The tone at the top - federal version #nlpoli

Marni Soupcoff has got it right about the campaign finance scandal currently swirling around federal intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue (pronounced Pen-ah-shoe-ay).  People should be concerned about the money Peter Penashue used to get elected:

The part that stands out is the involvement of a federal member of parliament who seems to have, in the absence of an ability to balance his own campaign books, used money that was meant for the Innu community to get himself elected. Not only has he has not been taken to task for this by his Conservative government. He remains a cabinet minister. Now that the media has discovered the loan and Mr. Penashue’s questionable campaign spending, he is finally being asked the sort of questions for which Innu residents surely would like some answers.

As Chief Justice Derek Green reminded us in his report on the the House of Assembly patronage scandal, the way officials and politicians respond to issues such as accountability is set by the tone at the top.

Soupcoff said:

If the Conservatives truly believed in maintaining a government of principle, they would be demanding answers from Mr. Penashue about why money that was meant for a deprived First Nations community ended up in his campaign coffers.

Let’s see what happens.

-srbp-

There’s reality and … #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale decided to talk about reality on Monday.

A reality check she called it:

“Everybody sees what’s happening with the price of oil, and I see every day what that’s doing to our budget,” the premier said.  [CBC online story]

Dunderdale warned that the provincial government’s deficit this year might reach $700 million. her forecast in the spring was $250 million.  Next year it could be a billion, she ventured.

Now that is on an accrual basis, of course.  On a cash basis, the current provincial government will face a deficit of more than $1.06 billion if oil actually manages to average US$124 a barrel.

Reality Check: drops and buckets version #nlpoli

Via labradore, a chart that plots Conservative unsustainable public spending since 2003 with recently announced controls on discretionary spending.

-srbp-

Magical Thinking and the Muskrat Falls Tax #nlpoli

Muskrat Falls seems to be intimately connected to magic, at least in some people’s minds.

For a while there, the gang at Nalcor sounded like they had found a way to make electricity and then ship it back upstream to Churchill Falls where it would be converted back to water. Sort of a water to wine to water miracle.

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be crap.

More Muskrat Falls Sunk Cost #nlpoli

That $350 million in sunk costs from Monday morning’s post wasn’t the whole story, of course. 

You’ll find more detail – and lots more cash – documented in the public utilities board’s final report on Muskrat Falls.

Rae backs Muskrat…sort of #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Big screaming CBC headline:

Federal Liberals support Muskrat Falls project:  Rae

Then you read the story.

Sunk Cost – Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

The chart below is taken from a Nalcor information hand-out describing the project’s capital expenditures to the end of March 2011.

What that covers are the various costs for engineering, staff, advertising and communications and anything else that the Labrador project office has spent getting ready to build the project.

The pre-2003 figures include $57 million spent between 1998 and the end of September 2004, the details of which the provincial government released in 2004.

-srbp-

Ya wanna know what stupid is? #nlpoli #cdnpoli

According to information supplied to the news media – and widely reported already – the helicopter from 444 Squadron used for a training flight than ended with a bit of fishing for the crew six weeks ago was available for search and rescue missions.

And if that re-tasking wouldn’t have been enough, the squadron had another aircraft on stand-by anyway to meet any call for civilian search and rescue service, which, by the way, is not the squadron’s primary job.

None of that stopped CBC from turning a photo of the trip into a scandal.  But to complain about that though would be to complain about dogs barking:  that’s the shit they do especially when it comes to a potential ratings driver like a controversy spun entirely out of the imaginations of people in a newsroom. 

Dazed and Confused: Swinimer version #nlpoli

You know things are bad when even the people who back Muskrat Falls without question start challenging stuff that has long ago been proven correct.

The heir to the Moon Man’s crown got some things right.  If you consider that the cost for Emera of building the Nova Scotia line is a trade for electricity, then they will get it for about 3.5 cents a kilowatt hour.

And then everything went horribly wrong for Jack.

Emera will get the power for 35 years, not 20 like Jack claimed.  They will never see a price increase for it ever. That’s because they are getting the electricity for free, in effect.

Meanwhile, the people who own the river making the electricity will see their electricity go up regularly for those 35 years.

Around the 2:00 mark, Jack claims the line for the electricity will be more expensive than the dam itself.  Nalcor’s figures put the cost for the dam at around $2.9 billion and the line to Soldier’s Pond at around $2.1 billion.  Those figures are not correct but let’s go with them for now.

He claims it will only cost two or three cents a kilowatt hour to make the electricity.  As Nalcor explained to the public utilities board, Muskrat falls electricity would cost about seven times that if you used the conventional way of pricing it.  By spreading the cost over more than fifty years, Nalcor can get the price to consumers down to a mere two and a half times Jack’s number.

As things keep going, Jack just gets worse.  By the time he’s done he claims that electricity for export will cost less than the electricity for people in St. John’s.  He gets on with some malarkey about water otherwise spilling over the dam.  The only reason Nalcor can give power to Nova Scotia for free under the proposed deal and think about selling it anywhere outside this province for less than it costs to make it is because the people of this province are going to pay for everything at Muskrat Falls, in full, plus profit.  They will only use about 40% of the juice but they will pay for 100% of the project’s output.

Jack finishes with a flourish.  Something about Internet bloggers or other.  Seems he doesn’t like those people.

Then he adds that there are none so blind as those who will not see.

That is true.

Unfortunately for Jack, that is just another one of his “own goal” efforts.  You see, Jack is sadly misinformed but thinks everyone else is wrong.  What’s worse he fights with people like randy who try and correct him. You can’t get any more blind than that, Jack.

His best one to date, though, was at the public utilities board hearings.  Swinimer finished off his presentation by admonishing the board to ignore ex-politicians, bloggers and…you guessed it …the people who call open lines shows.

Come to think of it, that last bit turns out to be good advice.

-srbp-

New Page: The Ghost in the Turbines #nlpoli

Look up and you’ll see a new page:  The Ghost in the Turbines.

You’ll eventually find there all the major SRBP posts on Labrador hydroelectric development from the earliest days to the latest ones. 

We’ve started out with the recent series that – for want of a better title – is just going down in history as the July 2012 series. The rest will be grouped by series title (if appropriate) or by topic such as “Financial”. 

There are a lot of posts on this topic, especially since November 2010, so it will take a while to get the links in place.  Keep checking back, though because it will be done before too long. 

-srbp-

The Stuff We Don’t Know #nlpoli

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns: there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don't know we don't know.

And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld will likely be best remembered for the 30 seconds or so that it took those words to come out of his mouth during a media briefing on the lack of evidence linking Iraq to weapons of mass destruction.

As tortured as the words seem to be, Rumsfeld actually describes the fundamental problem that bedevils all of us who are trying to do anything. 

It is called uncertainty.

Community Values, Part Deux #nlpoli

Political science grad student John Samms’ has lengthy post on the antics of local politicians on Twitter.

To complain about the asinine behaviour of local politicians these days is like complaining that monkeys in the zoo sit around their cage masturbating and flinging their poo at each other.

It’s what they do.

Don’t criticise them because they can’t do anything more than jerk off and toss crap. If you want more, look somewhere else.

And if you really want a change, then vote for someone else when you get the chance.

It’s that simple.

-srbp-

Felix Collins: laughingstock #nlpoli

labradore takes issue with a letter to the editor by justice minister Felix Collins.

He systematically demonstrates that Collins’ claim about the “frivolous and vexatious” provisions in Bill 29 are wrong.

labradore calls it a convenient omission on Collins’ part.

To be fair to Collins, you cannot omit what you likely did not know in the first place.

-srbp-

Going down by the front end #nlpoli

In the late 1980s, the Progressive Conservative administration in Newfoundland and Labrador committed more than $11 million  - ultimately $22 million -  to a plan to grow cucumbers and tomatoes using hydroponic technology developed by Philip Sprung.

Sprung predicted his technology would grow almost seven million pounds of cucumbers and tomatoes in its first year of operation and upwards of nine million by the end of five years.  Sprung had little evidence to back the claim from his test facility in Alberta.

An assessment by provincial officials concluded that the Sprung’s projections were impossible to attain.  Aside from any technological miracles, the Sprung predictions would need the average daily sunlight of Cairo to stand a chance of coming true.  Mount Pearl  - the site chosen for the greenhouses – didn’t even come close to those light levels in the very best years.

Still, the government persisted.

Executive Politics and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

In this series, we are not concerned with whether or not the Muskrat Falls project is good or bad. That is a separate issue.

Nor are we presenting information you shouldn’t already have.  Very little of what you will read should come as a surprise, especially if you  read SRBP regularly.

Rather this series is an effort to develop some explanations about why the provincial government’s energy company has been working on the Lower Churchill Project continuously for 15 years and yet has produced nothing.

High Politics and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

“[M]ega-projects”, writes political scientist Will Jennings,” exhibit a ‘performance paradox’ …being prevalent and popular among planners despite suffering from extremely poor track records in terms of completion times, cost escalations and shortfalls in projected revenues and economic benefits.”

Jennings looked at several projects to see why the projects tended to take a long time to finish or experienced huge cost over-runs or generally didn’t live up to expectations.

This week SRBP is looking at Muskrat Falls using Jennings’ four categories of factors that affect project performance.  The first of these is “high politics”.

Cost Over-Runs and Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

When announced in November 2010, the Muskrat Falls dam, the line to the island the connection to Nova Scotia were supposed to cost $6.2 billion.

The dam and the line to the island were priced at $5.0 billion.  The Nova Scotia line was supposed to cost $1.2 billion.

As it turned out, those numbers were wrong. 

Here’s what we have learned since then.

The Inevitable Muskrat Falls #nlpoli

One reporter tweeted his impression of the attitude toward Muskrat Falls that seems to come from the provincial governments in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. While the content was one thing,  he felt people should note the tone:

The attitude towards Muskrat is increasingly one of both NL and NS being locked in. A course change would be prohibitively expensive.

A similar comment turned up in his story for the Friday edition of the Telegram, illustrated by a quote from Premier Kathy Dunderdale at her scrum after meeting with Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter:

“What’s the alternative? To either ration energy or sit up in the dark. We have to pay for energy.  Where’s the least-cost alternative?” Dunderdale said.

Dunderdale’s comments are preposterous, of course.  There are plenty of alternatives, some of them considerably less costly than the one she has fixated on.  That fixation is cause for concern about the way the provincial government is barreling ahead with this project.

SRBP talked about this in May - here, here, and here  - in posts on making bad decisions. What’s more interesting these days is looking at Dunderdale and Muskrat Falls in light of a recent analysis of megaprojects and decision-making.

Hebron Dispute: No more give-aways, indeed #nlpoli

When it comes to the Hebron project, Premier Kathy Dunderdale should know exactly what went wrong with the development deal between the province and the companies.

She should know every give-away in it.  After all, she was natural resources minister at the time.

Share it maybe

-srbp-

Provincial government working Hebron dispute outside terms of benefits agreement #nlpoli

Lots of words came from Premier Kathy Dunderdale and natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy in their dispute over construction of a major module for the Hebron project.

What became pretty clear – if you listen -  is that the provincial government is trying to squeeze some resolution to the dispute outside the provisions of the Hebron Benefits Agreement.

Muskrat Falls Money Quote 3 #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale, Muskrat Falls lover, from a scrum on Thursday:

Dunderdale said due diligence is more important than artificial timelines but that the two sides are "considerably closer" to an agreement. A deal will be done before her government debates Muskrat Falls this fall, she said, "sometime before November, I hope."

November, hopefully.

For the debate or the deal.

Whatever.

That would be a deal that was supposedly so close last winter that they didn’t need to set a new deadline after they blew through the first two.

-srbp-

Innu Controversy Widens #nlpoli

The controversy at the Innu Development Limited Partnership developed some political overtones on Thursday.

CBC reported that federal intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue borrowed $25,000 from the partnership to finance his campaign in 2011. 

Muskrat Falls Money Quote 2 #nlpoli

Darrell Dexter, Nova Scotia Premier:

"We've already looked at that and we've done studies that look at the delivery of power to Nova Scotians," he said in Halifax."And the most effective way of doing that is through a project like the Lower Churchill."

Like the Lower Churchill.

So if it turned out that a hydroelectric project in Quebec could meet the need, Darrell could go with that option and still be correct.

-srbp-

Muskrat Falls Money Quote 1 #nlpoli

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, in a scrum after meeting with Premier Kathy Dunderdale about cost over-runs on Muskrat Falls:

"Here is this project that we have that can provide stability because we're going to know what the input costs are upfront. And that will provide stability for many, many years."

For 35 years, Nova Scotians will get free electricity from Muskrat Falls.

Any cost over-runs on the project are solely the burden of taxpayers in Newfoundland and Labrador.

That is stability any Nova Scotia premier would love.

-srbp-

Phake Photos Make Come Back #nlpoli

The Mighty Ceeb ran a story on Thursday about a block of three houses in downtown St. John’s.  Tourists and some residents are upset by a set of wires that one of the local phone companies has installed in front of the houses.

They quoted Les Cuff, who lives in one of the houses.

"Instead of having the three houses nicely unbroken, now you have three houses with a big bundle of wires in the middle, he said. "It just looks unsightly."

The guy lives there and he never noticed this stuff before?

Muskrat Falls carts, horses, chickens and eggs #nlpoli

All the Twitter commentary on Thursday about Muskrat Falls and mining prompted your humble e-scribbler to go back and do some checking about who said what when.

Sure enough, the initial announcement did mention that any electricity from Muskrat Falls that wasn’t used in the province would go off to any place that Nalcor might sell it.  Still, it would be available to call back for “industrial development” in Labrador.

But that wasn’t really the focus of the discussion about Muskrat Falls.

The Ground Game Counts #nlpoli

Two posts, quite a distance apart touch on the same basic political (science) issue:  the role of the local, get-out-the-vote effort in any political campaign.

The latest bit of drama #nlpoli

For the record, your humble e-scribbler will refrain from making any comment on the substance of the statements of claim filed by Danny Williams and Alderon against the Sierra Club and Bruno Marcocchio on the one hand and Brad Cabana on the other.

CBC has posted pdf versions of both, linked below:

• Statement of Claim – Sierra Club/Marcocchio
• Statement of Claim – Cabana

In general, your humble e-scribbler would humbly suggest that SRBP readers keep the following observations in mind.

What’s missing? #nlpoli

While the case before the Supreme Court of Canada on Tuesday was about the federal Elections Act, two provincial chief elections officers have intervener status in the case.

Neither of them have court cases currently underway that challenge the results of an election.

What other province might you think would have sought intervener status on a case about a potentially controverted election?

What other province could that be?

-srbp-

Autonomy and Legitimate Aspirations #nlpoli

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter is ringing the bells, trying to alarm Canadians to the fact the federal government is trying to withdraw funding from areas that are generally provincial responsibility under the Constitution.

You can see a lengthy interview Dexter gave to Evan Solomon of CBC’s Power and Politics on the Mother Corp’s website.  “They are pursuing what some people call a disentangled federalism,” Dexter warned.  Dexter described the country in a curious way, where the federal government pays for things and the provincial governments do them.

It’s curious because that isn’t what the people who wrote the constitution had in mind.

What Falls was that, again? #nlpoli

Tim Powers is a local boy who has done good for himself as a lobbyist in Ottawa. Powers is a sharp guy who is very well-connected in Tory circles.

The provincial energy corporation employed Powers to lobby the federal Conservatives on behalf of their Lower Churchill project.  While he has passed that contract off to a couple of other colleagues at Summa Strategies, Powers remains an ardent supporter of the Muskrat Falls project.

Powers delivered a keynote at the recent Expo Labrador mining conference. The title was Mining and Lower Churchill Falls.

Weird, huh?

Brand Failure #nlpoli

In another great service to Newfoundland and Labrador, the country’s leading shit-disturber has translated poll results by Abacus Data into a nice table.

It shows the results for each province across a range of topics.

Maybe it’s just you, Kathy #nlpoli

Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with Alberta Premier Alison Redford when the Pm dropped in for the Calgary Stampede.

As the Globe reported:

Carl Vallée, a PMO spokesman who was travelling with Mr. Harper during his Stampede stopover, wouldn’t talk about what was discussed during the Prime Minister’s meeting with Ms. Redford.

“He meets with premiers across the country when he travels out East, out West, everywhere,” Mr. Vallée said. “And he does do that, but we don’t comment on the content of the meeting.”

When Johnny Cab breaks #nlpoli

Last week’s Environics poll caused more than a few people in the province to have a few sleepless nights trying to find a way to prove it was a crock or nothing to sweat.

Those were the Tories.

The NDP wasted no time getting a fund-raising e-mail on the go.

Oddly enough, and as an aside, a couple of prominent Dippers – Jack Harris and Lana Payne – both joined the Tories in trying to dismiss the poll as a one-off.  Maybe their love of Muskrat Falls is clouding their judgment.

Anyway, and meanwhile…

The Liberals were wondering if the poll was good (they were up overall) or bad (they were still polling frig-all of any consequence in the province’s vote-rich capital region.

For the rest of you, here are some further ruminations to help you sort it all out.

Everything old is not new again #nlpoli

Trying to blow off the implications of last week’s Environics poll, former natural resources minister Shawn Skinner trotted out another line in this week’s edition of On Point with David Cochrane: it’s still early days. People don’t know Kathy Dunderdale yet. Give her another year and a half or two years for people to know her, or words to that effect.

Nice try Shawn, but Kathy has been Premier since December 2010. She’s been deputy premier since around 2008 and she’s been in cabinet since 2003.

Kathy Dunderdale is not new. In fact, Kathy has been around so long she was ready to quit politics back in December 2010. She’d done her thing.

If Kathy Dunderdale is having trouble making herself known to voters after a high-profile decade in politics, including winning an election as Premier after being in the job for the better part of a year, then imagine how much worse things will be 18 months from now.

Maybe the real answer, Shawn, is that people know Kathy too well already.

-srbp-

Selective Perception and Strange Bedfellows #nlpoli

Labour federation president Lana Payne tweeted last week about the latest labour force figures in the province.

And that’s true.  According to Statistics Canada, the province recorded the highest ever participation rate in June: 62%.

Two Conservative supporters retweeted Payne’s comments, apparently because they fit the Conservative mantra that everything is wonderful under the Tories.  Conservative policies produce results, which is why the Tories enjoy such huge support in the province.

Anyway, Tories and Dippers cheering the same thing isn’t really as odd a situation as it might seem.

Frankenstein – Final

A bit more work on Sunday morning and Frankenstein’s monster is done.

The colouring is unconventional.  The instructions call for black or dark brown for the jacket and pants.  A pre-painted figure, approved by Universal, in a slightly smaller scaled, appeared a few years ago with a colour scheme similar to this one.  It works.

The figure is stock, from the box with one exception.  The one hand that is turned incorrectly is fixed to imitate the original pose.  Here’s a publicity still from the 1931 movie just to give you an idea of where the pose came from.

-srbp-

Work in progress: Moebius’ Frankenstein #nlpoli

Here’s a close-up of Moebius’ Frankenstein, the project currently on the old modeller’s workbench.  The detail is a little fuzzy because the picture is via a cellphone not a real camera.

Moebius based the model on the scene in the 1931 Universal movie when you first see the monster. It’s stock from the box.

The base, door and back wall are finished, as is the body (jacket and pants). The latest work has been trying to get the face and hands right.  The choice for the face is very light grey for the deathly pallor, with some splashes of pink and red. 

Check online and you can find as many choices for the face and hands as there are people who have built this kit.  In the movie, Karloff wore a pale green make-up because it gave the right colouring for the black and white movie. Somehow, it just didn’t seem right to make the monster a part Vulcan.

Incidentally, for those who might be curious, the jacket is Model Master Dark Green (FS34079) and the pants are Testors’ Dark Brown (in the small bottle).

Here’s the same shot adjusted to make it black and white.

-srbp-

The Happiness Index #nlpoli

Leave it to labradore to come up with a new way to look at poll results.

He took the results of “satisfaction” questions in polls going back about a decade.  he netted them out, meaning he subtracted the dis-satisfieds from the satisfieds.

What he got is very interesting.

Minister to attend play #nlpoli

Telling the world that tourism Derrick Dalley will attend a play – no matter what play it is – would not be considered news and it sure as hell would not be worthy of a full-on media advisory by any organization on the planet, including a benighted, backward-ass dictatorship in a movie starring Richard Dreyfus.

And yet on a Friday afternoon that is exactly what the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador spit out.

More Hole Spotting #nlpoli

After the shock that evidently settled into the local Tories, the next most obvious thing about Thursday was the complete absence of any official provincial Tory anywhere saying anything about anything.  The usual clan of Tory Twitter Spam Spitters – Sandy Collins, Steve Kent, Vaughan Granter, and Paul lane  - were nowhere to be seen.

Normally these guys are everywhere spewing whatever bullshit talking point they have to spew.

Thursday?

Crickets.

or was it knobby knees knocking?

Hole-spotting: the Environics Poll Results #nlpoli

By now you have likely heard it all.

In one corner are the raft of people trying to dismiss the Environics poll as an outlier, an aberration, the logical result of a tough political month. 

Nothing to sweat.

Real Chip Diller kinda stuff.

In the other corner, there are the New Democrats who are so effercited they are like the dog who caught the car.

Well, here’s another take for you.

A latent political bomb #nlpoli

A few employers have noticed changes to the province’s Labour Relations Act that slipped quietly through the House at the end of the last session.

A story in the Telegram on Wednesday focuses on the construction business but some others are quietly pissed off and trying to figure out what they can do about the bill.

Environics latest national poll #nlpoli

As the country comes out of the long-weekend stupor, a few people noticed a poll released on June 29 by Environics.  Nationally, it shows a very small lead for the New Democrats over the Conservatives. That’s a modest change from May when the Tories were slightly in front of the New Democrats.

What caught some local Twitter attention was the post by threehundredeight.com and the headline “Majority support for federal NDP in Newfoundland & Labrador?”

The question mark is there for a reason, as you will see in a moment.

Beaumont Hamel and the Newfoundland nation #nlpoli

Mark Humphries is an historian at Memorial University.  He spoke with CBC’s Chris O’Neill-Yates on July 1 about the impact of Beaumont Hamel on Newfoundland and Labrador.

Humphries does an interesting job of putting the 700 dead and wounded on that day into a larger context.  He likened it to 161,000 Canadian males between 19 and 45 years of age dying in 20 minutes today.


Then in response to a question from Chris, Humphries turned it into a unifying event for the country.

What the cod moratorium wrought #nlpoli

The cod might be gone these 20 years but there are no shortage of people making a fine dollar telling us what it all means.

Surely the one making the most cash is Ryan Cleary, pulling down a pay cheque as a member of parliament partly on the pledge to have an inquiry into why there are no cod.  Hint:  a whole bunch of people, including Cleary’s friend Gus Etchegary, killed just about all of them.

If he had been around a century and a half ago, Cleary would have been campaigning to find out where all the Great Auks went.  Hint:  we killed them all.

Commemoration Day 2012 #nlpoli

• Beaumont Hamel (2010)
• Newfoundland and the Great War (2010)
• Commemoration Day 2009
• Some July 1 Reading Suggestions (2008)

-srbp-

And he is still wrong #nlpoli

The guy who helped create the monster called Nalcor thinks Muskrat Falls is a great idea.

But Lieutenant Governor John Crosbie backs it for a completely wrong reason.

The Premier and her glass house #nlpoli

One of Kathy Dunderdale’s more obnoxious qualities is her love of insulting other people.

She couldn’t let the House close without doing it a few times just for good measure.

There’s nothing witty in Dunderdale’s insults.  Nor is there anything that could pass for clever in her jabs.  That’s part of what makes her comments obnoxious:  they are just crude.

There’s another part to it that, like her predecessor who loved the same sort of crap-talk,  Kathy is the Premier of the province.  When she carries on like that she winds up setting an abysmally low standard of behaviour for public officials.

It’s undignified. It’s degrading to the province and to the people she should be honoured to represent. 

Muskrat Falls Policy Shift: The Audio #nlpoli

You read the post.

Now listen to Tom Marshall.

-srbp-

Shifting from non-renewable to renewable #nlpoli

Scan through the official record for the House of Assembly for the spring 2012 session and you will find example after example after example of a variation on this theme:  “…our vision for a prosperous future is the use of our non-renewable resources to secure a renewable future.” 

St. John’s West MHA Dan Crummell said those specific words on May 8.  But over and over again, the provincial Conservatives in the legislature tied oil money to things like Muskrat Falls.

Steve Kent (Mount Pearl North) on May 8:

The returns from this non-renewable sector are actually being used to build a renewable energy future for Newfoundland and Labrador.

Wade Verge (Lewisporte), May 8:

That is one of the reasons that as a government we are looking at Muskrat Falls and we are looking at the Lower Churchill. We have a vision for the future. Muskrat Falls is one of those projects that will help us as we give up our reliance on non-renewable resources in the future.

Keith Russell (MHA Lake Melville), May 8:

By using our non-renewable resources, Mr. Speaker, as a means of catapulting us into a renewable resource-based economy, this will in effect liberate us from the dependence and exposures to the realities of oil and oil markets and pricing. This, Mr. Speaker, is what it takes to be successful.

But that flurry wasn’t the only time.  Just look at these examples:

Municipal affairs minister Kevin O’Brien, Hansard, March 6, 2012:

I heard the Leader of the Third Party yesterday, as well, and I took it as an endorsement of Muskrat Falls, because she talked about moving from a non-renewable to a renewable economy. That is exactly one part of Muskrat Falls. Even though we have said categorically, time after time, that project has to – has to – stand on its own, it moves us from that non-renewable economy to a renewable economy. That is exactly what it does.

Paul Lane, MHA for Mount Pearl South, Hansard, March 12, 2012:

I will not sit on the fence. Muskrat Falls certainly is a great project for our future. It ties in to the Province's energy plan of taking the non-renewable resources we have and investing them into renewable resources for the future, for our children, for our grandchildren. I am pleased to be part of that. Again, it ties in to the great leadership that this government has shown right throughout the whole process.

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy, Hansard, March 13, 2012:

What we are doing, Mr. Speaker, we are taking our non-renewable resource monies, our oil money, we are building schools, infrastructure and hospitals leading with Muskrat Falls and Gull Island, hopefully, to the development of a renewable resource economy.

Natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy, Hansard, March 15, 2012:

As we utilize our oil, the non-renewable energy is used to develop a renewable energy economy, Mr. Speaker, consistent with the energy plan.

Glen Littlejohn, MHA for Port de Grave, Hansard, June 6, 2012:

Mr. Speaker, one of the central commitments in our provincial Energy Plan is to reinvest the portion of our non-renewable energy money into our renewable energy developments. Mr. Speaker, doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that make sense to us, and doesn't that make sense to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, that while we are reaping some of the best benefits we have, the resource we have now is non-renewable, so let's inject some of that non-renewable money into planning for the future and giving us clean, green, renewable energy, Mr. Speaker.

Still, for all those examples of what the Conservatives thought was their strategy, somewhere along the line they shifted their plan from using money from non-renewable resources to build Muskrat Falls to borrowing all that money.

Interesting.

-srbp-

Major Policy Shift on Muskrat Falls, or Uncle Tom's Problem #nlpoli

Finance Minister Tom Marshall called VOCM Open Line on Wednesday morning to talk about Cabot Martin and the pile of cash Tom is sitting on.

Poor Tom.

He was so effercited and agimitated that he got lost in his own maze of cash, net debt, infrastructure spending, and efforts to claim that what exists doesn't exist and even if  it did exist, it isn't what it looks like, whatever that might be.  "Foolishness", Tom said at one point, and that is about the most accurate description of what he got on with:  foolishness.

Tom should have just read the SRBP post that lays it all out using the finance department's own information.

Bottom line:  Cabot is right.  There is $2.77 billion in cash and temporary investments.  It comes from oil windfalls.

In addition to that pot of cash, there is money that is in the bank and that Tom and his friends will spend in this year's budget.  In the Public Accounts extract shown above, that is the amount called "Receivables".  Tom talked about this but he seemed to confuse it with the temporary investments.

Tom also mentioned to Randy something about equity in different Crown corporations.  That is actually another amount on top of the $2.77 billion.

Add it all together and at the end of March 2011, it came to nearly $5.0 billion.

Poor Tom.  It is hard to keep it all straight, evidently.

Now what is Tom planning to do with the cash and temporary investments?  

There's where it gets interesting.

Once upon a time, the Old Man and his friends wanted to use cash like that to build Muskrat Falls.  Remember they used to talk about converting revenues from a non-renewable resource into a renewable one.  Well, that was the scheme:  take the oil money and build a dam.

Tom told the Open Line audience that things have changed.  When they changed isn't clear.  On June 21, natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy told the House that "Our whole energy plan is based upon using our non-renewable resources to transition into a renewable resource economy."

Now that policy is apparently gone right out the window. This is a major policy shift for the provincial government with very serious financial implications for taxpayers.

Instead of that old plan,  Kathy, Tom and Jerome and Ed are thinking about borrowing the entire cost of Muskrat Falls.  Nalcor will do some of the borrowing directly and the "equity" portion the banks want Nalcor to find will come from you and me via Uncle Tom and another bunch of banks.  Rather than take that temporary cash laying about in case the arse drops out of Tom's oil revenue projections, Tom will now head to the banks and float a loan for three or four or five billion or whatever it winds up being.  Tom will then hand that money over to Ed Martin to build the dam.

We will know how much money Tom will borrow when we find out and not a moment before.

On top of that, Nalcor has to borrow some cash.  Now here's where it got a bit weird.  Tom tried to claim that this money would not show up on the provincial public debt because the federal government was going to guarantee it.  The accountants at the bond rating agencies might have something to say about that.  Safer, for now, would be to assume that the provincial taxpayers will be on the hook in the first instance for the whole thing, whether it is directly through Nalcor or through Uncle Tom's generosity with someone else's money.

If Muskrat costs a total of $8.0 billion, then Tom and Ed will borrow it all.  We can add all that to the current public debt of $13 billion and marvel at the record public debt of $21 billion.

And, in case you missed it, the only people paying it back will be you and all the rest of the ratepayers in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Plus interest.

Plus profit to the companies involved.

-srbp-

Garnishee Tom’s pension first #nlpoli

Spendthrift finance minister Tom Marshall is willing to spend your money and mine to keep the Corner Brook paper mill afloat. As CBC tells us, Tom is keeping the options open:

"It can be a loan, it could be cash, it could guarantees but you know that we've made it clear we are not going to fund operational losses."

Well, you’ve got to admire a guy who is willing to spend public money to help out a bunch of people going through a hard time.

Not even close to a Heritage Fund #nlpoli

A few people likely read Cabot Martin’s opinion piece in the Telegram on Muskrat Falls this past weekend and scratched their heads.

Open Line show host Randy Simms certainly did.

Martin’s piece isn’t available online but here (right) is a screen cap of a chunk of it that had Randy baffled. Writes Cabot Martin:

“…we have the equivalent of a provincial 'Heritage Fund’ of over $2.7 billion built up from ‘excess’ oil revenues over the last four years”.

Well, the amount is right but this isn’t a Heritage Fund of any sort.

Migrants and Migrant Labour #nlpoli

Russell Wangersky devotes his Tuesday column this week to migration and labour.  He starts out with a discussion of the recent quarterly population figures from Statistics Canada, notes that they run against the popular story that things are booming around here, and then segues neatly to a discussion of local labour shortages.

There is a feeling, at least in government, that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians away are somehow a sort of flexible employment pool, skilled workers who are willing to give up their stable, long-time Alberta or Saskatchewan careers to move their families back here at the drop of a job hat. 

Along the way, Wangersky hits a familiar point about how some people seem to think that the solution to our economic problems rests entirely with people who are supposedly ready to come home at any price.  They are homing pigeons, supposedly. Before you get too upset at that idea,  just remember that the Old Man Hisself once used that phrase.  Unfortunately, the CBC link in this old post is now dead but it does note that Danny Williams made the comment during a trip to Alberta sometime in 2007.  Maybe someone at the Mother Corp can dig out the link.

The other term that the word "migration" brings to mind is one of the solutions the current crowd running the place have used to cope with their stunning lack of success at economic development.  The term is  migrant labour.  Here's an excerpt from a post - "The Economics of Snuffleupagus" - that should give you a sense of how persistent the migration issue has been for the Conservatives:

It hit some new records in the best years of Danny Williams economic miracle.  That's right.  At a time when the economic miracle was taking hold people were flooding out of the Happy Province in near record numbers. The chart at left gives an idea of how big the problem has been.


There are parts of the province that are almost entirely dependent on migrant labour and remittance workers. 

In others - like Stephenville - the economic disaster of losing a pulp and paper mill on the Premier's watch didn't materialize solely because the workers there could find jobs in Alberta. 

But yes, you say, there has been more people coming back to the province since 2007, you say. 

And yes, that's true, but it isn't because of great economic opportunities in this province. 

Look around, especially outside the overpass.  All those enormous, job-creating projects that were supposedly luring people back don't actually exist.

-srbp- 

The Truth Hurts #nlpoli

For those of us who loved the West Wing, we can look forward to his latest effort, an HBO series about news media called The Newsroom. [video link to Episode 1]

And we can be sure that it will be a finely crafted and savagely accurate portrayal of the news business.

We can be sure because a gang of news types at the mighty Ceeb are shitting all over it from great heights.

Alberta-bound #nlpoli

This graph will likely cause some people to scratch their chins or heads.  The reason is simple:  it isn’t the story they’ve been told, namely the one that holds that all our ills of outmigration and the like vanished after 2003.

In fact, if you look at it, outmigration from Newfoundland and Labrador to Alberta has been greatest over the last 10 years or so.

$#*! Jerome said: Hebron Benefits #nlpoli

Hear what comfortable words Jerome! sayeth, back when he was finance minister (December 9, 2008):

The $4 billion six-year plan is as much as we can handle right now along with the Vale Inco, Hebron, and then hopefully the Lower Churchill. So we are at capacity, there are not enough workers, and there is simply no way that we can do anything more with infrastructure right now.

-srbp-

More $#*! the Premier said: copper fastened Hebron Benefits #nlpoli

December 16, 2009

Mr. Speaker, their ignorance of this project is staggering, and what is frightening about it is they put this out like they are speaking the truth.

Mr. Speaker, we have commitments on a concrete gravity-based structure, a mechanical outfitting, 4.1 million person hours of work; topsides drilling support module; topsides drilling derrick; flare boom; helideck; lifeboat stations; structural steel riser components and assembly of offshore loading system components; riser bases; rigid risers; tie-in spools and buoys. We have 50,000 hours of GBS feed-phase engineering. We have detailed engineering. We have 1.2 million person hours of detailed engineering that have to be done here in the Province.

Mr. Speaker, the first time ever in a negotiation of an offshore project that these kinds of benefits have been negotiated and copper fastened to the benefit of the people of the Province.

Yeah. 

Right.

In hindsight, they must have been fastened with something other than copper.

-srbp-

$#*! the Premier said: Hebron Benefits #nlpoli

November 27, 2008:

One of the things that I am proudest of – I mean, the benefits that we negotiated under the Hebron agreement have never been seen in this Province before. They are so comprehensive and they are so detailed, but one of the things I am so proud of is the gender and diversity agreement. [Emphasis added]

In hindsight, that comment seems to be rather telling.

-srbp-

How Irish are we: Serbian edition

 

It’s the Serbian accent that really makes it.

 

-srbp-

Caribou over Afghanistan

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. 

-srbp-

444 Squadron: answers to questions #nlpoli

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.

-srbp-

Looking beyond the Hebron sandbox #nlpoli

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.

More to it than oil prices #nlpoli

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.

Dear Jack: Turn off your frackin’ phone #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Talk about making an arse of yourself in public. 

Here’s Jack Harris in the House of Commons:

-srbp-

No stinkin’ knowledge required #nlpoli

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.

Premature Budget Panic #nlpoli

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.

Shit the Premier says: dems da facts version #nlpoli

“When your first piece of information is wrong,” said Premier Kathy Dunderdale in the House of Assembly on Monday, “you can pretty much assume…that the rest of it is wrong as well.”

Truer words, Mr. Speaker, truer words.

In fact, the words are awfully familiar.

But anyway…

In her first reply to Lorraine Michael’s questions about Bill 29, Dunderdale said:

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.

Newfoundland and Labrador.

The first province to have access to information laws.

Yeah, well, no.

Both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had freedom of information legislation before Newfoundland and Labrador. You can find a tidy summary of the key dates in access laws in the report of the federal Access to Information Review Task Force.

But you know, Kathy Dunderdale said it so well that it is fitting that we give her the last word on this as well.  She not only hoists herself with her own petard but she does it really, really well:

… 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?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

-srbp-

Shit the Premier says: law and democracy edition #nlpoli

Last week the gang at the Center for Law and Democracy were, in the words of justice minister Felix Collins, a “two-bit outfit.”

This week, things are different.

Now the Premier has decided that this two-bit outfit is peachy keen.  In the House of Assembly on Monday, she thought the Center’s rankings for the province were just wonderful:

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]

Nalcor’s Dark Secret #nlpoli

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.

Conflict of Interest and the Nalcor board appointments #nlpoli

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.

More background on the Twitter and ATIPPA #nlpoli

One Twitter exchange on Monday morning raised the possibility that Tory MHA Paul Lane was referring to something that happened during the debate last week on changes to the access to information bill and not details of access requests.

Could be.

But then again, there were a couple of other things that led your humble e-scribbler to think Lane was talking about specific access requests.

First, the Premier said something on Monday June 11 that suggested the Tories were ready or were getting ready to disclose details of requests:

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.

 

Second, a number of cabinet ministers talked about specific access requests during the debate. Some of them they might have known about because they came to their departments. Others they might not have. Since Hansard isn't available, your humble e-scribbler couldn't compile a complete list of mentions of specific requests. 

-srbp-

Tories involved in violation of privacy act #nlpoli

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.

Some words for Lorraine, via Peter Cashin #nlpoli

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.

How tenuous a grip indeed #nlpoli

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.

Collins beats Kazakhstan #nlpoli

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]

 

-srbp-

Resolute to Indefinitely Idle Mersey Mill in Nova Scotia

From resolute Forest Products:

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

 -srbp-

When rights are annoying #nlpoli

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.

Your Law School called… #nlpoli

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. 

And that was the point, Felix #nlpoli

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?

More oil, less democracy #nlpoli

“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.

The Vanished Records #nlpoli

Under changes to the province’s access to information law, briefing notes for cabinet ministers will be kept secret for five years.

Sounds like it might make some sort of theoretical sense.  Wait five years and then you can get the briefing note a minister used.

That’s hardly too much to ask, especially if government officials are just too busy to handle all those troublesome requests for information.

Great.

Well, what if the records don’t last that long?

The Secrets Policeman’s Bollocks #nlpoli

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…”.

The Stacked House Filibuster #nlpoli

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. 

Seat counts – seats count: the map #nlpoli

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.

You would fight against disclosure too… #nlpoli

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.