In this photo, beleaguered federal Conservative cabinet minister Peter Penashue rises to vote against a Liberal bill that would strengthen penalties for violations of the Canada Elections Act.
For those who can’t quite make him out, that’s Penashue slightly to the right of the clerk calling out the names of members as they stand to vote.
Penashue is currently embroiled in a controversy over irregularities in his election expense filings.
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Kathy Dunderdale told the House of Assembly on Wednesday something rather curious about the public utilities board review of Muskrat falls last spring:
Mr. Speaker, we did refer the question to the Public Utilities Board. The questions we asked: Do we need the power; is Muskrat Falls the least-cost alternative? Mr. Speaker, when the PUB produced its report it concurred with Nalcor – and it is in the executive summary right in the front so you might want to read it. It concurred with Nalcor and MHI that based on Decision Gate 2 numbers that we did need the power and indeed it was the least-cost alternative.
The PUB said that Muskrat Falls was the least cost option and that the province needed the electricity.
It’s in the executive summary.
Go read it, she said.
Okay, let’s do just that.
Seems that the post about the recreational lobster fishery got Jamie Baker over at the Navigator thinking about a bunch of things.
The biggest one was the idea that maybe the fishery around these parts is regulated too heavily:
It all raises the question: Is the industry in this province too tightly controlled? There cannot be anywhere else where the fishing industry at sea and on land is so strictly controlled and loaded with rules and regulations. There’s just can’t. It’s at a point now where fishermen almost have to take a logbook to the bathroom with them to record the colour and consistency of their urine.
Federal regulations. Provincial regulations.
So what do you think? There’s a spot for comments on Jamie’s post at The Navigator blog.
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The public utilities board is good.
The public utilities board is bad.
She said..
He said.
Confused aren’t you?
Well, there’s no surprise when Premier Kathy Dunderdale and natural resources minister Jerome Kennedy say two completely different things about the same PUB on the same issue.
Keith Hutchings is the Minister of Twitter.
At least that is what the Wikipedia entry for the Newfoundland and Labrador cabinet minister said on November 21:
In GovSpeak, he would be the TwitMin.
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Bob Cadigan is president of the association that represents the province’s offshore supply and service companies.
He thinks that there’s more interest in exploring offshore Nova Scotia than Newfoundland and Labrador because of the way the Nova Scotia offshore regulator handles exploration data.
As the Telegram reported on Tuesday,
Cadigan said the data — like geochemistry and seismic testing results — is more difficult for curious companies to access in this province. For example, much of the seismic data here is only available on paper and not digitally, he said.
In other cases, individual oil companies completed the testing and keep the results to themselves for as long as they are allowed.
Difficulty in obtaining information about an area can limit interest in making a bid and committing to exploration work in the area, Cadigan suggested.
Okay. That could be the problem.
And then again, maybe not.
One of the hardest things to do is keep track of the numbers the provincial government uses to justify their plan to double the province’s debt and force taxpayers to pay it down through their electricity rates.
Muskrat Math is unlike any other type of math because the numbers the government uses never add up.
Take events in the House of Assembly on Monday as a good example.
Provincial Conservative Keith Russell is at it again, back in the news over allegations about his behaviour.
As CBC reports, Hockey Newfoundland and Labrador is considering a multi-game suspension for Russell for a couple of incidents on November 10 and 11.
Russell was reportedly coaching a team in a children’s tournament on the 10th when he got into a verbal altercation with officials. They punted him from the game.
Russell came back the next day and again berated officials, according to the CBC report:
A woman who was there said Russell used foul language and upset children who were playing hockey.
The game had to be stopped twice before Russell was escorted out of the building.
In September, Russell displayed great sensitivity – not – when he dismissed Muskrat Falls protestors during a call to Labrador Morning:
I don’t buy into the mumbo jumbo about the trail leading to the Muskrat Falls site as being sacred ground. You can romanticize and sensationalize that particular piece of land all you want, but it is a resource.
In 2011, the Nunatsiavut government punted Russell from his position:
Quite simply, Mr. Russell was not fulfilling his duties and responsibilities as a minister. The matter was raised with him previously, on several occasions, and I was assured by him that he would make a more concerted effort to work co-operatively with officials within his department and with the Nunatsiavut Executive Council. It is incumbent on all ministers to be actively involved on a regular basis with their respective departments, and to work with other members of the Executive Council to ensure the Nunatsiavut Government functions efficiently and effectively. By his own admission, Mr. Russell was not actively involved in the functions and operations of the Department of Health and Social Development, and had very little to no contact with senior officials within the department. He made that fact known to me and the First Minister, as well as other members of the Nunatsiavut Assembly and numerous officials. I had taken the liberty of raising the issue with Mr. Russell in hopes that the situation would change. Unfortunately, it did not, and we were forced to take action accordingly.
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United States senator John McCain (Republican – Arizona) thinks that Parliament should hold hearings into the prospective purchase by the Chinese national oil company of Alberta-based Nexen.
“I think it’s also a role for the legislative body to hold hearings, to get witnesses and say, ‘OK what is this all about?’”
Two benefits that come with public hearings are media coverage and public education -- but when cabinet makes the decision behind closed doors, that exposure is lost, he said.
That pretty much says it all.
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Some people want a referendum on Muskrat Falls.
In an enthusiastic support of democracy, some other people don’t want to have a referendum on Muskrat Falls because the punters are not sufficiently enlightened as to the details of this major issue to make an intelligent-enough choice.
Those same punters are able to pick governments in general elections, though.
Election.
Referendum
What does Kathy Dunderdale think?
Kathy Dunderdale defended the Muskrat Falls project at a speech on Wednesday night, according to cbc.ca/nl’s story.
That’s an odd phrase given that Dunderdale was speaking to a Tory party fundraiser, as the headline noted. That would be the textbook definition of a friendly audience for any talk about Muskrat Falls.
But if you look at the record of political donations you can see some rather interesting things.
After all this time, some of you will find it interesting to go back and look at some slides from the original Nalcor “technical briefing” on Muskrat Falls delivered in November 2010.
The ”last saved” date on the deck is 25 November 2010
Compare it to the briefing Nalcor gave to the public utilities board, for example, in July 2011. Notice how much changed.
Last December, the federal cabinet appointed intergovernmental affairs minister Peter Penashue’s campaign manager in the 2011 to a plum seat on the joint federal-provincial board that regulates the province’s offshore oil industry.
It was a pure pork-barrel appointment since Reg Bowers has absolutely no background that might have made him qualified to sit on the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. A series of appointments by his provincial Conservative friends doesn’t count.
Bowers landed a sweet gig: six years, subject to reappointment. Hob-knobbing with international oil industry types.
Flip ahead a year and Penashue has tried to distance himself from the controversy. A letter from Penashue to constituents released on Tuesday notes that Bowers was responsible for campaign administration. Penashue says he made it clear that the campaign would follow Elections Canada rules.
“No one is more surprised than I am at the allegations that have arisen since the campaign,” wrote Penashue. “No one is more disappointed. That’s why there is a new Official Agent in place to examine all of the paperwork and to work with Elections Canada to correct any mistakes.”
There have been enough questions about Penashue’s campaign finances since last summer for him to have relinquished his cabinet job until Elections Canada finished its probe into the campaign. The fact he hasn’t done so is one thing.
But In his letter to constituents, Penashue pointed to his official agent during the campaign and his responsibility, as a function of the position he occupied, for the state of Penashue’s campaign accounts, finances and documentation.
Something was clearly amiss in Penashue’s campaign. The problems with Penashue’s campaign may well have resulted from nothing more exotic than incompetence. But that incompetence should be seen plainly enough by now, on the face of it, to cause the federal cabinet to request Mr. Bowers’ resignation from the offshore board. If he doesn’t to leave voluntarily, then he can be removed.
Peter Penashue’s letter laid the groundwork for it.
Let’s just get on with it.
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to crummell: to have one's opinion completely reversed in a nanosecond by the whim of another.
There may well be others that will turn up in the wake of Tory Dan Crummell’s 180 degree reversal on Peter Penashue on Friday.
But no matter what witticisms crop up, Dan Crummell defined himself rather neatly, if unflatteringly, last week.
Your humble e-scribbler saw a couple of comments last week that said the NDP town hall on Muskrat Falls was a good argument against having a referendum on the megaproject. Some people were quite badly misinformed, so the commentary went, not just about Muskrat Falls itself but about the province’s electricity supply and demand.
Those observations are surprising. They are surprising because we’ve had two whole years of relentless marketing by Nalcor about their project. They are surprising because the provincial government has been trying to develop the Lower Churchill continuously since 1998. There isn’t a single year since then when the provincial government, Nalcor and before that Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro have not been trying to find some way to get this thing done.
That’s almost 15 years of relentless public discussion. And still people don’t know basic information.
Absolutely gobsmacking, that is. Unless you think about public discussions over the past decade or so.