 7/25/2006
CADORS Number 2006A0549
Event Diversion
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC
Description UPDATE TSB: The number 2 engine had not failed rather a chip light had illuminated resulting in the flight crew reducing power for that engine.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 6/13/2007
CADORS Number 2007A0519
Event Diversion
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC.
Description A Canadian registered Sikorsky S92A, after departure from St. John’s (CYYT), requested to return to the airport due to an input chip light indication. The aircraft landed without further incident at 11:12Z. Nil TSB.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

Date 4/24/2008
CADORS Number 2008A0501
Event Engine failure
Owner COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC.
Description UPDATE TSB: A08A0059: The Cougar Helicopters Sikorsky-S92A , operating as CHI91, was in cruise flight en route from the Hibernia Gravity Based Platform to St. John's Intl. When the helicopter was approximately 100 NM SE of St. John's, NL the crew contacted Gander ACC to advise they were declaring an emergency and had shutdown engine #1 (GE CT7-8A). The engine shutdown was required due to a Gear Box chip light. The helicopter landed uneventfully at 12:35 NDT while ARFF were standing by. Maintenance determined the chip light was due to an accumulation of "nuisance fuzz" in the form of a "sliver" on a recently installed Main Gearbox accessory input.
Aircraft Model S92A
Aircraft Make SIKORSKY

- srbp -

Bennett’s telephone call “gendered violence” according to PACSW prez #nlpoli

Most of you likely missed it, but a sharp exchange in Twitter on Monday showed the way politics in this province rolls these days.

Dara Squires writes a blog called ReadilyAParent, She’s also syndicated in the Western Star and some of the TransCon weeklies.  Dara’s post on Sunday took up some recent local political events.  “False Feminists in Politics” is about feminism and women in politics. 

Here’s a taste of the broader argument:

And yet, in general, we swallow it hook, line and sinker when a woman rises to a position of power and declares herself a feminist. It's taken as both proof of the validity of the feminist promise and a victory of sorts when they do. But herein lies one of the largest dangers of false feminism, especially with regards to politics. For if some white, upper middle class women make their way into politics, or the heads of boardrooms, or CEOs of major companies, than we find ourselves facing the argument that the fight for equality is over. Wente is one of the white, upper-middle class elites who would have us believe this

Squires drew the whole thing down closer to home with a pretty sharp critique of Kathy Dunderdale. She made some particularly strong comments about the way government House leader Jerome Kennedy tied Jim Bennett’s telephone call and threat with violence against women:

Yeah, you read that right. Not only does he minimise the true extent of such violence by using it in comparison to a single, slightly threatening phonecall [call], he also shows an utter lack of awareness behind the real reasons for delayed reporting or not reporting sexual and domestic violence.
…
I can't believe that Dunderdale, who has been a member of women's status groups and worked as a social worker, would've not seen the significance of Kennedy's statements. The moment I read the transcript it was like a punch in the gut. But Dunderdale, leader of the party, Premier of the province, and supposed women's rights supporter, did nothing to halt Kennedy's ongoing attack against victims of violence.

Squires got some attention on Monday from some of the most powerful people in the province.  It’s hard to tell exactly how the Twitter discussion started and who got whom involved but before too long it involved not only Lana Payne – head of the federation of labour – but Glenda Power, the Premier’s communications director. 

You should go read the exchange;  just scroll back a couple of days or so and you can find the three contributions to the discussion.  It’s civilised, although tightly constrained by the 140 character limit. And you can expect that the Power didn’t accept for a moment that her boss might be anything but right.

What’s most interesting is that after Squires invited more substantive comment on her blog, she got it but not from Payne or Power but from Linda Ross.  The head of the Provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women left not one but two comments with a title “Criticism without Merit.”  They are right at the bottom of the post linked above.

Now some of you will recognize that this is not the first time that Ross – a cabinet appointee – has entered a provincial political fray on behalf of her patron Kathy Dunderdale.  Last April she launched a pretty savage attack on then-opposition leader Yvonne Jones over what was entirely a fabrication on Ross’ part.

This time Ross has some much more interesting things to say.

For starters, there is nothing half-hearted in Ross’ support for the Premier:

“The record of Premier Dunderdale and her government in Newfoundland and Labrador on advancing the status of women and preventing violence against women and other vulnerable populations has been outstanding.”

Ross then lists a series of what Ross suggests are Dunderdale’s personal accomplishments.  In the classic fashion, they involve how much money government spends. Ross attributes things to Dunderdale that she didn’t do.  Well, certainly not as Premier, anyways, if she did them personally at all:

In addition to the above noted investments, under Premier's Dunderdale's leadership, we now have a 10% participation of women in trades in this Province, up from 3%. Such achievements are critical in advancing women's economic and social equality. Likewise, since 2003 approximately 50 percent of all new recruits to the RNC are now women and more women are appointed to Provincial boards, agencies and commissions.

The construction Ross employs isn’t accidental.  What Ross is employing is the traditional patron-centred politics that has come to epitomize the Williams and now Dunderdale Conservatives in power.  The patron gets personal credit from his or her clients for government policies and programs, as if they would not have occurred without the patron.

The overall discussion about Squires - even on Twitter - and the emphasis in the exchange on common successes runs directly contrary to Squires’ argument without actually refuting it.  But it does express the norm of provincial politics these days:  partisan differences are, in truth, superficial ones.  For the elites themselves, the connections among them are more important than ideological or partisan differences or ones based on different values. 

What the elites have in common is also more important – to them – than anything else.  You can see this is the similarity among the elections platforms last October.  But you can also see this in the way Ross unequivocally endorses the partisan attack on Jim Bennett:

“in reality this event was indeed a very real act of gendered violence.”
…
All acts of violence and abuse can be equally as damaging regardless of the type of violence and abuse and can have very serious long-term impacts on a woman’s life. Violence is violence, regardless of what form it takes. Minimizing a woman’s experience of violence because it does not fit into the old-school traditional definition of violence could, by many, be identified as a form of violence in and of itself. We as women and as feminists must never minimize or judge another woman’s lived reality. 

Violence and abuse are best understood as a pattern of behaviour intended to establish power and maintain control over colleagues, intimate partners, or groups. The roots of all forms of violence and abuse are founded in the many types of inequality which continue to exist and grow in our society.

Yes, friends, in Ross' world, Jim Bennett’s lone asinine phone call exists as part of a continuum of violence that is directed by men against women solely on the basis of the chromosomal structure of the two people involved. Bennett is scarcely better than a serial killer or rapists. serial killers and rapists. 

Of course, Ross’ argument is as patently absurd as it seems, on the face of it.  Ross has made equally absurd arguments before when both parties were female.  What is important to notice here is that Ross seldom makes public statements on anything.  When she does make them – as in Jones or Bennett - she is as prepared as any Tory backbencher to make a ridiculous argument in support of her patron.

Kennedy’s remarks are – according to Ross -  “totally within the Provincial Policy on this matter.”
But just so that you appreciate the extent to which Ross’ arguments  are not motivated by a general concern about violence in our society consistent with “Provincial Policy”  take note of her comments that criticise any of her patron’s associates that were as bad or worse than Bennett’s or Jones’ at any time since 2003.

Don’t waste your time.  You won’t find any.

Take a minute and let all that soak in.  There’s some pretty heavy ideas in there.

As for what this incident says about issues like equality and political power in the province, we’ll have to save that discussion for another day.

- srbp -

Another one rides the bus #nlpoli

Albertans will be going to the polls shortly.  All the parties are gearing up.  Here’s the Wildrose Alliance’s campaign bus, featuring a picture of their leader, Danielle Smith.

Yeah, they didn’t really think about the layout until it was too late.

via daveberta.

Nose Job  Update:  Okay, so the Wildrose gang are going to repaint the bus now that everyone has had a good chuckle at the first version. The Edmonton Journal has the story of the unveiling and how the picture of the bus went viral.

The wheel problem will give the party the chance to fix a much more significant problem, though.  Look at Danielle Smith’s face.  A nose job would be in order to fix the distorted way her face winds up looking as a result of where the picture sits across the bus window lines.

While the wheel thing is funny, the face thing is a common problem for these bus wraps.  Closer to home, take a look the next time you are behind a Metrobus with Jake Doyle on the back.  His face gets mashed – the eyes disappear – because of where the face falls in relation to the windows.

- srbp -

All they want is fairity #nlpoli

The people who run the province’s town and cites are looking to get a new financial arrangement from the provincial government.

Last week, the municipalities federation held an emergency meeting to discuss recent developments:

“What we’re asking government for today is very clear,” said Rogers. “Short-term help in this 2012 budget and a commitment to participation in the development of a long-term, strategic plan for the municipal sector.”

Sounds reasonable enough. 

Odds are they won’t get anything in the near term. Give a listen to what municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien said at the outset of an interview with On Point with David Cochrane this past weekend. O’Brien quickly started into a recitation of how much money the provincial government has spent since 2008 on municipal infrastructure and things like fire trucks. he finishes off with the warning that any new financial arrangement has to be sustainable for taxpayers.

Coming from a guy who has helped boost provincial government spending to irresponsible, unsustainable heights without a toss about such ideas, those words sound a bit like a lead bell.  

O’Brien is using coded language.

What he really was telling municipalities president Churence Rogers is a simple “f*ck off”.  No one should be surprised if Rogers has heard something along those lines over the past few weeks, perhaps even from O’Brien himself.  Maybe no one used the “f” word exactly, but language likely would have had the finger buried in it.

You see it all comes down to money, power and control.

Right now the provincial government has all of it.

And they will not give up any of it.

The provincial government isn’t interested in changing municipal funding at all.  Any change to funding would have to transfer some of the provincial cash or the ability to raise cash over to the towns and cities. 

If the province doesn’t have that cash, then it no longer has the power to control what goes on in the province.  Fairity O’Brien may not have deliberately mentioned infrastructure and fire trucks, but there’s no coincidence that he did.  That money and those items are part of the old pattern of politics in this province: patronage. 

And that’s the money, power and control we are talking about.

None of that has anything to do with the very serious problem in many towns and cities in the province but frankly provincial politicians like O’Brien don’t give a rat’s backside about that. 

Many parts of the province aren’t really doing all that well, despite the reports you may have heard.  They don’t have the municipal tax base to come up with the sort of cash of their own they need to put into road work, water and sewer projects and other infrastructure.

Problems in the fishery, the loss of paper mills have all taken their toll.  People may be working in Alberta and still living in Stephenville and Grand Falls-Windsor but it’s local companies that pay the taxes that help to keep the street lights on, quite literally.

What’s more, way too many of the towns on the island are full of retirees and not much else.  People on fixed incomes don’t have the ability to tax up the tax slack.  Those towns also have problems finding people to volunteer for municipal services like firefighting.

There’s a bit of a false impression of a boom in some places.  People in Grand Falls-Windsor thinks everything is smurfy.  Ditto Gander.  But in both these towns the major economic engine is the provincial government and a level of spending that we know is unsustainable. 

What’s more, the provincial government doesn’t pay taxes to municipalities.  They do – however – collect taxes on every municipal purchase through the harmonised sales tax (HST).  The effect is to claw back a portion of the money the province grants in the first place.  Until the fictitious oil royalty claw back, though, this one actually reduces the amount of money the towns and cities in the province have available to actually spend on services to residents.

And then when towns and cities go looking for cash, politicians like Kevin O’Brien start coming up with all sorts of excuses for why things must remain as they are.  The miserable, dark joke in all that shouldn’t be lost.  Towns and cities in the province are looking for a fair shake on provincial funding.  Kevin O’Brien is the guy who told us all that the province just wanted “fairity in the nation.”

David Cochrane exposed the fundamental bullshit of government’s position.  Cochrane asked why it was that O’Brien was talking about the impossibility of making commitments of funds for a few millions in the short term to towns and cities while government was prepared to forecast the price of oil for 55 years in order to justify Muskrat Falls.  All O’Brien had was talking points.

O’Brien also couldn’t explain or justify the four years that it has taken for O’Brien to start getting around to talking about a new financial arrangement for towns and cities.  Municipal leaders have asked for predictable funding.  All O’Brien has said is that he and his colleagues in government are willing to talk.

The real bottom line is that people like O’Brien who have politicized the purchase of bed pans and fire trucks simply want complete control over spending in the province for their own, pork-barrel, patronage reasons.

All municipal leaders want is fairity.

They aren’t going to get it from Kevin O’Brien.

- srbp -

. 

Gas prices and political popularity #nlpoli

In some other places, gasoline prices have a political impact you can identify and measure.

That isn’t the case in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The reasons?  We don’t have anyone doing the research, for one thing.

For another thing, the marketing job that one pollster does like clockwork every quarter is so inaccurate a device that it can’t measure anything but the equivalent of a political tsunami.  Even then, it isn’t clear that CRA’s quarterly omnibus could detect it.

And for a third explanation, none of the province’s political parties identify consumer costs as a political issue they want to talk about.

That’s one of the more curious things.  Political parties in other places actually talk about things that piss off the average voter.  In newfoundland and Labrador,  even if we knew that voters were fried about gasoline prices, there’s no party that would likely raise the issue and try to do something about it.  This is just a variation of the Echo Chamber theme your humble e-scribbler raised in the last election:  the political parties didn’t talk about the issues opinion polls identified as stuff that bothered voters.

- srbp -

What makes news? #nlpoli

Sometimes you have to wonder why does one story make the news while another doesn’t.  Good example:  Jim Bennett’s asinine telephone call to Joan Burke’s constituency office.

Telegram blogger Geoff Meeker smacks the local media for covering the story in the way they did:

It wasn't even a valid news story. It was manufactured. The PCs sat on Bennett’s voice message for five weeks, until it was advantageous to toss out the bait. They played the media like a fish. 

And this is a criticism directed at all media, because they all played it at the top of their news, whether it was TV, radio or print. Meanwhile, as a direct consequence, more important stories – such as NDP Leader Lorraine Michael’s vital question about mercury poisoning in Lake Melville – were pushed back, diminishing their importance.

All fair comment.

In this case, the discussion is about what newsrooms chose to cover.  The usual comment from the people in newsrooms – editors and reporters alike – is that there is way more stuff going on than they could ever print or broadcast.

Sure.

But that doesn’t get at the question of why they might chose one story over another.

And what about cases where newsroom didn’t cover a story at all? 

There have been a couple of those stories related to energy policy that we know about:  one from April 2008 and another from September 2009.

But then there was another type of story, the one where the locals didn’t report it as news until the mainlanders did it first.

This is a story like the one about an education minister mixing and meddling in the appointment of a new president for the university. Until the story appeared in a national newspaper, no one locally reported it.  Sure there were columns in the Telegram about it but no one reported the story as news.

It’s not like the mainlanders got the story first and scooped all the locals.

Or how about the deliberate breach of the province’s privacy laws in the case of the Craig Westcott e-mail. Telegram editor Russell Wangersky brought up the e-mail in his Saturday column. The context was a discussion of the way the current provincial government selectively interprets the access to information and privacy law in Newfoundland and Labrador.

All the news media in the province had the story at the same time.  As Wangersky recounts the episode:

But first, a little history: Craig Westcott was hired in late 2010 as the communications spokesman for the provincial Liberals, a move that generated considerable ire inside provincial Tory ranks. 

In fact, such ire that a provincial cabinet minister, Municipal Affairs Minister Kevin O'Brien, went on VOCM to denounce Westcott, and to reveal that Westcott had written an intemperate email to then-premier Danny Williams' communications chief, Elizabeth Matthews, in February 2009. O'Brien said the email had been discussed at the cabinet table. 

The email questioned whether Williams had mental [health] issues, and, after O'Brien's VOCM comments, was released in its entirety.

Every newsroom went first with the e-mail story, exactly as the government intended when the Premier’s Office decided to release it.

One of the reasons why the current provincial government can get away with its selective application of the law has an awful lot to do with the consequences.  Basically there aren’t any. 

Sure they might be on the receiving end of a few sharp words in an editorial or a column.  The thing is, though,  that fewer people pay attention to news media these days than they used to.  And the ones who do likely don’t scan all the columns to finds tidbits of information like ones about the latest illegal actions by their own government.  They just don’t see the news that might wind up on the opinion pages instead of the news pages where they belong.

What the public gets instead are stories like the Bennett or Westcott ones where the government’s interpretation of things often appear  unfiltered.

What makes it into print or on the air isn’t always the story, let alone the whole one or the real one.

- srbp -

The Looking Glass News #nlpoli

“The Lower Churchill hydro project has passed the environmental review process,”  CBC news tells us, and as a result the project has cleared “… another hurdle to the Labrador power generation plant becoming a reality.

VOCM used the same word in its headline.

Hurdle.

It means an obstacle, a hindrance or a barrier that something or someone must be overcome on the way to a goal.

Now there’s a curious word for the CBC news writer to use.

Since the final decision on the environmental assessment process for the Lower Churchill rested with the very people who are behind the project in the first place, only the most naive person in Canada would have believed the review was anything but an exercise in filling out the paperwork.

So “hurdle” is such a wrong word that it is comical.

And indeed the fuss about this little event today was entirely comical.  It came complete with news releases, scrums and all manner of breathless comments about how wonderful a thing this was that the project passed the review.

Like there was some doubt ever that the provincial government wouldn’t approve the project.

Still, as odd a choice of a word as “hurdle” might be in this context, it makes perfect sense down here in the rabbit hole into which we all slipped in 2003.

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Demanding what is just #nlpoli

For if it is to establish an order that citizens will agree to support, the state must go further than merely investigating their needs;  it must also encourage them to demand what they consider just.  In this way democracy becomes a system in which all citizens participate in government…

Pierre Trudeau,  Approaches to politics, p. 78

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Nova Scotia would get Churchill Falls power for free #nlpoli

If you’ve been following the ongoing Muskrat Falls saga, you will recall that energy analyst Tom Adams raised some questions a couple of months ago about whether or not Muskrat Falls could actually produce the power Nalcor and the provincial government claimed.

The problem basically came down to this: 

• January through to March is when Muskrat Falls needs to produce the most power.
• That’s when Holyrood would be cranking at full tilt to meet demand on the island for lights and heat in the winter months.
• At the same time, the Nova Scotians will need to get their guaranteed block.
• Upstream, Churchill Falls will be cranking at full tilt to feed Quebec under the 1969 contract and the 1998 Guaranteed Winter Availability Contract
• But the water flows in those three months are the lowest for the year.
• And at that point, Muskrat Falls would have a problem generating much more electricity than Holyrood did, despite the fact that Muskrat is – on paper – considerably larger.

Nalcor’s official line is that the water management agreement imposed by the public utilities board gives Nalcor access to the Churchill Falls reservoir. 

With production at Muskrat Falls completely integrated with Churchill Falls, this means that during May and June Muskrat Falls will be producing at full output, and the resulting production not required on the island will be displacing production at Churchill Falls. This energy will be drawn down when rivers flows are lower, and during peak winter periods when electricity demand is higher on the island.

Problem solved.

Yeah, well not really, as you will see in a little bit.

The Ides of March, 2012 #nlpoli

Twitter is a wonderful thing except that sometimes you can’t use the whole of a great quote.

The following is a larger bit of one quote that turned up in a minor flurry on the Ides of March.  It was hardly a Shakespeare smack down but it was fun for a moment.

The quote below is part of a speech from Julius Caesar in which Cassius – he of the lean and hungry look – talks to Brutus about fate and destiny and the power that individuals have to change the course of events.

Here’s a bit more of it:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

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To Encourage the Others #nlpoli

Lots of people look to leaders in a crisis to see what lessons they can learn.

Well, Kathy Dunderdale is special.

She is an excellent  example for any leader – political or not – who wants to know how not to handle a major financial problem.

The Telegram editorial on Wednesday does an excellent job of summarising the convoluted, contradictory and confused way Kathy Dunderdale has talked about job losses and budget cuts in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Think about Kathy Dunderdale’s comments in a slightly different way and you can get a sense of the magnitude of her problems.  Instead of lay-offs, imagine she was announcing another life-altering decision. You can summarise her statements this way:  we will have to kill some people, maybe.  If we do kill them, there won’t be a lot of bodies, so they should all relax until we figure out how many. And even if we do wind up killing a few people they all knew they would only be here temporarily anyway so this is pretty much what they should have expected anyway.  It’s in their contract.

An exaggeration to be sure, but for the thousands of people in this province across the province, that’s not far off the chilling effect Dunderdale’s words have had. 

The provincial government budget covers about 20% or more of the provincial labour force.  That’s a heck of a lot more than 2100 people who Dunderdale has said are going to be randomly thrown out of work – possibly – in a few weeks time.

All those people have families, mortgages and other bills and all sorts of plans they’ve been making on the expectation they’ll have a job in a few weeks time.

All of them know that when any Premier starts talking about layoffs, program reviews and spending cuts, they aren’t likely to be just limited to this year and a couple of people.  Things must be bad. Lots of them have been through it before. 

And even if things don’t turn out as badly as those public servants might fear, prudence will likely dictate what experience might not.  They are going to change their plans for the next year or so.  New home?  New car?  Renovations?  Trip? Maybe not.  Those who get laid off will have to cut their spending, find a new job and start again.  And those who don’t will scale back just to be on the safe side.

That’s the practical economic impact Kathy Dunderdale will have on tens of thousands of people across the province.

Then there’s the impact on her bottom line.  Provincial sales tax is the second largest source of money for the provincial government, after oil royalties.  We already know oil royalties will drop this year.  Now factor in a drop in sales taxes due to the Dunderdale-induced chill. 

Drop sales tax revenue by 10%  - for argument’s sake - and you have about the same amount of money the Premier says she wants to save, that is, less than $100 million.  It would actually be around $82 million.

So the Premier and her colleagues cut $82 million from the budget – theoretically – with their job cuts.  And in addition they have induced another $82 million revenue loss as a result of the chill in the economy.  Dunderdale’s cocked-up communications have effectively She’s actually doubled the effect of her cut.

At this point, though, we don’t know how much the provincial government will chop.  Anything more than a small handful of jobs lost, coupled with reassurance that those few are all, and the Premier can guarantee the lost revenue and the economic contraction will be much larger. 

Now factor in cuts to federal spending and a loss of federal jobs that will come on March 29. Incidentally, that’s the real reason the provincial government is delayed until April.  All this talk of internal reviews and such is just fluff and nonsense. 

The provincial government will introduce its budget likely around the end of the first week of April.  They are waiting  - and the only thing they are waiting for – is to see what the feds do.  Provincial finance officials likely have some ideas of what will come.  They should have gotten them from their federal counterparts and their colleagues in other provinces. That’s what happens every year. 

The provincial officials have contingency budgets with adjustments here and there in the figures, based on what the feds do.  They can make any last minute adjustments and get the provincial budget out quite quickly afterward. For the most part, the whole thing is done.

The cuts Kathy Dunderdale is talking about may appear to be new to the Telegram editorialist’s reckoning but they aren’t. Dunderdale and her cabinet have apparently settled on them some time ago. How big the cuts will be may depend on the federal budget. 

What the telly-editorialist and others might wonder about more profitably, though, is how a government with billions in cash laying about is thinking about laying off a single solitary employee based on the size of the hand-outs the provincial government will get from Ottawa.

Now that is something to marvel at.

- srbp -

Government hiring process revealed #nlpoli

From your humble e-scribbler’s e-mail this week came a copy of what is purported by an anonymous e-mail to be a sooper sekrit document.

It appears to be the rules set down for hiring people in temporary jobs with the provincial government.

- srbp -

It’s all about export, eh #nlpoli

On Tuesday, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the House of Assembly:

Essentially, what Muskrat Falls does, it allows 40 per cent of the power for the Island to meet the Island needs, 20 per cent for the export - 170 megawatts which allows us to then gain access to the markets in the United States, in the Maritimes, but also to develop other hydro and wind sources on the Island, and 40 per cent of the power for Labrador.

Of course there are no chances of exporting the extremely expensive electricity from Muskrat Falls into any other province, let alone export it and make money.

But hey, let’s humour Jerome! for a bit.

Don’t forget to notice the part that is about the link to Nova Scotia:

170 megawatts which allows us to then gain access to the markets in the United States, in the Maritimes, but also to develop other hydro and wind sources on the Island

Export.

That goes with Jerome’s comments over the past few months about all the revenue that will come from Muskrat Falls.

So what did Jerome say on Wednesday, a mere 24 hours later?

… we see the Maritime Link as a great opportunity to gain a billion-dollar asset for our children and grandchildren, Mr. Speaker, an asset that will continue to produce revenue, which opens up the ability to move power when needed, Mr. Speaker, to the Maritime Provinces, but also it allows us to bring power back…

There’s that revenue thing again, even though Nalcor has no customers for any Muskrat Falls power outside this province.  Basically, if they can’t force people to pay for Muskrat Falls, no one will.

But look at the words at the end.

…it allows us to bring power back…

The energy warehouse will be importing electricity now, according to Jerome Kennedy.  All those people who will be making money from Muskrat falls – if you believe Jerome – will also be able to live the dream he has and buy electricity from somewhere else.

Why would our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren do that if  - according to the provincial Tories - we have more than we need and want to export it all forever and a day especially after 2041 when we “repatriate” Churchill Falls?

Sometimes you really get the sense that Jerome and his friends just make stuff up as they go.

- srbp -

If the people are silent… #nlpoli

…if the people are silent, you call them content;  if they protest, you say that they are given to disorder; and in the one case as in the other, they can look to you for nothing…

William Ewart Gladstone,  (29 December 1809 - 19 May 1898) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister four times (1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886 and 1892-1894).  Gladstone was a notable political reformer, known for his populist speeches. 

- srbp -

Unions oppose energy conservation device #nlpoli

Unions representing Hydro-Quebec employees are oppose to a plan to install so-called smart meters in Quebec homes.  According to the Montreal Gazette:

One week before the Régie de l’énergie is to begin hearings on the controversial venture, the Syndicate des employés de techniques professionnels et de bureau d’Hydro-Québec denounced the move at a media conference.

The union has submitted an economic analysis of the project to the energy board that contends Hydro-Québec would lose $104 million over 20 years, while the new network would wipe out about 1,000 direct and indirect jobs.

 

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When you suddenly become the enemy… #nlpoli

For those of us in Newfoundland and Labrador who  - from the outset - opposed the political style that settled on this province after 2003, it’s been a fascinating exercise to watch others suddenly take up the same issues.

Danny Williams’ Conservatives imported the style and applied it ruthlessly to anyone the Old Man felt was not sufficiently compliant with his wishes.

The pattern of behaviour is very well documented.

Until lately the province’s New Democrats and the labour unions that back them enjoyed a very special relationship with the Conservatives.  Generally, they backed the Tories on major projects and issues.  They could find lots of common ground on all sorts of issues.

And as for things like free speech, well, those things were nothing to get bothered about.

Well, those days are gone.

Federation of labour president Lana Payne isn’t signing provincial Tory praises any more now that the Tories have turned on her friends.

And so it is that Lana wrote in her Telegram column this past Saturday that the “divisive smear politics” from other places “has found its way” to this province.

It is disheartening.  No good can come from this.

Well,  of course, it was disheartening.

No good did come of it.

What was most truly disheartening in this province after 2003, though, was the way that people and organizations you would expect to fight for basic rights and for progressive causes couldn’t be bothered to do so as long as the Tories kept the public purse strings loose.  

Maybe Lana could write a column about that some time.  If she did, then maybe she might have an ounce of credibility in her sudden love of fundamental rights and freedoms.

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Discussion is healthy, indeed #nlpoli

From the Telegram a former chief of staff in the Premier’s Office puts it as eloquently as only he could:

If public discussion, questions and debate on any issue should be dropped because “the people who have the political and corporate power to make it happen want it to happen,”  then logically there should be no talk of improving search and rescue operations, fisheries mismanagement, deficiencies in health care, industrial safety, workers’ rights, robocalls or any government or corporate action.

Indeed, why would we need public opinion vehicles like letters to the editor and open-line shows?

Why indeed?

Edsel Bonnell gives the answer:

It may be a tiresome process to some, especially those who deal with it every day in government and media, but it’s the price we pay for democracy. The pragmatic alternative is unacceptable.

Amen, brother. 

Amen.

- srbp -

Lay-offs, Noseworthy and other things the Premier talked about #nlpoli

Listen closely and you can hear the beep-beep-beep of the garbage truck of government comms as it backs up on the idea of laying off public sectors workers as a result of government’s “review” of programs and spending.

Premier Kathy Dunderdale scrummed [link to CBC’s raw video]outside the House of Assembly on Monday and CBC’s David Cochrane - the guy who on Friday got her to accept the premise that she might lay people – led off the questioning.  He repeated comments by public sector union boss Carol Furlong.

Notice that Dunderdale doesn’t talk about layoffs in her first answer except to start out by saying that people need to relax.  That isn’t a direct retraction of her comments from Friday, but take a look at the rest of it and you can see where she is going.

Dunderdale claimed that she has said time and again that this is about “good fiscal management” and nothing more.  Of course, the truth is that Dunderdale said a great many things, some of them contradictory.  Her comment to the media is one of her stock approaches whenever she frigs up.  Dunderdale claims she has said the correct thing all along, with the clear implication the rest of us are just not grasping her brilliance.  For one of the earliest examples see Dunderdale and the Joan Cleary mess in December 2006.

Dunderdale also said that government needs to “constantly” review programs to make sure they are efficient and effective.  Then she  referred to some unspecified programs in Joan Burke’s department that are upwards of two or three decades old.

Fair enough.

Except that the government got into its current mess because they didn’t review anything ever.  Instead, they just piled on the hiring and piled on the spending with no goals.  They had no idea where things were going. 

To give you a sense of out far out-to-lunch Dunderdale and her colleagues took things, consider this table from a post back in September 2010.

The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador spends more per person to deliver programs than any other government in Canada, bar none.

In fact, Kathy Dunderdale and her colleagues in cabinet spend more than $3,000 per person more than Alberta does.  That’s not good.  That’s how grossly inefficient and ineffective they are.

The reason is simple.  As with anything in life, if you have no idea where you want to go, you can never tell when you get there or if you get there. So it is that a government that has more money coming through the doors than any of its predecessors has to talk about cuts to spending and layoffs.

In the scrum, Dunderdale said that might be related to the people administering the programs but that permanent employees are safe.

Cochrane comes at the layoffs issue again and this time Dunderdale doesn’t duck.  She accepts the potential there might be layoffs. She emphasises that the review is not about what she terms “gutting” the public service   She puts the review down to effective management of the public service itself. 

Of course, that rings hollow in light of the facts of the matter.

Dunderdale swings to the old line about permanent employees being protected.  Then she adds a twist:

… and others can be redeployed

By 2:53 of the scrum though, Dunderdale is back to acknowledging that cabinet has a number of potential cuts in mind.  She goes on about how “temporary” means only around for a short time.

By 3:36 in the scrum Dunderdale says she “is not going to lie” about it.  Who said anything about lies?

Cochrane then comes back at her to ask what the number is.

So having successfully cooled everyone’s jets in the first couple of minutes, Dunderdale then says she and her cabinet colleagues are considering lay-offs for 800 employees or, “far less than” 800.

And at that point, with a suck of air, someone else takes up the questioning.

Time into the scrum:  four minutes.

And in those four minutes, Kathy Dunderdale has changed directions in her messaging twice in completely contradictory directions.

She started by backing the truck up.

And then by four minutes she is in forward gear again and driving right over the same issue she tried to back off of a couple of minutes earlier.

Dunderdale gets a respite from the layoffs for a second as she answers a question about John Noseworthy and his pork-barrel job.  Dunderdale does what Joan Burke didn’t do in the House.  Dunderdale ties the hire with Noseworthy’s supposed unique skill set.

Then Cochrane goes back to the lay-offs.

“We will look at all of the temporary employees,” said Dunderdale, “the same way we will look at all of the permanent employees.”  Of course since permanent employees aren’t being looked at,l this sounds very confused and confusing.  And indeed it is.

But there’s that beep-beep-beep again.

However, by 6:00 minutes into the scrum, Dunderdale has said that there will be lay-offs but  that the number will be less than 800.

Look at Dunderdale’s face at this point in the scrum as she gets another question about Noseworthy.  She’s clearly pissed off. She doesn’t know anybody better qualified to do the job, Dunderdale insists.  That is actually part of the problem, of course:  hiring people with connections as opposed to qualifications. 

In response to another question, Dunderdale does the pre-emptive denial, saying that no one made any promises to Noseworthy when he decided to run in the last election.  She puts responsibility for Noseworthy’s job on Joan Burke, saying that Burke brought the name to Dunderdale.

At that point, the scrum switches to other topics.  It’s a wonder everyone wasn’t dizzy what with all the shifts of position.  Expect more shifting to come. 

- srbp -

Kremlinology 39: What Burke didn’t say #nlpoli

In defending the $140,000 –a-year patronage job she gave to former Tory candidate John Noseworthy, advanced skills minister Joan Burke told the House of Assembly:

Mr. Speaker, no one can argue that Mr. Noseworthy has a unique set of skills.

Indeed no one can make such an argument.

Former auditor general John Noseworthy doesn’t have any special skills at least, in this case.

He is an accountant with lots of experience as a provincial auditor.  In that role, he has been known to make a few serious fumbles.

Everything that Burke said her department needed to help the department sort itself out could be had from a great many people out there.  Some would be former provincial public servants here or from other provinces.  Some would be former federal public servants and some would come from the private sector. What’s more, all of those people would know more about the core mandate of Burke’s department than than John Noseworthy.

Joan Burke is right.

No one can argue Noseworthy has a unique skill set.

He doesn’t.

And to her credit, at no point in her response to questions in the House did Burke actually say he did. 

Looks like someone foisted the guy on Burke and she got stuck trying to defend someone else’s pork-barrel decision.

The clue is in what Joan didn’t say.

- srbp -

Government cash give-aways #nlpoli

CBC’s Rob Antle has updated work done over the past couple of years on government give-aways to private sector businesses in the name of economic development:

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has funnelled more than $20 million into grants, loans and the direct costs of business-attraction initiatives that have provided a net benefit of fewer than 100 new jobs — a quarter of them seasonal.

Faithful readers will notice some familiar names in the story and the associated documents posted with the online version of it.

Kodiak got $8 million to expand its operations at Harbour Grace.  They laid off workers instead.That isn’t the only example of that sort of thing happening.

Then, there’s Dynamic Air Shelters,which has more government cash in it than many Crown corporations

None of this is surprising since Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province in Canada where the private sector prefers to be publicly funded.

It’s another way in which the provincial economy has grown increasingly fragile over the past eight years.

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Poll Math #nlpoli

Just for the heck of it, here’s the most recent CRA marketing poll adjusted to take out the misleading way CRA reports its clients poll numbers.

Here are the Conservative Party voter choice results from the fall of 2010 when Kathy Dunderdale took over the Tory leadership until the most recent poll in February.

The solid blue line is the percentage of respondents who picked Conservative.  It’s the real percentage, not the share of “decideds”.

The light blue dashed line is the actual percentage of eligible votes the Tories got in 2003 and 2007.  Yes, friends, 43% of those eligible to vote picked Tory.

The bottom line is the share of eligible votes the Dunderdale Tories got last October.  If you can’t quite pick it out, the number is 32%. It’s the lowest share of eligible vote any Tory government received and won re-election to government.  The previous record low was 33% in 1975

So while there’s nothing in these numbers that would send the Tories into a panic, the fact is that the Tories don’t have the kind of overwhelming electoral support that would allow them to do things like…say… slash public spending without risking a pretty significant turn around in popular support. 

Keep that in mind over the next few weeks.

You see while the Tories might be 20 points ahead of their nearest rival according to CRA, that really means that only an 11 percentage point swing puts the Tories in second place, behind the New Democrats.  Even a five point swing to the NDP would send shock waves through provincial politics.

Heck, if the Tories drop down in the public polling to numbers below 50% in the misleading way CRA reports them and you’d see people raise their eyebrows.

Slow down government spending to any great degree, chill economy with talk of lay-offs or – to be really daring – actually lay people off and you can bet there’ll be a change in the polling numbers.

It’s important to keep these things in perspective.

- srbp -

Dundernomics 101: Public Sector Employment Numbers #nlpoli

In an interview with CBC’s David Cochrane, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said that the public service has grown by more than 2,100 jobs in the past eight years and that total employment in the public service is about 9,000.

Well, not exactly.  That depends on what you consider to be public sector and “public service”.

As labradore noted last July, the entire public service sector in this province – federal, provincial, municipal and Crown corporations accounts for was more than that.

The growth in public sector employment alone 11,500 between 2006 and 2011.

If you look at figures for 2010, the totals are way more than what the Premier talked about:

In the first quarter of 2010, approximately 53,780 people in Newfoundland and Labrador worked in some portion of the provincial public sector: 11,550 in the provincial civil service, 20,400 in public health-care and social services establishments, 10,900 at Memorial University and the public colleges, and 10,930 employed by the various public school boards.*

Even if we allow that the Premier defined “public service” pretty narrowly in 2012,  you can see that in early 2010 there were 2,500 more people working in the public service,  that is, just working directly for the provincial government than the Premier currently claims work for government in total.

And yes, that is way more than the 2,100 jobs the Premier claims she and her colleagues added – in total – since 2003.

Confused?

Well, obviously the Premier is.

And if she doesn’t understand what is going on now and what has gone on in the recent past – stuff she actually lived through and decided already – then it is going to be very hard for her to understand whatever the current review comes up with.

Confusion about the basics also explains why the Premier could claim that 3% of what she herself has called almost $8.0 billion in public sector spending is about $100 million.

Three percent would be $240 million.

Two percent would be $160 million.

One point two five percent (that is 1.25%) comes out to $100 million.  And for anyone who is still unsure, 1.25% is closer to one percent than it is to two percent.

All those jobs come at a price.  Here’s another pretty chart from labradore to give you a sense of what those payroll costs are:

The figures are for early 2011 and the total bill hits about $2.65 billion.

None of that is about whether the jobs are needed or not, whether the people do good work, what the impact of any cuts would be or anything else related to it. 

This is just to establish so everyone can plainly see that what the Premier said everywhere last week on several occasions and what is actually going on are two completely different things.

To her credit, the Premier acknowledged in one interview that she had frigged up her explanations of things last week.

But that was before she told David Cochrane that temporary employees could be getting the heave-ho in order to meet her  targets.

That likely isn’t correct either, by the way.

So as we start the week, expect that the most common noise you will hear will be the gigantic garbage truck of government communications beep-beep-beeping as it backs up  - yet again - and tries to move forward  - yet again - again without turning the same information into road kill for the third or fourth time in the past seven days.

– srbp -

The truth is an absolute defence #nlpoli

Seems that the goings-on in the provincial legislature are weighing heavy on many brows at the end of the first week the place is back in session since this time last year.

Telegram editor Russell Wangersky has a column on it as does Bob Wakeham in the Saturday paper.

Wangersky writes about the way the House was recently.

Part of the blame is the failure of not reining in these Type-A bad boys and bad girls soon enough; I know that criticizing past Speakers of the House is frowned upon in the parliamentary system, but when Speakers are either too lax or too one-sided in dealing with abuses of House procedure, you can guarantee that frustration will build and tempers will boil.

Let’s be clear:  Harvey Hodder and Roger Fitzgerald were both incompetent and nakedly biased during their time as Speaker of the legislature.

In the ordinary course of things, in a properly functioning House, that is a contempt and one could be expected to be dragged in front of the members to answer for it.

But as with all defamation claims, the truth is an absolute defence.  That’s why your humble e-scribbler had no problem in writing and publicising the comment repeatedly.

Both were picked, one might readily surmise because they were biased and would comply with the wishes of the root cause of the problem in the House.

The current Speaker is another hand-picked one; Tommy Osborne was told to stand aside.  But we have yet to see him rule on a major issue.  Let’s give Ross Wiseman the chance to break the recent pattern and restore some dignity to the tattered Speaker’s robes.

Wangersky identifies the source of the problem as well:  it starts at the top..

But what neither he nor Wakeham get to is why the government uses the tactics they do or why the opposition members individually or collective engage in the buffoonery.

That’s where the real problem lies.

And suggesting that the party leaders need to sit their members down and give them a stern talking to?

Well, that just misses the point entirely. You have to get at the cause.  The goons and the buffoons – whether in the House or on Twitter or in the comments sections online– are just a symptom.

Still, the very fact that people are talking about the legislature and how it needs to improve is good.

That’s certainly a radical change from recent years.

- srbp -

CNLOPB announces 2012 call for bids on offshore parcels #nlpoli

From the offshore regulatory board:

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) announced today the details of a Call for Bids in the Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Area. Call for Bids NL12-01 (Area "C" – Laurentian Sub-basin) will consist of six parcels, which comprise 1,589,738 hectares.

Interested parties will have until 4:00 p.m. on November 1, 2012 to submit sealed bids for parcels offered in Call for Bids NL12-01. The sole criterion for selecting winning bids will be the total amount of money the bidder commits to spend on exploration of the respective parcel during Period I (the first period of a nine-year licence). The
minimum bid for each parcel offered is $1,000,000.

The C-NLOPB hereby wishes to inform prospective bidders for parcels NL12-01-01, NL12-01-02 and NL12-01-04 (these parcels are adjacent to the French Exclusive Zone around the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon,
France) that it has been advised by the Government of Canada that on May 17, 2005, the Government of Canada and the Government of the French Republic signed the Agreement between the Government of Canada and the
Government of the French Republic relating to the Exploration and Exploitation of Transboundary Hydrocarbon Fields (the Agreement). 

The Agreement provides a framework for the conservation and management of hydrocarbon resources in fields straddling the maritime boundary between the two countries.  The Agreement will enter into force on the date on which the Government of Canada and the Government of the French Republic have informed each other that all necessary internal requirements have been fulfilled. While France has ratified the Agreement, Canada is putting in place the domestic arrangements to allow it to proceed with its ratification process.

As a result, the Government of Canada has advised the C-NLOPB that if the Agreement enters into force prior to or during the term of a licence covering any of the above parcels, this necessarily will result in the application of additional terms and conditions for those parcels,
through legislation, regulations, amendments to licences or otherwise, in order to ensure compliance with the Agreement.

The C-NLOPB recommends to prospective bidders that they consult the text of the Agreement, which is available from the C-NLOPB upon request to information@cnlopb.nl.ca.

This Call for Bids contains provisions for rentals during the term of an exploration licence and during the term of any resulting significant discovery licence. This Call for Bids contains a sample exploration licence which incorporates a sample significant discovery licence.

These areas have been previously assessed to identify any mitigative measures that may be required in relation to exploration activity on these parcels.

Subject to Ministerial approval, successful bidders will be issued an exploration licence for a term of nine years; however, during Period I a well must be spudded to validate the licence for the full nine-year term.

Notification of any changes made to this Call for Bids will be posted to the C-NLOPB's website.

For a complete copy of the text of the Call for Bids, visit the C-NLOPB website at www.cnlopb.nl.ca.

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* paragraphing changed for online legibility.  SRBP added two links related to the Canada-France agreement on transboundary hydrocarbon resources

Kremlinology 38: what they left out #nlpoli

In a news release from the federal natural resources minister that heralded the future of Newfoundland and Labrador is energy, they didn’t mention the Lower Churchill once.

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Enough of the Political Day-Care #nlpoli

In some respects, it is a threat that would strike fear only into the hearts of Danny Williams’ Tories:

If this problem is not resolved today, you can expect me to absolutely vilify your minister on Monday morning on Open Line.

No broken limbs.

No financial ruin.

A call to Open Line.

That was enough for the ruling Tories to save the voice message containing the threat and to reveal it to the world as a question of privilege in the House of Assembly at the end of the first week  the legislature has been open since last spring.

The government house leader spoke of intimidation and threats and fear.  In a scrum with the media after , Joan Burke – to whom the threat was directed in early February – appeared shaken.  Premier Kathy Dunderdale, she of the haughty condescension and the cheap put down had a few words of derision for the Liberals and their bad words. The only thing the Tories didn’t do in all their melodramatic glory was stage a collective back-of-wrist-to-forehead swoon.

All wonderful play-acting on the part of the Tories. Former parole officer Joan Burke showed her unease with all the credibility  of Rob Ford after a visit from Mary Walsh in her Princess Warrior costume one morning.

All that was vintage Danny,too.  The aged drama queen  could hurl any sorts of petty, vicious. mean-spirited and contemptible invective at anyone any time.  Yet, a whisper of derision aimed vaguely in his direction would bring on the screams of self-righteous indignation.  The bully one minute, the victim the next in the fashion of the chickenshit hockey goon who specialises in taking the dive for the ref whenever someone stands up to him.

Playing acting, hysterics,  and, of course, the finest vintage hypocrisy on the planet.

Classic Danny-era politics.

But that really isn't the story here.

The story is that elected provincial politics remains the domain of the childish and immature eight years after the mean widdle kid and his allies took it there.

Danny made the House safe for buffoonery, contempt, accusation, insult and intimidation.  Jerome, Darin, Paul and Steve showed how well they learned their lessons with their performance on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. On Thursday, the whole gang on the government side joined in.

This week, though, the Tories proved the old saying that in politics you don’t have to be good, you just have to be better than the alternatives.

For their part, the New Democrats display in the House this week was less about childishness than inexperience combined with basic incompetence.  This is a caucus that has a long way to go and a lot to learn before they could ever be considered a political threat to anyone except themselves.

As for the Liberals, they confirmed this week that these are likely the last Liberals anyone will see sitting in a legislature in this province, at least with enough of them to occupy the official opposition benches.    A couple of them might survive the next election but the Liberal Party is more an historical artifact than a viable political force.

To make clear how politically inept they are, consider Jim Bennett’s asinine phone call.  Anyone who watched the Liberals in action this week would hardly be surprised by it. In making the call, Bennett showed he has no judgment. In defending the call as the enthusiastic defence of a constituent, Bennett shows he has no genuine understanding of just how ridiculous his behaviour was.

Yvonne Jones’ performance as opposition House leader on Thursday was equally cringe-worthy.  In her embarrassing defence of Jim Bennett, she showed no signs of understanding parliamentary procedure despite having sat in the House for the past 16 years.  During Question Period the rest of the week, she displayed little knowledge of anything else. How bad was Jones?  She made John Hickey look good.

The root of the problem for the Liberals remains the same as it has been for years:  no one is in charge. Generally, neither the leader, no one in the caucus, the senior caucus staff nor the party leadership has any idea of where to go or what to do to get there. They operate as a loose association of individuals lacking either a common purpose or the common sense to work together.

Dwight Ball is clearly the leader in name only.  His own performance over the past few months and in the House so far could be generously described as grossly ineffective. The only good thing for Ball is that he won’t face any challengers should he decide he wants to lead the party permanently.  The party is in such desperate shape that no one in his or her right mind would waste energy trying to bring the party back from the political dead.

For the rest of us, though, this week has been nothing more but a reminder that the provincial legislature and the provincial government have become little more than a very expensive day-care. 

That is not merely an uncomfortable thought.

It’s unacceptable.

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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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