It’s the Serbian accent that really makes it.
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The real political division in society is between authoritarians and libertarians.
Your eyes are not playing tricks on you.
That’s a DHC-4 Caribou, known to Americans as a C-7, upgraded with turboprops.
They are indeed 50 years old, but they still do the job dropping supplies to remote locations in Afghanistan.
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As a general background on 444 Squadron at Goose Bay, here is the text of a question posed in the House of Commons by member of parliament Marc Garneau and the reply from defence minister Peter MacKay dated June 19, 2012:
Marc Garneau Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC : With regard to 444 Combat Support Squadron: (a) how many aircraft were in the squadron on April 10, 2012; (b) how many aircraft were in the squadron on April 12, 2012; (c) is the aircraft which the Minister of National Defence references in his press release of April 12, 2012, an aircraft allocation which was not previously present at the squadron, or is it the restoration of an aircraft allocation which was previously seconded to other duties; (d) if the aircraft referenced in (c) was previously seconded to other duties, what were the nature and duration of those duties; (e) what is the mandate of the squadron; (f) in what orders, instructions, or other documents is that mandate set out; (g) what is the date or what are the dates of those orders, instructions, or other documents; and (h) did the mandate of 444 Squadron change at any point during the present calendar year, and if so, what was the nature and date of any such change in the mandate?
Peter MacKay Minister of National Defence: Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), on April 10, 2012, 444 Squadron had two CH-146 Griffon aircraft on strength.
With regard to (b), on April 12, 2012, 444 Squadron had three CH-146 Griffon aircraft on strength.
With regard to (c), the aircraft that the Minister of National Defence references in his press release of April 12, 2012, has restored 444 Squadron to the full establishment of three helicopters for which it was originally created.
With regard to (d), in October 2005, a CH-146 Griffon was transferred from 444 Combat Support Squadron to 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron, 8 Wing Trenton. The Griffon referenced in (c) was transferred to 424 Squadron to support the CH-149 Cormorant search and rescue fleet when it was recognized that the Cormorant fleet was not able to sustain primary search and rescue operations at four main operating bases alone. CH-146 Griffons continue to be stationed at 424 Squadron to support search and rescue. The aircraft that is now being used to provide a third CH-146 Griffon to 444 Combat Support Squadron was provided by 438 Tactical Aviation Squadron, Saint-Hubert.
With regard to (e), (f) and (g), the mandate of 444 Combat Support Squadron is to provide support to air operations at 5 Wing Goose Bay. This role is set out in Canadian Forces Organization Order 7697, dated October 18, 2001, which superseded Canadian Forces Organization Order 2.2.5.2, dated May 15, 1993.
The roles, tasks and responsibilities of a combat support squadron are further defined by the operational document 3010-7, A3 Tactical Aviation Readiness, Concept of Operations--Combat Support Capability, dated March 25, 2002. This document provides that combat support squadron roles are as follows: primary role, to provide rapid search and rescue response to air emergencies resulting from local military flying operations; secondary role, to provide administrative and utility airlift in support of Wing operations; and tertiary role, to provide national secondary search and rescue and civil assistance capabilities.
In its tertiary role, a combat support squadron can be expected to respond within 12 hours of notification. However, within the context of the Canadian Forces search and rescue response, this does not imply a mandated response posture. Such secondary search and rescue resources are considered for assistance only when circumstances permit, and are not accountable to the search and rescue system for the provision of a dedicated resource.
With regard to (h), the mandate of 444 Combat Support Squadron has remained to provide support to air operations at 5 Wing Goose Bay.
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ExxonMobil drew a line in the sand this morning, and the minister and I are here to draw another line in the sand, as far as this project is concerned.
Premier Kathy Dunderdale, 21 June 2012
Premier Kathy Dunderdale and natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy spent more than a half hour meeting with reporters on Thursday to talk about the provincial government’s position that a major module for the Hebron project must be built in the province.
Take a look at the scrum video. There is a lot of talk. There is a whole lot of talk. Some of it tough-sounding. There are threats.
But there is so much talk, and so much rambling, and so many threats that most of the talk is unconvincing.
A closer look at the history and the agreements pulls you toward the same conclusion.
Politicians spent a few hours this week harrumphing about the impact falling oil prices might have on the provincial budget this year.
The problem for the provincial government is not whether they got the price of oil right in their budget. They’ve been underestimating for years. This year might be an over-estimate. In the short-term, they’ve still got lots of budget smoke and mirrors to cover off most of the likely outcomes. There’s no cause for panic, yet.
The problem for the provincial government is bigger than the current price of oil. Most of this will be familiar to regular readers, but at times like this it is worth pulling it all together in one spot so that people can see the big picture.
Talk about making an arse of yourself in public.
Here’s Jack Harris in the House of Commons:
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Say one thing for Kathy Dunderdale, she tells it just like it is.
In response to questions about the qualifications of four people the provincial government recently appointed to the board of directors at Nalcor, the Premier said they didn’t need to know anything about electricity, oil and gas or any of those other things that the provincial energy corporation is doing.
Their job didn’t involve knowing anything.
Premier Kathy Dunderdale didn’t bring up crude oil prices at a scrum after her speech to the offshore industry association. Reporters did. [Link: CBC story and scrum video]
No harm. No foul. That’s the way these things work.
She accepted the way the reporters framed questions and went into her usual rant about fiscal responsibility and saying “no” and all that. She repeated the old Tory lie - and it is a lie - about the provincial government being bankrupt in 2003.
Not surprisingly, some media picked up on Dunderdale’s line about
"We are watching very carefully, and our deficit may end up at the end of the year larger than we forecasted .… We are keeping a very tight grip on the purse strings at the moment in terms of sanctioning spending that we announced in the budget,…”
No one should panic just yet.
Newfoundland and Labrador was the first Province in this country to introduce legislation on access to information…First piece of information out of her mouth.
… all I can say to you…is wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. … When your first piece of information is wrong, you can pretty much assume … that the rest of it is wrong as well.So what are the odds Glenda will retweet this post?
Mr. Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador was the first Province in this country to introduce legislation on access to information. We were rated number one in the country. The Centre for Law and Democracy does rankings of provinces that have this legislation, Mr. Speaker. Five provinces and the federal government have this legislation. Mr. Speaker, Newfoundland and Labrador is ranked second in the country, next to BC, on openness and access to information in this Province. [emphasis added]
Since its creation, Nalcor has existed in a perpetual conflict of interest of one kind or another.
SRBP raised the issue of conflict of interest 2006 when Dean Macdonald – then chair of Nalcor’s board – accepted an appointment to the board of a company Nalcor was doing or was planning to do business with.
Nalcor has been in another sort of conflict of interest in it acted as lead negotiator for the provincial government and as an oil company at the same time. On the one hand its interest should be in maximising benefits to the province while on the other hand, its interest should be to lower costs in order to maximise corporate profits. The two things cannot exist side-by-side as the Hebron agreement demonstrates.
Again, SRBP pointed this out in 2006 when the Hebron talks fell apart and on several occasions subsequently.
Time hasn’t changed much.
2050 hrs – Mulligan Update – scroll to the end
Leo Abbass is the mayor of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
He is a staunch of supporter of the Conservative Party. He is such a staunch supporter of the Conservative Party – federal or provincial – that he can sometimes take on the appearance of the Pushme-Pullyou from Doctor Dolittle.
PREMIER DUNDERDALE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, somewhere in this process I will hopefully have the opportunity to demonstrate to people where their requests for information come from, and that is going to be very eye-opening to the people of the Province. Ordinary citizens who look to access information from this government do so readily, Mr. Speaker. They do it in record time, Mr. Speaker, at little or no cost. There are lots of vexatious requests for information, lots of phishing expeditions, Mr. Speaker, but they do not come from ordinary people here in the Province.
The temperature in the House of Assembly is not even cooled down and Tory legislator Paul Lane (Mount Pearl South) is likely to find himself in the middle of a controversy involving the disclosure of personal information that is supposed to be protected under the Access to Information and Protection of Personal Privacy Act.
Lorraine Michael should bear in mind that some very famous Newfoundland and Labrador politicians found themselves accused of defaming someone.
That’s really the essence of the current question of privilege Government House Leader Jerome Kennedy levelled against her last week. Kennedy knows the law well enough to know that what she did is a matter that he or Felix Collins ought to have taken to a courtroom on Duckworth Street. Kennedy likely also knows the law well enough to realise he stands virtually no hope of getting anything from a Supreme Court justice except the back of his or her hand. That’s why he is trying to win in the kangaroo court where he controls a majority of the votes.
To some people the provincial Conservatives are in fine political shape. They are so firmly entrenched in power that they can afford to piss people off, to polarise the electorate.
There is always time to recover.
Yeah well, when you humble e-scribbler started predicting that Danny Williams would not run for a third term, plenty of people thought that was crazy too, and said so. 18 months before the event it seemed impossible. Even a few weeks and days in advance, the Old Man looked like he planned to stay until he died in office.
Funny how things change.
From a second rebuttal to justice minister Felix Collins, right (not exactly as illustrated) from the Center for Law and Democracy:
In a speech to the House of Assembly on 14 June 2012, Collins used derogatory terms to refer to CLD, and claimed we had financial motives in publicising our research. CLD is no stranger to working in difficult political environments. Over the past year, we have conducted projects in Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Somalia and many other countries that are known for being particularly hostile to democratising forces. However, this is the first time that the integrity and professionalism of our organisation have ever been directly attacked by a political leader. [Emphasis added]
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MONTREAL, June 15, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ - Resolute Forest Products (NYSE: RFP) (TSX: RFP) today announced that it will indefinitely idle the Mersey newsprint mill located in Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. The facility, owned by Bowater Mersey Paper Company Limited (BMPCL), is a joint venture between Resolute (51%) and the Washington Post (49%). The indefinite idling will be effective on Sunday, June 17, 2012.
"The mill produces newsprint primarily for export markets and is unable to compete due to declining prices in those markets, caused mainly by unfavorable currency fluctuations, stated Richard Garneau, President and Chief Executive Officer of Resolute. "The decision to indefinitely idle production at the facility was difficult as we are mindful of the impact it will have on affected employees and local communities. We have worked diligently with the provincial government, our employees, union leadership and other stakeholders but simply could not overcome the inherent challenges."
The Company remains committed to customer service and delivery of high-quality products and will work closely with customers to ensure a smooth transition.
This indefinite idling will reduce capacity by approximately 250,000 metric tons of newsprint. Approximately 320 employees at the Mersey paper mill, associated woodlands, Oakhill sawmill and Brooklyn Power Corporation will be affected by this action. Resolute will continue to work collaboratively with governments to ensure that impacted employees are provided support during this transition.
The Company is currently assessing the feasibility of selling all of its assets in Nova Scotia, including its private timberlands, the paper mill, sawmill and Brooklyn Power.
...
For further information:
Media and Others
Seth Kursman
Vice President, Corporate Communications, Sustainability and Government Affairs
514 394-2398
seth.kursman@resolutefp.com
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There’s something about this frivolous and vexatious thing that caught people’s attention right from the start.
Under the provincial Conservatives’ new secrecy laws, a cabinet minister can refuse to disclose information if he or she thinks the request is “frivolous or vexatious”. (sec. 43.1)
Leave aside the idea that a politician gets to decide on who gets information and who doesn’t. As we learned from the Cameron Inquiry, Danny Williams and his political staff vetted access to information requests and blocked stuff they didn’t want to hand over or blocked people they didn’t want to give stuff to. The law didn’t matter. They refused. They stonewalled. They used every other trick in the book.
But that’s a whole other issue.
Let’s just look at this curious choice of words and see what they reveal.
The more they talk, the worse it gets.
In the House of Assembly on Thursday, justice minister Felix Collins gave some examples of what he would consider "frivolous and vexatious” requests for information.
Now before we go any further, we should explain what those words usually mean to lawyers. After all, Collins is a lawyer so he should understand the concept.
This definition is taken from a 2010 Ontario Court of Appeal decision in a case called Pickard v. London Police Services Board (canlii.org via Morton’s Musings):
[19] A frivolous appeal is one readily recognizable as devoid of merit, as one having little prospect of success. The reasons may vary. A vexatious appeal is one taken to annoy or embarrass the opposite party, sometimes fuelled by the hope of financial recovery to relieve the respondent’s aggravation.
One of the examples, Collins gave was of a person who asked for copies of e-mails sent and received by seven people over the course of year. Frivolous and vexatious harrumphed the law school graduate. And now under Bill 29 a cabinet minister can dismiss such a request out of hand and save time and money.
There are a few problems with Felix’s example.
Justice minister Felix Collins and his colleagues are having a bad week. Felix and his buds want to limit public access to government information. They want to make it harder for people to find out what they are doing with public money.
People don’t like it and they’ve been making that clear to them.
Felix and his friends got especially angry when an assessment of their new secrecy rules showed that what Felix and company were claiming wasn’t true. far from being a model of openness, transparency and accountability, the Conservatives were taking massive steps backward.
So infuriated did the Conservatives get that they issued a statement late Wednesday night taking issue with the CBC report. The statement. It read, in part:
The Department of Justice has reviewed the global ranking of countries assembled by the centre. What the news story does not make clear is that most countries that ranked the highest or strongest on this list are third world countries. Many of these countries are listed on travel alert watch lists, have known human rights abuses and high crime rates.
So?
“Oil and democracy do not easily mix,” wrote political scientist Michael Ross in The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations, his 2012 study of the impact that income from oil development has on governments around the world.
Regular readers will recall this idea from an earlier post.
Countries that are rich in petroleum generally have lower economic growth and less democracy that countries that don’t have oil revenues. Ross puts this down, in part, to a relationship that citizens see between government revenue and government spending.
Citizens in oil-producing countries, though, cannot directly observe how much their government collects in oil revenues. They must rely on the government and the media for their information. If they live in a democracy, the information is probably available.
Probably available.
That assumes, of course, that the media in those democracies can find out the information and publish it.
CBC demolished the false claims a couple of Conservative cabinet ministers made in order to justify their efforts to destroy the public’s access to government information.
Justice minister Felix Collins claimed that they had to cut down the number of information requests, which he said numbered in the thousands each year. Service NL minister Paul Davis said in the House of Assembly: “"You know, they make countless and countless requests for information…”.
Democracy is a beautiful thing.
The people of Newfoundland and Labrador are witnessing its full beauty in the filibuster against the Conservative government’s latest assault on openness, transparency and accountability.
Here’s a map showing the possible seat results for an election where the Tories wind up with 41% of the vote, the NDP get 38% and the Liberals get 20%. That’s basically the next public opinion poll from CRA if the current trending continues.
Rarely does one cabinet minister put on not one or two spectacular displays of incompetence in one session of the legislature, but justice minister Felix Collins has done that this spring in less than a month.
“We will amend the Access to Information legislation to enhance the transparency of government actions and decisions.”
Danny Williams, Leader of the Opposition, February 2003
There truly is a greater fraud than a promise unkept. That would be the promise that is consciously and deliberately broken.
In February 2003, the provincial Conservatives – then in opposition – pledged to increase public access to government information. The latest round of changes to the provincial access to information law suggests they are continuing their practice of hiding as much information they can.
Here are some examples of the sorry provincial Connie legacy of Freedom from Information:
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Last Friday, your humble e-scribbler gazed into the old crystal ball and produced a possible poll result if the recent trends continued.
If you reported them the way Corporate Research Associates does, you’d get the Tories at 42%, NDP at 38% and Liberals at 20%.
Wonder what that might mean to seat counts if you had that as an election result?
As a rule, when a cabinet minister speaks publicly about a private sector company’s significant financial problems, things are not good.
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the world on Friday and Saturday that Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited had a heavy bank debt and an unfunded pension liability of about $80 million. Kennedy said the mill that hasn’t made money since at least 2006.
Things are so bad that Kennedy that he expected Joe Kruger was coming for a meeting to tell the provincial government he was closing the west coast paper mill.
So why was Kennedy gabbing about stuff he’d known about for some time but kept to himself?
"I would go to an election tomorrow on these numbers," Premier Kathy Dunderdale told reporters on Thursday. "You know, these aren't bad numbers. Look where my opposition is."
Fair enough. They are pretty good. It’s the trending that sucks.
But if Kathy Dunderdale is so confident in her strong public support and in the rightness of her Muskrat Falls cause, maybe she’d drop the writ and let the public settle the issue.
It can be a matter of days or weeks after it's been tabled before a piece of legislation makes it to the floor of the House of Assembly for second reading.
This interval is the crux of what we're talking about here today.
“Premier Dunderdale has the highest personal popularity of all Atlantic Canadian Premiers” the Tory faithful tweeted and retweeted on Thursday night to help ward off the chill of recent polls. It was the 21st century equivalent of clicking their ruby slippers together and whispering that there was no place like home.
Sadly for the darlings, they did not have Toto and this is not Kansas, anyway.
The toll the Tories mentioned came from Angus-Reid. In it, 46% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians approved of Kathy Dunderdale’s performance while 44% disapproved. She may score the highest of the Atlantic Premiers but with the population evenly divided on her, she is not doing all that well. As your humble e-scribbler reminded them, what they were really saying is that their hero du jour just didn’t suck as much as Darrell Dexter. Big deal.
Anyone who was wondering why the Tories ramped up the attacks on the NDP this week can now find the answer. The clue to the future is that the Tory attacks were pathetically weak and ineffective. Rather than deliver a killer virus, all the Tories did was help the NDP build up their immune system.
Bad move.
The news: the provincial Conservatives had the support of 34% of respondents in the last Corporate Research Associates poll, about 11 percentage points ahead of the provincial New Democrats.
These are numbers you get if you take out the CRA skew of talking only about decideds. Here’s a picture of the party choice numbers, including the undecideds since last year, just so we are all on the same page.
That black line is the undecideds.
Now here’s what it all means.
The best answer to the Old Man’s latest bullshit about his mine and Muskrat Falls is what he used to say to companies that wanted to get the province’s non-renewable resources at a bargain:
And on a related note, remember what he said to established Labrador miners in 2006/2007:
"We do acknowledge that this is a huge company which makes a big contribution," Williams told CBC News.
"By the same token, they also have to understand that we have to get a fair return for the people of this province."
Alderon should expect to pay the commercial rates for electricity set by the public utilities board using the current rate-setting approach, not the taxpayer subsidised give-away Danny set up before he ran from office.
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Wonder no more, dear friends.
Stop scratching your chin.
Now we know why Nalcor and Emera have not signed a deal now some four or five months after saying they were so close to finishing their negotiations that they didn’t need to set a new deadline.
In advance of the latest Corporate Research Associates poll, check out the SRBP post on the February results.
Here’s the Tory voter choice number, over time, compared to actual vote results in 2003 and 2007 and in 2011.
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Talk of financial problems at Eastern Health brought to mind an operational review of the former Health Care Corporation of St. John’s, completed by the Hay Group and released in May 2002.
Go back to the official record of the House of Assembly – Hansard – and you’ll quickly be struck by the similarity between the way the opposition approached the issue then and now.
Consider these comments by Ross Wiseman, the Liberal who crossed the floor to the Tories and later served as health minister:
The union says, once again nurses and other health professionals in this Province are holding their breath to see if their jobs are going to be lost.
Fear of lost jobs. Wiseman asking the minister if he will reject the report.
All too familiar.
Not surprisingly, Kruger issued an ultimatum on Tuesday to workers at its Corner Brook mill. CBC quoted the message from the company to the union in an online story:
"The first step to go forward will be to obtain a firm committment [sic] from employees by achieving a satisfactory agreement that will allow CBPPL to be competitive in the market," said the Kruger statement.
"Given the critical situation of the mill, this collective agreement will have to be reached by June 15 so that we can quickly move on to the next crucial step, which will be to submit the pension plan funding relief measures to a second vote and hopefully be able to apply them before the mill’s situation deteriorates any further."
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As an astute reader pointed out in a n e-mail Tuesday morning, the Hebron-Muskrat Falls connection is not really as important these days as the the connection between the future of the Kruger mill at Corner Brook and the plan to develop the Lower Churchill.
Manitoba Hydro International noted that connection in their review of part of the Muskrat Falls project for the public utilities board. In instance, a relatively modest change in the project cost coupled with the closure of the Corner Brook mill, erased the Muskrat Falls advantage:
Also, should the existing pulp and paper mill cease operations, and its generation capacity be available for use on the system (approximately 880 GWh), and should the capital costs of both the Muskrat Falls Generating Station and Labrador-Island Link HVdc projects increase by 10%, the CPW for the two Options would be approximately equal.
Nalcor has no export markets for most of the electricity from Muskrat Falls.
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy is right:
“There's obviously an obligation…on any member in this house when presenting a petition to ensure that accuracy, to ensure that statements made to this house are ones that can be relied on ... This is a very serious matter."
The obligation for accuracy doesn’t just apply to petitions. It applies to everything a member of the legislature says.
And if the member of the House is also a cabinet minister or the Premier, then the obligation for accuracy goes up another few notches.
Dunderdale said she expected there would be a second vote on the pension restructuring plan.So while the pols are laying on the tough talk in a fairly obvious effort to sway the mulligan vote, what the rest of us should wonder is how much public money the politicians plan to pour into the mill to keep it running.
Once those issues are resolved, she said, the government is committed to stepping in to ensure that the mill is sustainable.
In a column in the weekend Ottawa Citizen, Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute made a convincing argument for investing provincial government oil revenue in an investment fund:
Natural resource revenues, by contrast, gyrate wildly. The temptation, when prices are high, is to pretend those revenues will always exist, causing a cycle of booms and busts in public finances. Moreover if you acquire recurrent obligations on the basis of one-time asset sales, an inevitable day of reckoning comes. The natural resource is gone and you have a lot of public servants you can’t pay and a lot of people reliant on public services you can no longer afford.
This problem is resolved by using the money to pay off debt and then investing the rest and only spending the fund’s returns.
Ah yes, the temptation to spend irresponsibly – i.e. unsustainably - followed by the day of reckoning.
Sounds familiar.
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In the wake of the latest revelations of financial mismanagement in the provincial government, SRBP has been looking at some of the possible contributing developments over the past decade or more.
Last week, SRBP noted that it appears the provincial government broke up the treasury board secretariat around 2007. They sent some of its bits off to one department and put the rump of its administration – about the size it had been in 1968 - under the finance department, as it had been before the 1973 reforms introduced by the Moores administration.
At around the same time, the provincial cabinet started a series of massive annual increases in public spending that Premier Kathy Dunderdale admits is unsustainable.
And the same cabinet also ballooned the size of the provincial public service. Again, it’s something that Kathy Dunderdale admitted was something she and her colleagues now had to sort out.
These three things are connected.
Even if the government loosened the constraints of its internal financial controls, there are other agencies that have a role to play in keeping an eye on the public treasury.
The provincial government is giving $50,000 to a company in Grand bank that makes inflatable shelters for industrial and emergency use, according to a news release issued Friday.
Dynamic Air Shelters Ltd. will [use the money to] engage the services of Advanta Industrial Design Group Inc. to conduct staff training and improve the company’s design and production processes. The company will also upgrade its computer systems and drafting software program.
Since 2006, Dynamic Air Shelters has received more than $4.0 million from the provincial and federal government.
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ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil have won a North American Free Trade Agreement appeal of a 2004 offshore board regulation that sets the amount of research and development money oil companies operating offshore must make in the province.
They filed the appeal in 2007
That means the oil companies will have to pay the much lower fixed amount for research and development accepted by the provincial government in the Hebron final agreement.
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Memorial University economist Dr. Wade Locke, has concluded Muskrat Falls is the least-cost option by a factor of 2.2 billion dollars.
It is interesting to me that the most vocal and ever predictable critics of the Muskrat Falls development were quick in their attempts to disparage the work of Dr. Locke – something they had not done previously when Dr. Locke has presented on, for example, the province’s financial position.The Premier liked what Wade had to say because it matched what she wanted. Well, these days, Kathy is in the same spot as the unnamed “most vocal and predictable critics” she found interesting six months ago.
CBC’s online story takes a weird tack on the tale of recent financial and management problems at Eastern Health, the province’s largest regional health authority.
CBC headlines its story “Hospital Tim’s never came close to predict profit”.
That’s true but the full story is so much more interesting. While the profit may have been less than originally predicted, the facts are the outlet worked as intended for most of the time its been in operation: it made money.
The losses, though, are spectacular and recent.
From the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board:
The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) announced today that the Hebron Development Application is approved.
At its April 27, 2012 meeting, the Board approved the Hebron Benefits Plan and Development Plan subject to the conditions outlined in Decision Report 2012.01. In its deliberation with respect to these plans the Board considered advice provided in the Benefits Plan and Development Plan staff analysis as well as recommendations resulting from the Report of the Hebron Public Review Commissioner.
Under the Atlantic Accord Implementation Acts, Fundamental Decisions of the Board must be ratified by both governments before they can be implemented. The Board’s Approval of the Hebron Development Plan was a Fundamental Decision. The approval of the Development Plan by both governments now enables ExxonMobil Canada Properties Limited to proceed with development of the Hebron Field, which is estimated to contain 707 million barrels of oil.
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Newly minted Premier Kathy Dunderdale from her 20 Questions interview in the Telegram, December 24, 2010:
Still, Dunderdale maintains being premier was never on her radar.
She says she’s not the kinds of person who envisions things 10 years down the road, but prefers to live in the now.
“If you live your life more in the moment, the rest of it will work its way out.”
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Mr. Speaker, if the members opposite think that the level of scrutiny that we do over a $3 billion expenditure in health care is to take every single health authority and work down line by line by line through every piece of that, I do not know what they are thinking over there.
Health and community services minister Susan Sullivan, House of Assembly, May 30, 2012
Let’s hope that health minister Susan Sullivan doesn’t sit on the treasury board.
That’s a committee of cabinet created under the Financial Administration Act. Passed by the House of Assembly in 1973, the Financial Administration Act was one of several great reforms of public administration in the province introduced by the Conservatives after they defeated Joe Smallwood and the Liberals in the 1972 general election.
Every provincial government and the federal government has a treasury board. It is typically the most important or one of the most important cabinet committee by virtue of its control over money and people within government. Treasury board is also the only cabinet committee whose existence is set down by law.
The treasury board’s main job is to oversee how the provincial government and its agencies spend public money.
As often as they say it, the facts don’t bear out the claim some politician like to make about the provincial public debt.
The Premier did it again in the House of Assembly Tuesday evening. We can all give her a bit of a break since she was on her feet and obvious her blood was up.
But still, this is an old claim that is as false now as it was when the Tories first started using it a few years ago. And frankly, Kathy Dunderdale should have a better grasp of the facts. Otherwise what some people think is visionary leadership is just another delusional politician on a rant. Heaven knows our province has been saddled with enough of those.
If the provincial government can actually get control on its spending and head down the road to management reform along the lines that Eastern Health’s Vicki Kaminski talked about on Tuesday, then they are headed down the right road.
Basic public relations problem.
Say one thing.
Say another thing.
A few weeks later, do something else, twice over.
For starters, here’s the what Premier Kathy Dunderdale said in the House of Assembly in March about job cuts and the provincial budget:
Here’s what Premier Kathy Dunderdale said on March 6 about possible job cuts in the provincial public sector (emphasis added in all):
Mr. Speaker, we have not talked about cuts….Front-line health and education services will be exempted.
Here’s what education minister Clyde Jackman said on March 29:
I spoke at an NLTA meeting a little while ago; I said to them, we are looking at our budgets across departments, but the Premier said there will be no frontline cuts.
And then there’s what health minister Susan Sullivan said on May 28, the day before Eastern health’s planned announcement:
Mr. Speaker, our resolve has not changed. There will not be any cuts in programs and services. The announcement that you will hear tomorrow will lay out some particular initiatives that Eastern Health wishes to embark upon, but we have made our commitment firm to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador; there will not be cuts in programs and services, Mr. Speaker.
Do those words all mean the same thing?
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For those getting ready for this afternoon’s announcement by Eastern Health, here are some figures from Statistics Canada on employment in the health care sector in the province from October 2003 to December 2011.
A new poll by CROP (via Paul Wells) shows that Quebeckers support having students at Quebec’s post-secondary colleges and universities pay more for their education.
What’s more, they think that the law which tries to force protesting students back to class is a bad idea.
Take these results together and we begin to see the wisdom of crowds — not the ones in the street, necessarily, but of the whole population. Opinions are divided, but in the main, Quebecers:
• think it is more legitimate to ask students to contribute more to their education than to say they have paid enough.
• believe Law 78 asks for things a government should be able to ask of its citizens — i.e., that it’s a legitimate law;
• don’t think Law 78 will make student refuseniks more likely to cough up their tuition money — i.e., they don’t think it’s a pertinent law.
About 30 years ago, Kathy Dunderdale started out her political career fighting against fisheries reform.
Last December, she scolded fish plant workers in Marystown for turning out 18 weeks work that would have qualified them for employment insurance and kept their plant open.
She continued her fight against fisheries reform over the weekend in a series of interviews with national media about the federal government’s proposed changes to the employment insurance system.
Premier Kathy Dunderdale should appoint municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien to handle intergovernmental affairs.
While Dunderdale is busily lobbing hand grenades at the federal government, Fairity is taking a very different attitude:
In a scrum on Wednesday, May 23, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said:
“What we are talking about, in fact, is a two hour window here.”
In the House of Assembly on Thursday, May 24, Premier Kathy Dunderdale said:
I have asked Minister MacKay for an explanation of the gap that occurred on January 30 in the search when there was a five-hour period that they were not engaged in the search. The answers are not satisfactory; the protocols need to be changed.
There is no five-hour period in the Burton Winters search that matches whatever Kathy Dunderdale is talking about in that exchange in the House of Assembly. In fact, it’s pretty hard for anyone with even a sketchy knowledge of the events in Makkovik in late January and early February to figure out what Kathy Dunderdale is getting on with.
“In the fishery of the very near future,” SRBP wrote in February, “fishing subsidies like federal employment insurance wage subsidies, state-sponsored marketing schemes and the stalinist political control of the economy… will all go by the wayside. International trade talks are already laying the groundwork for massive change.”
The very near future arrived this week.
In an interview with CBC’s David Cochrane, federal intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue called Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s bluff about a public inquiry into the death of Burton Winters.
Penashue said:
"This is a legally initiated process and everyone would have to co-operate."
Dunderdale has criticised the federal government over Winters’ death. That’s despite Dunderdale acknowledging – eventually – that provincial officials had responsibility for conducting the search for Winters when he went missing. As recently as Tuesday, Dunderdale continued to try and smear Winters’ blood on federal officials.
Municipal affairs minister Kevin “Fairity” O’Brien stood in the House of Assembly on Wednesday “to highlight the continued progress in implementing the Provincial Waste Management Strategy in our province.”
Wonderful stuff it could have been.
The only problem is Fairity really didn’t provide an update.
Via Monkey Cage comes a link to a study that shows that the average speech comprehension level in the United States Congress has dropped a full grade level in the past seven years. It’s dropped to 10.6 from 11.5.
Over the past 16 years, the Republicans and Democrats have traded places when it comes to scoring lower grade levels on the comprehension scale. The party scores were never more than 0.2 or 0.4 apart, but since 2006, the Republicans score lower than the Democrats.
Political leaders have a moral duty to the people they serve.
There are times for politicians to fight for their constituents.
And there are times when responsible political leaders must help a community to heal. In the wake of the tragedy in Makkovik, Premier Kathy Dunderdale should be helping people to come to terms with a tragedy. Instead, the Premier is abusing people who have put their trust in her to do the right thing.
A few days ago, Stephen Taylor posted a table from a 2010 study that showed how big Quebec’s public debt is compared to that of countries around the world.
The results weren’t pretty.
A similar comparison for Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t pretty either.
One of the more curious comments from provincial Conservative supporters lately has been the claim that they support the current Connie administration provincially because they – the supporters – are fiscal conservatives.
labradore has already challenged one such claim with a look at the provincial labour force figures. Here’s the chart from labradore’s post. It shows the public sector as a share of the total provincial work force:
Yes, friends, the “fiscally conservative” provincial government has produced a massive increase in the size of the provincial public service since 2007. And, lest any of these “fiscal conservatives” try to justify the Connie actions with talk about the unions’ favour excuse – catch-up – notice that the chart shows that Newfoundland and Labrador had no catching up to do.
While you are at it recall that the current labour force in the province is the largest it has been for quite a while. So the current “fiscally conservative” provincial Conservatives employ a larger percentage of a larger labour force in a very fiscally unconservative way.
But there’s more to it than that.
The Premier’s communications - Glenda Power - sent a couple of twitter messages to CBC’s Curtis Rumboldt on Friday. She was apparently correcting him on the impact closing Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited would have on the Muskrat Falls project.
Simply put, that’s not true.
Kathy Dunderdale is apparently off to Ottawa. According to voice of the cabinet minister:
There's no word on when the Premier will be flying to Ottawa, but according to the MHA for Mount Pearl South [Paul Lane], it will be soon. Representatives from the Premier's office have confirmed that Dunderdale has requested to meet with the feds sometime in the near future.
Meanwhile the Fisheries Minister says he's making a separate visit. Darin King says he'll be meeting with his federal counterpart to express concerns over the continued cuts in Newfoundland and Labrador. King says the fishing industry, search and rescue, and everything attached to the sea is of importance. He says the fight is not over.
She needs to work out some “fustrations”, maybe.
More likely, she is trying on the “Fighting Newfoundlander” suit to see if it fits. The fact she is trying it on – after explicitly rejecting it when she took over from Danny – is another symptom of the basic problem. If she had a plan, a set of priorities, an agenda, then she wouldn’t have the problems in the first place that are causing her frustrations.
Another Premier tried this once.
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Kruger, the owners of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper, are reassessing the viability of the mill in the west coast city on Friday after unions at the mill rejected a company proposal to restructure the company’s pension plans.
In a statement issued Friday, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy said:
We are facing a grave situation, one which could potentially lead to the closure of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited. Kruger is now reassessing the viability of its operations in Corner Brook. This obviously could have very serious ramifications for the employees and the entire Corner Brook area.
The provincial government wants the company and the unions to negotiate a settlement to the dispute.
Built in 1923, the mill at Corner Brook was the second paper making operation in Newfoundland after the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Corporation mill at Grand Falls. AbitibiBowater announced that it would close the mill at Grand Falls in 2008. The provincial government expropriated the mill and all of AbitibiBowater’s assets in the province before they could shut the mill. Ab closed its Stephenville operation in 2005.
The Corner Brook mill is heavily subsidised by the provincial government. It is the largest private sector employer on the west coast of the island.
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Premier Kathy Dunderdale is frustrated.
“What is it that we have to do down here to get your attention?” she asked, rhetorically, on Thursday.
She expressed that frustration in the House of Assembly in response to questions from Liberal leader Dwight Ball and in a scrum with reporters. Dunderdale aimed her barbs most especially at defence minister Peter MacKay.
If the Premier is having trouble getting her message through to the federal government, attacking an influential cabinet minister in public for something he didn’t do won’t help matters.
It just piles bad tactics on top of flawed strategies.
This one is for all the musicians…band musicians, that is.
The bands of the guards regiments of the Household Division are among the best bands of their type, made up of the some of the finest musicians in the world.
Here’s a massed rehearsal recorded earlier this month and posted to youtube. leaving the music to one side for a moment, it’s fascinating to watch the director and how he conducts the rehearsal. Watch how the musicians respond to his direction and how they adjust and adapt.
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Justice minister Felix Collins offered a spectacular example on Wednesday of how serious is the current administration’s political problem.
Collins makes a complete arse of himself trying to explain why he and his colleagues are refusing to act on a promise they made in 2007 to introduce legislation that would protect public servants who disclose information - in the public interest - about wrongdoing in government.
The video of Collins’ scrum with reporters is worth watching
Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy in the House of Assembly on Wednesday explaining some of the financial aspects of Muskrat Falls:
The one thing I need to make clear though to the people of this Province that any equity investment in Nalcor is on the basis of the project being sanctioned. The money stays in the Department of Natural Resources and is then disbursed to Nalcor as money is spent, Mr. Speaker. Also, it does not go to the net debt of the Province because it is a capital investment. In this particular case, Mr. Speaker, we have a revenue generating asset which can produce monies and revenues for this Province, along with hydroelectricity, for 100 years. [Emphasis added]
In the first bit he describes how the cash goes from the provincial government to Nalcor. That would be the $2.9 billion they plan to spend on the dam itself.
The problem comes with that bit in bold print.
Few people who pay attention to public life in this province will forget the abuse the provincial government - particularly former Premier Danny Williams - heaped upon Max Ruelokke for having the temerity to be a better candidate to head the offshore regulatory board than the guy the premier wanted to stuff in the job.
Ruelokke had to sue the provincial government to force them to do what the law directed.
So detestable was the provincial government’s – i.e. Danny’s - behaviour that the judge who heard the case stated in his decision:
Having considered the above, I find that the conduct of the Respondent (in relation to the Applicant) has been callous and “reprehensible” and is deserving of “reproof and rebuke”. Accordingly, I will exercise my discretion and award the Applicant his solicitor and own client costs.
We may be headed for the same mess again.
For those who remember the post from 2009 on problems some paratroops have had exiting the aircraft, here’s one that makes the old heart stop.
There is no audio so it is hard to tell exactly what happened. In any event, the fellow dangling on the end of the fouled static line and parachute assembly eventually gets to live thanks to the Hung Up Parachutist Release Assembly.
While the soldier is dangling, the crew in the back of the transport break out the HUPRA parachute rig and hook it onto him. They eventually release him and the guy floats to the ground. You can see the red nylon of the HUPRA pack just as the guy floats downward. His landing was likely a hard one, but at least he lived.
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Four years from now, Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation and Hydro-Quebec will automatically renew the 1969 power contract for another 25 years.
Everyone knows that, surely.
What you may not recall, though, is that 2016 is the year that the federal government will renew its annual payment of $8.0 million to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador under Term 29 of the Terms of Union.
In 1996, the provincial government negotiated an advance on the Term 29 payments totalling $130 million. Here’s the quote from the 1996 budget speech:
We will receive $50 million of the advance this year. The federal government has agreed to provide us with another $80 million over the three year period.
Of course, while people call them Term 29 payments, they are actually the amount set by the commission appointed under Term 29 to study the financial position of the Newfoundland and Labrador government within the first decade after Confederation.
The commission was to recommend “the form and scale of additional financial assistance, if any, that may be required by the Government of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador to enable it to continue public services at the levels and standards reached subsequent to the date of Union, without resorting to taxation more burdensome, having regard to capacity to pay, than that obtaining generally in the region comprising the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.”
The legislative authority for the payment comes from the Newfoundland Additional Financial Assistance Act.
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The townie Tories are all a-twitter over federal Dipper leader Thomas Mulcair’s endorsement of Sheilagh O’Leary for mayor of Sin Jawns in the next municipal election.
On Monday, reporters asked Premier Kathy Dunderdale about Mulcair’s comments. Here’s a bit of what she said, via CBC:
"I don't know how somebody who doesn't live here, is not on the ground, doesn't appreciate the demographics to start with and the particular issues, could be offering advice on who is best suited," said Dunderdale outside the House of Assembly Monday. [capitalization corrected]
“So the frig what?” would seem like a better, i.e. appropriately dismissive, response. Instead Kath used a comment that begs for the retort that she does it all time: talks about stuff when she doesn’t “appreciate the demographics” or understand what is going on.
An innovative cover of “Somebody that I used to know”…
And, the inevitable parody of the creative cover that is creative in a whole other way…
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The Telegram’s James McLeod took some time during a recent Estimates committee hearing on Monday to dash off a post at his blog about the ceremonial aspects of the legislature proceedings.
He mentions the number of items in the House of Assembly chamber that came as presents from other provinces after Confederation. He finishes off with this bit:
Arguably the coolest gift of them all came from B.C. They gave us a massive gold mace. The mace is so cool, it actually gets a parade every day when the House is sitting - it's a small parade, just the Speaker, and a handful of other folks, but still, a parade! You can read more about the mace here, including the old wood one that sits outside the public galleries.
The wooden mace on display in the public gallery of the House of Assembly is the one used in the first parliament in Newfoundland in 1832. How it got there is a story in itself.