A decade ago, the offshore regulatory board reduced its estimate of the recoverable reserves in the Terra Nova field from 405 million barrels to 354 million barrels.
Danny Williams was trying to squeeze additional transfer payments out of the federal government in the guise of getting provincial oil royalties that the federal government supposedly took back.
The whole thing was a fraud of the first magnitude but hundreds of thousands of people in Newfoundland and Labrador fell for it.
Sometimes a comment is so profoundly revealing you just can’t let it slide by.
This one came from Milly Brown, the Premier’s communications director, in an exchange with Simon Lono on Twitter on Wednesday. And just so everyone knows up front, this is not from Milly’s personal account, if she has one. It’s a comment from Milly in her official capacity.
As your humble e-scribbler spent time on Tuesday finishing off a presentation to the ATIPPA inquiry next week (11 AM, 25 June), here are a couple of quickies you might find interesting:
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If you want to get a decent discussion of the Ontario election results and the way polling research tracked the campaign, take a look at a piece from The Star on Sunday.
The piece talks about different ways of conducting a poll – Internet panel, live calls or automated calls – and compares the results of each technique with the election outcome and with different polls conducted during the last week of the campaign.
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We’re shit at giving it, we’re shit at getting it, respecting it, promoting it. Criticism in Newfoundland is bad.
“Fundamentally, the [Conservative Party leadership] process works,” former Conservative cabinet minister Shawn Skinner said on CBC’s On Point last weekend. “It’s been proven in the past. The party would have been better served if there’d been more candidates, but it is what it is.”
It’s a variation on what Skinner said on the same program after he confirmed he wouldn’t run.
In itself, the statement is literally true: the process delivered a leader for the party.
But that’s about all it seemed to do.
The incredible story from Ireland about the remains of 800 babies and children found in a discarded septic tank caused your humble e-scribbler to think a bit about local history.
Then this post at the Monkey Cage put it in a bigger perspective.
How times change.
Last week, industry minister Susan Sullivan attended an announcement by Air Canada that they would be bringing back year-round direct flights between St. John’s and London. Starting in the fall, Air Canada will offer three direct flights a week to London. Next summer, they’ll offer daily service.
It’s great news for anyone who wants to travel to Europe for business or on holiday. For that matter, if you want to get anywhere to the East, having a flight to London is a bonus. It’s like having that daily shuttle to Newark if you want to go anywhere in the United States and further south.
At times like this, it seems like a million years ago that the same people who are running the province these days were engaged in a complete insane jihad against Air Canada for making a simple business decision.
Tom Marshall spent his last few hours ever as a member of the House of Assembly on Thursday, as the spring session drew to a close. Tom’s already handed in his notice and will be out of the Premier’s Office and politics around this time next month.
Marshall is decent fellow who brought sincerity, integrity, and dignity to the House and to the cabinet responsibilities he bore. He took a lot of praise from colleagues on both sides of the House on Thursday and Tom deserved every word. Tom’s short tenure as Premier began with some of the smartest moves the Conservatives have ever made.
It’s unfortunate that the end of his tenure has been marred by a series of unfortunate events. But in another sense, those events are typical of the history of the current administration.
Corporate Research Associates and the provincial Conservatives played up the change in government satisfaction in the release of CRA’s quarterly advertising poll on Wednesday.
But CRA’s satisfaction numbers don’t mean anything, as regular readers of this corner recall from last month. CRA doesn’t explore “satisfaction” to see what it means and, as you can see from the party choice numbers, voters don’t think it means much either. The Conservatives get high government satisfaction numbers but they still indicate they’d vote for another party by a wide margin if there was an election tomorrow.
Essentially the Conservatives today are in the same spot the Liberals were in before the 2003 election. That is, the same spot, with one difference: the Liberals were polling higher. That should send a shiver up the spine of a few Conservatives. Either that it would spur them to all sorts of imaginary crap like pretending that the Liberal vote is soft or that people are just waiting with bated breath for the real Coleman to emerge and unleash his “vision” on them.
Rather than fantasy, let’s see what the CRA numbers might tell us if we try to keep both feet on the ground.
John Crosbie, the elder statesmen of Conservatives in the province took a shot at Danny Williams for his continued interference in the internal affairs of the provincial Conservatives.
Danny blew a gasket and willingly gave interviews to every media outlet in town, thereby guaranteeing that the story that can only do even more damage to the provincial Conservatives would keep going for a day longer than the Conservatives needed.
Not to be outdone, Tweet minister Steve Kent called a couple of the local media outlets and claimed that his unique status in the Conservative leadership-race-that-never-was entitled him to refute Crosbie. Thus the story will drag on for yet another news cycle longer than the Conservatives really needed.
Every now and again, someone will talk about voter apathy.
Last week, Steve Kent was circulating the link to an article that claimed that youth engagement – getting young people more involved in the community and in politics – was a way of getting more people to vote at election time.
That’s what voter apathy is about, by the way: low voter turn-out at the polls. It’s a big issue in most of Europe and in North America. we’ll get back to it in a minute.
Kent was so keen on this article because he is working hard to become the youth engagement guru of Newfoundland and Labrador. He is especially proud of his first bill in the legislature – Bill 6 – that included a couple of clauses that say a town council can name people under the age of 18 years to positions called “youth representatives.”
The smart guy they could have had – but frigged over twice - told Canadian Press:
“The understanding of the [provincial political] climate isn’t as sophisticated as it should be for those who are working with Mr. Coleman on the strategic side.”
Without knowing what the smart guy said, one of the guys supporting Mr. Coleman said:
“I don’t think anybody ever dreamed in a million years that Frank would take the heat that he has taken over the past few months since he decided to run…”.
The ferry service between Newfoundland and Cape Breton is economically important to the province as a whole, but it’s especially sensitive for Port aux Basques.
Marine Atlantic announced a change in the summer ferry schedule on Thursday. The company will reduce the number of crossings daily and put one of its ferries on stand-by in the event they need it.
This isn’t the schedule the company announced in February for its busiest season of the year but, as the company spokesperson put it in this media interviews, their original projections turned out to be high. As a result, the company has reduced the number of schedules crossings while keeping the option of adding capacity if bookings pick up.
The Telegram’s James McLeod started a story that appeared on 26 May with the following sentence:
Premier-designate Frank Coleman says he wants to run a premier’s office with fewer people, and he’s starting that already — six weeks before he becomes premier.
What neither McLeod, nor his editors, nor anyone else in the province’s news media seemed to wonder is how Coleman did that. They’ve all treated events last Friday evening as normal. They’ve reported it as routine.
According to NTV’s Mike Connors Frank Coleman said that he and Tom Marshall agreed to Friday’s events. That is, they both agreed to sack all but a couple of Tom’s staff members and replace them gradually with people of Coleman’s choosing.
For his part, Tom Marshall insists that he appointed Coleman’s people and that there is only one Premier in the province. That’s all beside the point, though, as Marshall well knows.
Liberal leader Dwight Ball and Conservative leader-designate Frank Coleman delivered speeches in St. John’s last week and you couldn’t have scripted more startling contrasts.
Ball delivered a speech at an event that reflected his party’s standing in the polls: more than 500 people who paid $500 a head to attend.
Coleman spoke to a small meeting of the St. John’s Rotary Club where the audience paid a few dollars to the Club.
Thanks to the Telegram’s James McLeod, you can compare the two speeches. Since James posted the speeches and Coleman’s scrum to youtube, we’ll also give you those links.
Take the time to listen to the speeches yourself, but here are some observations about the pair of them.
From the industry association representing companies that provide sureties and other bonds, released May 26, 2014:
News Release
For Immediate Release: May 26, 2014
Recent remarks by Nick McGrath, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure for Newfoundland and Labrador about the use of surety bonds on public projects are completely preposterous. So says Steve Ness, the President of the Surety Association of Canada.
“Mr. McGrath clearly doesn’t understand surety bonds; nor does he comprehend how they work to protect public construction buyers from serious losses.” said Ness. His comments were made in response to a statement made by Minister McGrath following the ministry’s decision to release Humber Valley Paving from its obligations to complete an unfinished project without making a claim on its performance surety bond. The government instead opted to see to the completion itself and has now retendered the uncompleted portion of the project. In explaining this controversial decision, McGrath stated: "If I had called in the bonds, I would not have got the job done on time and on budget," [sic (comma in original)]
Frank Coleman recorded CBC’s On Point with Peter Cowan on Thursday or Friday afternoon.
During the show, Coleman acknowledged that he had a personal financial interest in a decision by transport minister Nick McGrath to let Humber Valley Paving out of a contract without calling the performances bonds associated with the project. Coleman’s son – connected to the company at the time - negotiated with department officials on behalf of the company.
Auditor General Terry Paddon is currently investigating the contract decision based on a request from Premier Tom Marshall.
Whether McGrath should have called the bonds is another question. But Coleman told CBC that he had personally guaranteed the bonds. As a result, he would have been personally on the hook for the bond despite the fact he had sold his interest in Humber Valley Paving three days before his son contacted the department about the contract.
Whether McGrath would have called the bonds or should have is another matter.
Coleman recorded the show well before it aired. But what happened on Friday evening caught everyone by surprise.
Whatever is going on in the Premier’s Office these days, it isn’t an orderly and organized transition from one premier to another.
That’s certain.
Every transition from one premier to another since 1949 - whether it involved a change of party or not - has happened in a matter of a few days or at most a couple of weeks. Your humble e-scribbler was directly involved in two of them and is familiar with most of the rest.
News on Friday that Tom Marshall had fired all but two of his staff doesn’t look like any transition anyone has ever seen.
For those who missed it, here’s the podcast from the Fisheries Broadcast for May 22, complete with your humble e-scribbler talking about politics and the fishery.
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If you want to get a sense of how the New Democratic Party convention actually ran last weekend, take a few minutes and listen to Tony Adey’s interview on CBC’s Corner Brook Morning Show.
Adey attended the convention but announced afterward that he was leaving the party. Adey believes that the convention was stacked and that more New Democrats want to see major changes in the party than the convention vote suggested.
He noted that the chair of the meeting wouldn’t allow debate on the motion about whether or not hold a leadership convention. For all that, they still had to spend 45 minutes answering questions as many of the delegates couldn’t tell if a yes vote would mean the party wouldn’t have a leadership review. Adey also said there was a discrepancy between the number in the room for the vote and the tally of ballots. More people voted, apparently, than were officially in the room.
The most forceful point Adey made in the speech is that Lorraine Michael believes she can be Premier while many people in the party believe that Lorraine has to go so that the party can attract new candidates and move forward.
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Is anyone else having trouble trying to figure out what all the fuss is about Cathy Bennett, Nalcor, and conflict of interest?
Seriously.
Here’s the story in a nutshell.
According to New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael, the party convention this past weekend was “a room of people who are saying, 'we're new, we're moving forward.'" [quote via CBC]
Would that merely saying the words made it so.
The reality is that the party isn’t new. They aren’t moving forward either, except in the sense that time moves only in one direction and the province’s New Democrats are willing to watch the clock.
The Conference Board of Canada released a report last week that assessed economic performance in each of the provinces in Canada.
“The resource-driven economies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador can boast A+ grades for their economic performance,” read the first sentence of the news release accompanying the report, titled How Canada Performs: Economy.
Amazing stuff and more than a few people - most likely provincial Conservatives – stuck their chest out in pride. They should have read the big print in the report. The first sentence is more than a wee bit misleading.
Senator Fabian Manning says that the 2008 Anything but Conservative campaign is stilling hurting the province in dealing with the federal government.
“There's no doubt in my mind that the ABC campaign,” Manning told CBC’s Fisheries Broadcast,” [that] we pay a price for that, and people can shrug it off and say, 'That's just an excuse,' but I've been around this game too long now to not know that without a voice here at the table we are at a major disadvantage." [via CBC]
The disadvantage Manning referred to was the lack of a regional minister in the current cabinet who represents a riding in Newfoundland and Labrador. Some people might be tempted to dismiss Manning’s comments at sour grapes. After all, the ABC campaign cost Manning not only his seat in the House but also his chance for a seat in cabinet.
On that point, though, Manning is right. The regional minister is a key player in Ottawa and the province has undoubtedly suffered to one degree another by not having such an influential voice at the federal cabinet table.
Frecker Drive is a well-designed residential street in the west end of St. John’s. The street is wide: you can park cars on either side and still have space left for two cars to pass abreast easily along its entire length.
This is a residential street. As you might imagine, it has its fair share of cars and trucks as well as the odd bicycle. They’ve been able to live together safely on the street because it is wide and the traffic flow is relatively light.
When the city planners decided to bring bicycle lanes to the City of St. John’s a couple of years ago, they settled on Frecker Drive. They banned parking from one side of the street. And on both sides of the street they marked out two bi-directional bicycle lanes for the full length of the avenue.
In light of the controversy about Humber Valley Paving, here are some of the Conservative promises made in 2003 about contracts and public tendering, controls on political donations, special committees of the legislature, and disclosure of lobbying activities.
Each of them bears on the HVP tendering controversy in one way or another. You humble e-scribbler has highlighted some of the sentences in bold because they contrast so starkly with that the Conservatives did once they got into office.
Note the bit about revising the Public Tender Act. The Conservatives promised it in 2003. They gave notice that they planned to introduce a new public tendering law in the spring 2012 session of the legislature. And then it disappeared. They promised campaign finance reform and did nothing once in office.
Enjoy!
Part of the problem the folks at Nalcor have had in trying to build support for on Muskrat Falls is that they never explain things completely, in plain English.
The result is that they look like they are hiding something .That is, they look like they are not being candid or sincere. They often come across as if they are not telling you the whole story.
Take as a fine example, the war of words that is erupting between Nalcor board chair Ken Marshall on the one hand and David Vardy and Ron Penney on the other. Marshall had a lengthy op-ed piece one Saturday, Vardy and Penney had a rebuttal on April 19 and now Marshall is back again.
Frank Coleman’s idea for change in Newfoundland and Labrador is to keep everything the way it is.
As CBC reported in March, “Coleman said one of his priorities if he assumed the role of premier would be to maintain the economic momentum created by the Tories.”
He might even want to roll back the clock a bit, too, on some things.
But on economic policy, Coleman is firmly committed to the Conservative plan to use public money to subsidize private sector businesses.
Nalcor’s effort to have local taxpayers subsidize electricity exports to Massachusetts came up in the House of Assembly on Thursday.
Well, sort of came up.
New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael asked a couple of lame questions and got – not surprisingly - a few equally lame answers.
Here they are, in their entirety.
Farley Mowat passed away on May 7, 2014, aged 92.
The prolific Canadian writer and environmentalist was just shy of his 93rd birthday on May 12.
Mowat wrote about his experiences in three books: The regiment (1955), And no birds sang (1979), and My father’s son (1993).
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If nothing else, the controversy over the sweet heart deal the provincial Conservatives cut with Frank Coleman’s son at Humber Valley Paving should dispel the fairy tale that Coleman and his family are political outsiders.
They are very much the quintessential political insiders.
Transportation minister Nick McGrath admitted to reporters on Tuesday that he’d never been involved in a negotiation before about road paving contracts like the one with Gene Coleman for Humber Valley Paving.
That takes juice. In itself, that should give an idea as to why the deal stands out in people’s minds and why the Coleman influence is obviously so strong. The Coleman influence is so strong, in fact, that it clouds people’s minds.
[In a hole with a jack-hammer update at bottom]
The controversy around Humber Valley Paving got worse for the provincial Conservatives on Monday as transportation minister Nick McGrath confirmed that he actually released $19 million in performance and goods bond’s supplied by the paving company despite the fact they failed to complete the tender as original awarded.
But that’s not all.
Put McGrath’s comments in the House on Monday together with media reports last week and you have a pretty clear picture of the pretty sweet deal McGrath cut with HVP.
Nice to be wrong update: The Liberals started Question Period on Monday hammering the Conservatives over the Humber Valley Paving controversy.
This is a big story with huge implications.
Original post follows
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As far as when Frank Coleman might find the time to get around to taking over the Premier’s job, not much as it seems.
It’s till vague, undefined, and potentially will happen quite some time from now.
He appeared on VOCM Open Line on Friday and still talked about wanting to take the job some unspecified time after July 5th. As for when he will get a seat in the House, Coleman is still talking – hypothetically – about some unspecified time in “the fall.”
Some people might think the cabinet shuffle changed a lot. The Telegram editorial board is hung up on the cost.
Meh.
The provincial Conservative Party is in the midst of such an intense revival of interest only about a dozen people turned out on Wednesday night for the annual general meeting of the district association in Mount Pearl South.
They were there to elect delegates to the party convention in July. Even though there’s no leadership contest, you’d expect that a party on the rebound might manage to attract more than 12 or so to a delegate selection meeting.
A few weeks ago all of 126 people turned out in Charlene Johnson’s district and that was when they actually still had a leadership race. That’s 10 times the number that showed up in Mount Pearl. It is still a far cry from what the Liberals – in about the same spot in 2001 as the Conservatives these days - managed to turn out in their leadership contest at the time. It’s also a far cry from what Conservatives turned out in their past either.
Renewal and revival just aren’t what they used to be or what they seem or something.
After 13 days, Nalcor boss Ed martin finally responded to a simple request from the Telegram’s James McLeod for an explanation of what impact a delay in construction might have on project interest costs.
Read McLeod’s original article from Wednesday Telly. it’s a tidy summary of what Martin told him about that specific issue.
The problem for taxpayers is that Martin did his usual job of only talking about what he wanted to talk about. He didn’t try to explain the whole thing to McLeod in such a way that he could actually get the full impact of what was going on.
Martin’s interview was highly political, in other words. Unfortunately for Martin, McLeod posted back-up information consisting of the audio of the whole interview plus a couple of pages of background from Nalcor. They reveal a lot more than the company has previously disclosed.
The Alberta Conservatives are looking for a new leader. The old one quit last month amid a caucus revolt and a loss of popularity in polls.
Former federal cabinet minister Jim Prentice is interested in the job, as are a few provincial cabinet ministers.
A source close to the campaign told CBC that Prentice will make an announcement in a few weeks “at which time he will outline his vision for the province.”
According to the Calgary Herald, some of the likely contenders might drop out once Prentice confirms that he is in. According to the Herald:
Political analyst Duane Bratt from Mount Royal University said with Prentice now running to be the next premier, he expects the PC leadership contest will “not be competitive” as the former MP gains support from across the party.
Unlike other would-be candidates from within the Tory cabinet ranks, Prentice won’t carry any of the baggage of the unpopular decisions tied to the Redford government, he noted.
“He’s coming in as the white knight,” said Bratt.
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In a scrum with reporters after a public meeting about the Corner Brook hospital last Thursday, Frank Coleman showed he has picked up the tendency of some politicians to talk about themselves in the plural.
The reporters asked about Coleman’s tendency to shun media interviews and to pop up here as if he were playing peek-a-boo.
“We” had a strategy, Coleman told them, of talking to the “family” first and “we” would get to everyone else after. Coleman contrasted that with the opponent he wouldn’t name who spent a lot of time talking to “mainstream media” instead.
That’s a noticeable choice of words – “family” and “mainstream media” just like it is curious the way he referred to what will happen when he becomes “leader”.
People like things in life to fit together.
When things don’t fit together, people get upset. They get fidgety. They try to make things fit together.
It’s an idea regular readers know from other posts. Take this bit from a post from 2012 as a good example of how some people react when faced with a situation where what is happening doesn’t fit with their pre-conceived notions. The context was a decision by then-Premier Kathy Dunderdale to refuse to meet with the parents of a boy who had died tragically.
CBC Radio’s St. John’s Morning Show is so off-put by politicians who issue prepared statements that they’ve found a former journalist turned journalism professor to discuss the growing trend not only in this province, but elsewhere. Interviews are important, said professor, because then journalists can ask questions and get more information.
If CBC really wanted to get into this issue, they wouldn’t ask a journalism prof. They’d be asking someone from the public relations or communications side of the street. That person could explain the value of using many approaches to send information, not just the prepared statement.
You see, prepared statements themselves aren’t the problem. They aren’t necessarily part of some growing and troubling trend, either.
Some enterprising political science graduate student will be able to write a brilliant doctoral dissertation a few years from now on the parallel ideas in provincial politics and popular situation comedy.
She will find fertile ground in the Big Bang Theory, especially the episode the in which Sheldon explains a complex idea in physics theory using the analogy of a cat in a box that may be either alive or dead based on a random earlier event.
Nalcor, for example, is like a giant box filled with Erwin Schrodinger’s cats.
Depending on which interview you listened to on Tuesday, Tom Marshall would be hanging around as Premier until the end of the summer.
At least.
That’s the VOCM story.
Marshall will run the place for two full months after the Conservative convention in early July while Coleman runs around the province attending all sorts of summer festivals.
Meanwhile, on CBC, Peter Cowan said in his report on Tuesday evening that Marshall expects to hand over the Premier’s job shortly after the Conservative party meeting in early July.
Which is it?
That’s a good question, but there’s no clear answer.
Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman did speak to the Telegram on Monday evening about the controversy that has been raging all weekend over his views on abortion and what that might mean for public policy in the province.
Coleman chose to issue a statement on Friday that didn’t address the central issues. He was silent all weekend and unavailable to other media all day Monday.
That only made Coleman’s problem of a big lack of legitimacy and credibility all that much worse, of course.
Late on Monday, Coleman has tried to put the controversy behind him, but he will have a fair bit of work to do.
Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman was off in Toronto on Monday – reputedly undergoing intensive media training - and so he wasn’t willing to talk to reporters about anything, least of all the controversy about his views on abortion.
When Bill Barry dropped out of the Conservative leadership on Thursday, Coleman became the leader by default. The only thing left is for the party insiders figured out when they wanted him in the job. That’s not a joke. That’s pretty much what Coleman said last week after Barry bailed.
Other than that, Coleman issued yet another official statement rather than talk to people. And when controversy erupted about his support of the province’s Right to Life group, Coleman issued another statement.
Memorial University political scientist Stephen Tomblin offered CBC some scathing comments on Monday about Coleman’s performance thus far.
Public sector pensions in Newfoundland and Labrador are underfunded. There’s not enough money in the fund account to cover all the likely money they’d have to pay out to people when they retire.
But make no mistake, the province’s public sector pensioners are not in any real danger of losing their pensions as a result. That’s because the Pension Fund Act guarantees that the provincial government will make up any difference between the money owed to pensioners annually and the money available from the fund. Unless some provincial government in the years ahead changes the law governing the pensions, people will get the money and benefits they’ve been promised.
The provincial government isn’t going to default on pensions any more than they are likely to take the completely irresponsible advice some might give them to change all the plans immediately - unilaterally if necessary - to make them defined contribution plans instead of defined benefit plans.
It’s important that people remember that because there is a concerted effort going on at the moment to mislead people about public sector spending generally, and pensions in particular.
In the crude, modern way of putting things, shit got real for Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman on Friday.
The Telegram’s James McLeod tweeted Coleman’s response to a question about whether Coleman planned to do this year what he normally does on Good Friday and participate in the anti-abortion march in Corner Brook.
Here’s what McLeod tweeted:
And then Twitter exploded.
“So, I’m just trying to figure this out myself,” said Coleman, who noted he’d barely had time to discuss it with his team.Coleman doesn’t have something substantive ready to say.
Coleman said his communications co-ordinator would be issuing a media release later in today.
A paraphrase of Coleman's comments, offered by an e-mail wag: "When asked about the withdrawal of his only competitor, his friend, and neighbour, Frank Coleman told his local newspaper that he'd have his communications director send them a prepared statement."
Bill Barry, in the Western Star, on the Conservative leadership show he quit on Thursday:
“I just chose to recognize that the leader has been selected by the party insiders.”
…
“But if they’re going to do that, why have a convention?” he asked. “If the determination is going be made before the debate happens, and before an event happens and people are going to all head in one particular direction, why go through the process? It seems disingenuous to me.
Read the rest of Barry’s comments in the Western Star exclusive.
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Now that Frank Coleman is the de facto leader of the provincial Conservative party, there’s no reason why Coleman can’t be in the Premier’s Office with his new cabinet in place when the House of Assembly resumes its current sitting in early May.
Absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Coleman can appoint Tom Marshall as the deputy Premier or leave whomever Coleman appoints as Government House leader to stand in for him until Coleman can get a seat in the legislature.
It’s really simple.
And when the budget is done, Coleman can head down to Government House and ask the Lieutenant Governor to issue a writ for a provincial general election to be held by the end of June.
There is no reason for Coleman to delay going to the voters to ask them for a mandate of his own to govern the province as Premier.
Mount Pearl is alive with rumours this week that Steve Kent is trying to cross the floor (back) to the Liberals.
Kent’s open dispute with the education minister Clyde Jackman over school re-organization in the bedroom city seems to have been the catalyst for the flurry of rumours.
Now it could all be nothing, except for the fact that Kent’s fellow Mount Pearlers…Pearlites…Pearlies…whatever … know that the former child mayor has a reputation for changing his political affiliations when it suits.
The folks at Nalcor held a media briefing at 11:00 AM on Tuesday. it was supposed to be about the release of the independent engineer’s review of Muskrat Falls done as part of the federal loan guarantee.
You may recall this was part of some great confusion a few months ago when the provincial energy department answered an access to information request by saying they didn’t have a copy of the report only to have it emerge that Nalcor had had the report since the previous November and briefed at least a couple of cabinet ministers on it in the meantime.
That led to a bizarro series of telephone conversations between energy minister Derek Dalley and the Telegram’s James McLeod that just added to the sense that Dalley - among others – had no idea what was going on in the world. Later on the provincial government announced they were creating yet another form of Nalcor oversight regime all built around informing the public. That turned out to be a whole lot of nothing at all and, to cap it off, Nalcor missed its commitment to issue a financial update at the end of the last fiscal year. (March 31)
Not a very good way to bolster public confidence in a company after the Nalcor-induced blackouts in January.
Danny Williams said it.
Tom Marshall said it.
In the Virginia Waters by-election the Conservatives were trailing by 15 percentage points and managed to come back and tie it up in the matter of a couple of weeks.
Marshall embellished the story in his most recent interview with David Cochrane. Supposedly the Conservatives were trailing from the start and some unknown people expected the Conservatives to lose the Virginia Waters by-election.
The Conservatives claim they came from behind to tie it up but there is no objective evidence that the claim is true.
While the provincial budget for 2014 was all about spending government money, the budget speech did raise one issue that the provincial government appears intent on cutting dramatically.
A key component of the province’s net debt relates to unfunded pension and other post-retirement liabilities. Despite an investment of more than $3.6 billion, the liabilities have continued to grow. As of March 31, 2013, they accounted for 67 per cent of net debt. By 2016-17, they will account for 85 per cent of net debt – almost $9 billion.
The provincial government has been talking about the unfunded pension and benefits liabilities for a couple of years now. It’s a hot issue among business groups like the employers’ council or the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
As regular readers know, the board of trade is keen to deal with the unfunded liability, too, even if the president or whoever wrote her column in last week’s Saturday Telegram don’t appear to understand what it is all about.
For whatever reason, business groups get quite agitated about public sector workers and their pensions. Other public debt doesn’t get them quite as worked up and, as the board of trade demonstrated quite clearly, there’s a fair bit of misinformation about the unfunded pension liability.
In this second post in the Budget Basic series, let’s take a look at public sector pensions and put them in a wider context. Misinformation never leads to good public policy but right now, pretty well all the anti-pension commentary is based on some amount of misinformation.
Pretty well every Conservative who is anyone in the province turned up on Wednesday night at Danny Breen’s by-election headquarters.
Every Conservative, that is, except the fellow who is the heir-apparent to the leadership. Frank Coleman wasn’t anywhere to be seen according to reporters at the headquarters after the polls closed.
It turned out that Coleman had shown up at around 7:00 PM, an hour before the polls closed, looked around for a bit and then left. Apparently, he had better things to do. He didn’t speak to reporters about the by-election loss.
Instead, Coleman sent out a written statement. If he gets to be Premier, someone wrote on Coleman’s behalf, Coleman would welcome Breen as a candidate in the next election.
In ordinary circumstances, people would likely consider Coleman’s actions to be quite bizarre. But then again, these are not ordinary circumstances.
The provincial Conservatives lost a crucial by-election in Virginia Waters on Wednesday, but not for lack of effort. The could not possible have pulled out any more stops to try and win the seat in the last two weeks of the campaign.
Even on polling day the Conservatives mounted a prodigious effort and the last couple of days before the final vote, the Conservatives had every cabinet minister, caucus member, and political staffer doing whatever it took to find every possible vote.
They came close, but the Conservatives lost
And that simple fact will have enormous implications.
As of April 4, Nalcor was “still in the process of negotiating and letting some large contracts for the [Muskrat Falls] project.”
That’s the reply the Telegram got from Nalcor about missing the Muskrat financial update the company was supposed to issue at the end of March.
Haven’t got the information yet.
Okay.
Well, that’s a bit troubling in itself, given that Nalcor is supposed to be reporting monthly to the provincial government on project costs. So if Nalcor is telling the provincial government that sort of information they can tell the people who are paying the bills – the local taxpayers – the same information, without any deletions or omissions.
And if the provincial government had any stones, they would insist that the Nalcor board not deliver any bonuses to the president and the corporation vice presidents until the company sorts out its financial reporting. Ed, Gil, and Dawn would be spitting out real numbers pretty damn fast if someone actually held them accountable.
No one should hold their breath waiting for that, of course. At least, not any time soon.
Anyway, if Nalcor won’t report its costs accurately and on time, here’s a little tidbit to hold you over.
Astaldi is the company that won the tender last year to build the Muskrat Falls dam itself. The company and Nalcor valued the contract last fall at CDN$1.0 billion.
You can see that in the screen capture from Astaldi’s 2013 year-end financial report, released at the end of March.
The company reported the CDN$1.0 billion figure as well in its third quarter report released last November. There’s also a mention of payments on Muskrat Falls that would come before the end of Astaldi’s fiscal year:
Payments expected from Italy (Rome Subway Line C, Milan Subway Line 5) and Canada (Muskrat Falls Hydroelectric Project) are forecast to decrease net debt levels by year end to approx. €800mn [from 896 million]
Lovely stuff.
But hang on.
What’s the exchange rate on the Euro these days?
Well, friends, if you plug that 822 million Euro valuation Astaldi gave the project into a currency converter you find out that it works out to CDN$1.24 billion, or 24% more than the project’s face value at the time Nalcor announced the tender award last October.
That’s a hefty cost increase in a very short space of time. Now Nalcor has something else to explain besides just why they are tardy – yet again – with their project reporting.
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Related:
Now we know why it took the provincial government so long to release the “review” of the provincial electrical system that former Premier Kathy Dunderdale made up off the top of her head when people were trying to take her head off over Nalcor’s giant blackout in January.
The “review” is going to involve nothing more than a description of the existing electrical system and other systems across Canada.
There’s nothing in the request for proposals – not a commission of inquiry (!!!) – that people in the provincial government either don’t know already or should know.
And since this will be just another consultant’s report, the consultant has no legal ability to obtain detailed information the way the public utilities board or a public inquiry could.
There also doesn’t appear to be any provision for a discussion of the regressive, monopoly system the provincial government created in 2012 because Muskrat Falls isn’t the cheapest way to provide electricity for provincial demand.
What’s the point of examining the province’s electricity policy if you don;t actually look critically at the policy and propose alternatives?
Yes, folks, it is a waste of time. And you know it’s a waste of time because they released word of the request for proposals after normal working hours on Monday. It’s a new version of “take out the trash”.
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The Liberals proposed a motion during last week’s private member’s day that the government repeal Bill 29.
Meanwhile, at the Telegram, legislative reporter James McLeod has been waging a one-man crusade to get everyone to stop trying to repeal Bill 29. Bill 29 actually fixed a few nasty things, according to McLeod. For example, rather than force reporters to chase after ministerial briefing notes, Bill 29 banned release of them outright:
When Bill 29 came along, it created a specific exception to end this game. Now, the government could withhold any document which was “a record created solely for the purpose of briefing a member of the Executive Council with respect to assuming responsibility for a department, secretariat or agency.”
Then there is the matter of requests for information that the bureaucrats think are “frivolous and vexatious.” The example McLeod uses to endorse that part of the bill is odd. He filed a request for documents about the cod moratorium. The Telly dropped the request when they discovered that a couple of days after getting their pile, the government proposed to release the whole pile on the Internet. That wasn’t a frivolous request, incidentally, but McLeod holds it out as a justification for that bit of Bill 29.
While people have been agitated about comments on Twitter, the Premier has been dazzling the politicians in the House with his explanation of the marvellous financial position of the provincial government under the Conservative Party.
On Monday, the former finance minister buggered up the amount of dividend that Nalcor will provide thanks to Muskrat Falls.
On Tuesday, he corrected himself and noted he meant all of Nalcor instead of just Muskrat Falls. That just made matters worse, though. You see, the Premier’s comments didn’t exactly jive with information one of his colleagues talked about in the House a year or so ago. That’s not including the fact that much of the money the Premier attributed to Nalcor was actually coming from oil that the people of the province gifted Nalcor with for nothing.
On Wednesday, the Premier went for the hat-trick with a discussion of debt.
Back when he was in another cabinet job, Premier Tom Marshall made some comments about dividends from Muskrat Falls.
Let’s take a look at them.
Premier Tom Marshall has been in cabinet since 2003. He’s held pretty well all the big portfolios connected to Muskrat Falls, including natural resources and finance.
He should know details about Muskrat Falls backwards.
That’s why his comments in the House of Assembly on Monday caused such a stir:
If you haven’t read it already, flip on over to Drew Brown’s blog coaker’s ghost and check out his post called “much ado about nothing.”
Drew discusses some recent events in local politics and makes two major points:
There’s more there - and Drew is always worth your time - but those are the two points to take up here.
On Monday, Danny Williams was actively campaigning with Danny Breen in Virginia Waters.
Breen posted this photo to Facebook:
Breen’s campaign is in serious trouble if the Old Man is knocking doors.
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Related:
Premier-in-waiting Frank Coleman, anointed replacement for Danny Williams, turned up with CBC’s David Cochrane to explain to the On Point audience what he is all about.
Cochrane asked him about Danny Williams and the widespread stories about Williams’ support for Coleman’s candidacy.
What happened next is fascinating.
Danny Williams appeared in Virginia Waters on Saturday to campaign for Danny Breen, the Conservative candidate in the by-election.
Breen’s campaign wasted no time in pushing out pictures of The Appearance, like the one above, another one showing him with some young fellows out posting Breen campaign signs in the district, or the one below showing him with some volunteers in Breen’s headquarters.
Sharp eyes will notice that the shot of the two Dannys is actually from something else entirely, not the campaign, but that’s neither here nor there.
What is important to notice is that this is the first time the Old Man has turned out publicly for His party since Hisself left the leadership in an unseemly haste in late 2010.
That’s what makes The Appearance stand out.
The Old Man has been content until now to do his work behind the scenes either directly or through agents. The fact Hisself is out pressing the flesh among the faithful sends a bunch of potent messages.
On the outside, the spring budget for 2014 looks like a delicious assortment of goodies for everyone. You can tell it is delectable because everyone is shouting for joy and drooling over their good fortune.
There is not a single group who have had their hands out for government money that did not get something. And they are telling anyone who will listen just how happy they are.
Once you bite into one of sweetmeats in the Conservative Quality Assortment budget, though, the result might be a wee bit less tasteful.
The House of Assembly unanimously voted in favour of a bill on Tuesday that gives the government permission to spend $2.8 billion as part of next years budget.
Officially, it is called interim supply. It’s “interim” because the bill fills in the period between the 2013 budget – the last time the House gave the government permission to spend money – and the 2014 budget bill that will give government permission for the next year.
Incidentally, on that basis, you can expect that the 2014 budget will be something like $8.4 billion when finance minister Charlene Johnson reads the budget speech in the House on Thursday.
“Permission” is likely not a word you are used to hearing when it comes to the House of Assembly and budgets but in the Westminster legislatures like the one in Newfoundland and Labrador that’s exactly what the House does. It gives government permission to spend public money.
As it turned out, the “robust” oversight of the Muskrat Falls project that everyone was making a big deal about a few weeks ago is - as your humble e-scribbler suspected – an awful lot less than some thought it would be.
What a surprise.
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Finance minister Charlene Johnson will read the new provincial budget speech on Thursday.
In keeping with the provincial Conservative tradition, though, they’ve been announcing bits and pieces of the budget already. On Monday, for example, justice minister Darin King announced that the new budget would contain money for 20 new sheriff’s officer to provide court security and new lawyers and staff for the legal aid division.
Both news releases specifically indicated that the money was from Budget 2014, that is, money that isn’t supposed to be announced until Thursday. Reporters asked King if the finance minister would have money for these announcements.
It was only a matter of time before the government that says more and more about less and less figured out that its best mouthpiece was Steve Kent, right, the minister of perpetual self-parody.
Frank Coleman told an audience of reporters and supporters in Corner Brook on Wednesday that he was in the Conservative Party leadership race to win it.
That’s novel, given that most people run in an election with the intention of losing.
There’s very short clip on the Western Star website of Coleman speaking.
Coleman apparently didn’t say very much. Let’s see if that changes over the next few weeks.
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Premier Tom Marshall, in the House of Assembly, discussing what the provincial government can and cannot release:
There is nothing in the ATIPP legislation that prevents government, with the exception of some privacy information, from voluntarily releasing information that comes – we release reports all the time. The midwifery report, I think, and the bussing report, those reports were released and we will continue to do so.
There’s nothing in the parts of ATIPPA that cover access to government information that “make it illegal under Bill 29” or any other part of the Act for the provincial cabinet to release information.
Cabinet can hand out an independent audit report, the papers on the FPI prosecution, anything they have on Muskrat Falls, or the recipe for Tom Marshall’s favourite cookies and sleep soundly at night that the release was legal. No one in cabinet will get a fine or go to jail.
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No one could have picked a better panel of three people to review the provincial government’s access to information law than the three announced by Premier Tom Marshall on Tuesday.
The panel will be chaired by former premier and retired chief justice Clyde Wells. The other two panellists will be Doug Letto, a former producer at CBC television, and Jennifer Stoddart, the federal privacy commissioner from 2003 to 2013.
The terms of reference – included with the release – are comprehensive and will allow the panel to review the operation of the provincial access law in all respects.
Only a couple of years ago, national media were writing about all the women running provincial governments across Canada.
No less a pair of authorities as Jeff Simpson and Kathy Dunderdale agreed that politics would be different because all these women were around and, aw shucks, the gals just do things differently from the men.
The experience has proven to be far less than the promise.
For anyone who thinks it is unusual for the provincial Conservatives to backtrack or apologise, recall, the massive deployment of cabinet ministers to the Straits-White Bay North by-election in the fall of 2009.
Then there’s the who transparency thing.
According to a major Telegram story on Monday morning, the provincial government won’t be able to release some information about Muskrat Falls because of the provincial access to information laws.
There’s only one problem: the Telegram got the whole thing wrong.
The story of the 2014 provincial Conservative Party leadership contest is a study in politics on its most basic level.
It is a story of those with influence and of those who have less of it or none at all.
It is a story of how politics actually works inside the Conservative Party, instead of how we imagine it.
It is a fascinating story.
The provincial government will be establishing a committee of senior public servants to co-ordinate information on Muskrat Falls for cabinet.
VOCM faithfully reported Premier Tom Marshall’s comments to reporters outside the House of Assembly. The people want more, says Tom, so the Conservatives are going to give the public more oversight. The new committee will receive monthly project updates and quarterly financial updates from Nalcor, according to the VOCM story. The committee will issue an annual report.
All new stuff supposedly.
Except it isn’t.
“Province to deliver on promise of whistleblower law” read the headline for the CBC’s online story about the provincial government throne speech read Wednesday in the House of Assembly.
About half way down the story, it says that “Premier Tom Marshall is fighting back against the perception” that the government he’s been a part of since 2003 is secretive.
You’ll see the same idea in the Telegram’s story:
In today’s throne speech, Premier Tom Marshall made his most significant signal so far that the government is doing everything possible to be more open and transparent.
Last week, everyone told us that public satisfaction with the Conservative administration went up because of Tom Marshall. Corporate Research Associates certainly credited Marshall with the boost in the news release that covered the release of their poll data. The panel on CBC’s On Point with David Cochrane [March 8]all agreed that Marshall might play a significant role because, after all, he was the guy who boosted that satisfaction number.
What’s interesting about this idea, that Tom Marshall alone did all this, is simply not true.
by JM and EGH
The BBC online news magazine carried an article on March 10 that should be of interest to all those following the Muskrat Falls debate.
“Do massive dams ever make sense?” summarizes the work of researchers at Oxford University. They studied more than 245 large dams completed between 1934 and 2007.
A large dam is one with a wall height of more than 15 metres. Muskrat Falls would meet the study criteria
The researchers found that dams ran 96% over their approved budgets, on average. One Brazilian dam went 240% over budget. With few exceptions, the researchers found that the dams were not economically viable.
“On the outside, Shawn Skinner and John Ottenheimer are still mulling it over, “wrote Des Sullivan last Thursday. “The price tag of running a credible campaign still daunts them; if Frank Coleman confirms his candidacy, both will fold.”
VOCM reported on Monday afternoon that Frank Coleman would make his final decision on Wednesday. CBC’s David Cochrane reported that same information on Monday evening and added an interesting extra bit of information: unidentified Conservative Party insiders told Cochrane that it is looking less and less likely that Coleman will run.
Cochrane also reported what he and others had been reporting since Monday morning. Former natural resources minister Shawn Skinner and municipal affairs minister Steve Kent - right showing maturity and judgment - were collecting signatures for their leadership nomination.
Neither would declare they were in the race until, respectively, Thursday and Friday.
[Includes Hamlet update]
If David Cochrane’s sources are right, Danny Breen won’t be running for the Conservatives in Virginia Waters after all.
That means that unless the Conservatives come up with an amazing and currently unknown candidate, they will likely not only lose the upcoming by-election but run the risk of coming in third place behind the New Democrats.
Breen has impeccable Conservative credentials. He’s already well-known having done the impossible: been a strong, solid, and visible performer on St. John’s city council without succumbing to the drama-queen antics of some of his colleagues.
You’ll hear Conservatives, Corporate Research Associates, and some commentators play up the fact that public satisfaction with the governing Conservatives has gone up in CRA’s most recent quarterly poll.
That’s wonderful but that poll and a couple of bucks will get you a nice hot coffee at Tim’s. Other than that, the satisfaction numbers don”t mean much.
Just to give you a starting point, here are the Conservatives’ satisfaction numbers since the last general election in October 2011.
As laughable as it is for the Premier’s Office to insist former Premier Kathy Dunderdale received only 46 e-mails in a single week and sent none, there are some other things in this little episode that are worth noticing.
Put ‘em all together with other information and you might have something interesting. Not necessarily huge, but interesting and revealing.
How odd that the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador – arguably the busiest job in the province, bar none - received only 46 e-mails in a one week period in January.
And how extremely odd that none them – apparently - came from any of her staff, senior public servants, cabinet ministers or other politicians.
And how completely bizarre that in that same period the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t send a single e-mail of her own to anyone about anything.
A tale out of Ottawa reveals the extent to which access to information problems crop up in lots of places.
CBC News asked for a copy of a memo from the commander of the Canadian Army about leaks of information within the army. CBC apparently had a copy of the memo or someone had seen it and so they formally requested a copy.
The tale gets interesting because of the internal dispute over how to respond to the request. Most public affairs officers advised the commander to direct the CBC to file an access to information request. Only one public affairs officer – a former political aide to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – advised against that action and, ultimately, refused to be the one to tell CBC what to do.
The army relented, largely due to that refusal, and released the letter to the media without forcing them to go through the access process.
Think back to last December.
A couple of Nalcor guys bragged about the company’s strategy of importing electricity when they needed during the months when prices were low and then exporting our own electricity when electricity prices were high.
Brilliant idea. It worked for Hydro-Quebec for most of the past 50 years.
There’s only one problem: it won’t work any more.