Gimme that Old-Time Religion #nlpoli

Kim Keating is the president of the St. John’s Board of Trade this year.

In her Telegram column on Saturday, Keating offered some advice to the provincial government about the upcoming budget and taxes.  “As the voice of business, the St. John’s Board of Trade does not support tax increases.”

Funny that.

A couple of years ago, the Board of Trade enthusiastically supported a new tax called Muskrat Falls. The whole scheme is premised on raising electricity rates in the province to pay for the deal and to generate sizeable profits for the companies involved.  The profit for Nalcor is supposed to go to the provincial government to help pay for government services.

So maybe what Kim said wasn’t entirely inside the Ring of Veracity.  The Board of Trade likes some taxes. Like say ones where its members can make crap-loads of money from government procurement.

Gimme that Old-Time Reaction #nlpoli

The only news to come out of the New Democratic Party convention this past weekend is that the party now has not one but two leaders.

Earle won’t be looking for a seat in the House before the next election.  As a result, Lorraine Michael remains the leader of the party in the House of Assembly while Earle is now the leader of the party everywhere else.

It’s the worst possible position for the party, even if it fits precisely with the shrewd game Lorraine’s been playing over the past few months.  She successfully called the bluff of other pretenders to the throne in January. Now she gets to share the leadership with Earle.

Federal Presents, the 2015 edition #nlpoli

November 2005.

The Harris Centre at Memorial University issued a report on the number of federal public servants working in Newfoundland and Labrador.

With a Liberal administration in Ottawa and with a provincial Conservative government that enjoyed shooting at foreign enemies,  the whole argument about federal presence was a big deal.

The Offshore Ownership Fight Examined #nlpoli

Last year was the 30th anniversary of one of the most significant events not only in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador but of Canada as a whole.

The agreement between the federal and provincial governments known as the Atlantic Accord resolved a dispute over the control of oil and gas resources offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ray Blake is a historian at the University of Regina with a research interest in federal-provincial relations.  His latest article is “Politics and the Federal Principle in Canada: Newfoundland Offshore Oil Development and the Quest for Political Stability and Economic Justice.” (Canadian Historical Review, volume 96, number 1, March 2015)

Here are some extracts from the last two paragraphs:

Federalism and the Constitution were not established as simple instruments of coercion to impose a final victory between the two orders of government. They were designed to manage and mediate, not eliminate, conflict, but in the offshore dispute no compromise was achieved between successive Newfoundland premiers and the
federal government.

…

The Atlantic Accord represented a new approach to federalism and regional development. Peckford’s federalist dreams had come in a bilateral political agreement, not a constitutional one, and it applied
only to oil and gas, not to fisheries or electricity. … Peckford succeeded in reducing the power and influence of the national bureaucracy in one sector of the Newfoundland and Labrador economy.

Blake has written a concise account of the dispute and the resolution.  He has also captured the importance of the final agreement.  As recent as this history is,  too many people seem unaware of it.  Blake’s article will help change that.

This article is based on research for Blake’s book - Lions or Jellyfish?  Newfoundland-Ottawa Relations since 1957 – due later this year. 

-srbp-

The Abacus Insight #nlpoli

[Updated:  1715 hrs]

By lunch time today, you’ll have Corporate Research Associate’s latest quarterly omnibus poll.  Odds are the overall numbers on party choice for provincial politics will be in line with all the other polls we’ve seen over the last while.

What sets Abacus Data’s poll released on Tuesday is that Abacus asked a bunch of questions that give much greater insight into local public opinion than what you’ve seen from the other opinion research firms.

Before we get to that stuff, let’s look at the party choice numbers.

Class Conflict #nlpoli

The former Premier.

The premier wannabe.

-srbp-

Obesity in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

A study published in 2014 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal projected that 71 percent of people in Newfoundland and Labrador would be overweight or obese by 2019.

Think about and then reconsider comments by a Norwegian writer working for the New York Times.

-srbp-

The Elephant in the Room, the Astigmatic Seer, and other horrifying budget tales #nlpoli

Has anyone noticed a small problem in all the discussions about next year’s budget?

On Point’s David Cochrane had both NAPE’s Carol Furlong and the Conservative’s pet economist Wade Locke on the show to talk about the next budget.  Carol was warning against cuts.  Locke was talking about a request by Tom Marshall last year to reform the provincial income tax system. Locke and his students – are busily working them up, in close co-operation with the provincial finance department.

Can you see the elephant in the room?

Language Problems #nlpoli

“Increasing taxes is not about solving the deficit, it’s about maintaining our programs and services that we have.”

That’s what Labrador and aboriginal affairs minister Keith Russell told the handful of people who showed up for the government’s pre-budget consultation in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

The Conservatives are perturbed that the turnout for these sessions has been small.  Part of the problem was the tight timeline:  they only announced the dates last week and started the first session on Monday.  Another part of the problem is that everyone knows that the things are a farce. They aren’t interested in wasting their time.

People should turn out to these things, though, if only for the entertainment they offer,  not to mention the practicality of it.

Nova Scotia won’t get Muskrat Falls electricity #nlpoli

As part of its deal with Nalcor,  Emera will get its electricity from Bay d’Espoir, not Muskrat Falls. 

The Business Post’s March 2015 edition reported that confirmation of the arrangement came from Emera Newfoundland and Labrador chief executive Rick Janega following a speech to the St. John’s Board of Trade on February 23. Janega took the view, though, that the company will get power from whatever source of generation was operating at the time.

As the Business Post reported, the “deal between Nalcor and Emera is not specifically to supply Nova Scotia with Muskrat Falls power, but
rather to supply the equivalent of 20 per cent of Muskrat’s generating capacity from any source.”

Bond Raters and other things to wonders about #nlpoli

Cast your mind back a couple of years and you will probably remember finance minister Jerome Kennedy told us a couple of things.

One was that he expected the government would run deficits for three years, totalling about $1.6 billion.

The other was that surplus would follow after that.

Well, here we are three years later and the latest finance minister – we’ve had four in three years – is now saying we can expect to see another  five years of deficits before maybe, possibly, getting the budget into surplus in Year Six ALE. 

That’s ALE as in “after the latest estimate.”

The Unsustainability Problem #nlpoli

The annual budget consultation farce started on Monday with a couple of sessions.

This year the provincial government has turned out a budget simulator that is supposed “to illustrate the tough budget choices” the provincial government is facing and “to promote a public dialogue on how we can set a sustainable fiscal course.”

The simulation can’t really do either of those things.  The information is relatively recent but the options to adjust income and spending don;t cover the full range of policy choices the government can make.  The ones it does offer are artificially limited to presented increases or decreases.  That’s a programming choice as much as anything else, but the reason for the artificial limitations is not important.  The fact is that the choices are deliberately limited.

The result is that people can’t really see what sorts of choices the provincial government might make to set a “sustainable fiscal course.” In that sense, the current “consultation” is as artificial as all the other ones the provincial government has run over the past decade or so.   People aren’t stupid.  They can handle the truth.

The politicians and bureaucrats can’t.

The theory of everything #nlpoli

People are talking about the budget.

People are talking about Bill 42, the politicians’ decision to cut public representation in the House.

People are talking about the recent polls.

People are talking about the next election.

People have predictions about how this one or that one will play out.

But they are not looking at everything.

They are not looking at the whole board.

And you gotta look at the whole board, Sam.

A cunning plan it ain’t #nlpoli

The whole “Paul-Davis-Decisive-Leader” thing doesn’t seem to be working for the provincial Conservatives.

The latest NTV/MQO poll puts the Liberals at 42, the Conservatives at 20 and the NDP at seven,  with 30% undecided.

In October 2014,  it was Liberals 37,  Conservatives 16,  NDP six, and undecided at 40.

In October 2013,  the Liberals were at 35, the Conservatives at 20, the NDP at 12, and the undecided at 32.

You can see the trend there of Liberal growth – up seven points -  while the Conservatives hover around 20.  The undecided is down.  Most of them won’t vote anyway.  And the New Democrats have dropped from 12 to seven.

Stragedy and Polls: Chop House version #nlpoli

Public opinion polls are a really useful thing in politics.

The Liberals did a poll the weekend before the Liberals and Conservatives voted to slash public representation in the legislature.  They bought into the scheme in largest part because it looked hugely popular.

The problem with the poll results is that they didn’t tell the Liberals anything useful. You can see the same fundamental problem in the poll commissioned by NTV from MQO.

St. Pierre shifting health care to Moncton, Halifax #nlpoli

Rising costs are forcing the government of St. Pierre to look at shifting health care for its residents to Moncton New Brunswick from St. John’s, according to Radio Canada.

The cost of having St. Pierrais treated by Eastern Health has risen 75% since 2010 despite a decrease in the number of people from St. Pierre and Miquelon seeking treatment in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Costs aren’t the only issue.  Eastern Health has only two translators to help St. Pierrais admitted to Eastern Health hospitals for treatment.  On top of that, the regional health authority is also not adept at identifying bilingual staff and making them available to treat the mostly unilingual French patients from the islands off the southern coast of Newfoundland.

Radio Canada notes concerns in the local business community at the loss of St. Pierrais coming to St. John’s for treatment.  Money that would be spent in St. John’s is now going to Moncton and Halifax,  according to Stephanie Bowring, an economic development officer with the Newfoundland and Labrador Francophone Economic Development Network St. John’s. 

The francophone federation is also concerned about the potential decline of French language service at Eastern Health. 

Health minister Steve Kent told Radio Canada that the increased costs were due to inflationary pressures.  Kent said it made sense to suggest Eastern Health could provide bilingual staff when French patients seek care but doubted that it would be possible to provide bilingual care 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

-srbp-

Lighter and Lighter #nlpoli

Three separate stories over the past three days highlight changes to the local media world.

On Saturday, Telegram editor Russell Wangersky slammed the publicly funded CBC Radio for turning its morning show into the sort of light, fluffy morning program heard on commercial radio.

(Is "We're broadcasting from Tim Horton's" really that much different than that old private radio staple, "We're broadcasting live from L&M Carpeting, your best carpet buy in the tri-state area"?)

There are stupid host and guest tricks: let's make the mayor of Mount Pearl, Randy Simms, wear a party hat for that city's 60th birthday. Let's make him blow on a party horn. Let's Tweet the pictures. Let's dress someone up as a turkey and film them doing tricks.

He’s right.

But Russell is also wrong.

Money and Politics – the Chronic Enforcement Problem #nlpoli

We can have all the rules in the world about how political parties and political candidates receive and spend money in Newfoundland and Labrador, but they are useless without meaningful enforcement.

It’s been illegal since 2011 for municipalities to make political contributions.  The association representing the province’s towns and cities knew about the 2011 amendment to the Municipalities Act.

The people at the electoral office didn’t.

Money and Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador #nlpoli

Some people are making a big deal over the fact that the judge heading the boundaries commission made political donations to both the Liberal and Conservative parties in the province before he was appointed to the Supreme Court Trial Division.

Justice Robert Stack made donations totalling $1,718 to the provincial Liberal Party between 1996 and 2003 and $2,032 to the provincial Conservative party between 2001 and the time he was appointed by the federal government as a Supreme Court judge in 2009.

No one has actually explained how what is a normal activity for ordinary citizens in every province in Canada is problematic in this case.  There’s just the innuendo that goes with a comment like this:

“Nobody's really questioning that Justice Stack has the qualifications to do what he's being asked to do, it's about whether or not there are other connections that then make it a little more questionable.”  [See new comment by Kelly Blidook at end of post]

Insinuation and Innuendo aren’t evidence of anything except the exceedingly bad judgement of the people making the comments and the news media who are repeating them.

The Boundary Commission Fun is closer #nlpoli

The Chief Justice has named Justice Robert Stack as the chair of the boundary commission appointed under the Electoral Boundaries Act.

We now have to get four other members of the commission, appointed by the Speaker of the House of Assembly so the whole crowd of them can start their 130 adventure.

Will it be done on time?  And if it isn’t,  will we be trooping to the polls on schedule in the fall to vote in 48 districts instead of 40,  as NHTV reported on Monday night.

Amazing as it is, some people still haven;t quite sorted it through.  Let’s save them further anguish and lay out the possibilities.

The Other DarkNL #nlpoli

For as long as anyone can remember,  some people in Newfoundland and Labrador have had a love of conformity.

They loathe discussion and debate. 

They dislike democracy.

Reforming the budget process #nlpoli

We already know that the provincial government won’t unveil its budget for the new year until late April or early May.

That’s not as unusual as it might seem.  In 2012, for example, they introduced the budget on April 24.  Five years before,  Tom Marshall read the budget speech on April 26.  The next year – 2008 – Tom again read the budget speech in the House in late April,  the 29th to be exact.

The fact the Conservatives aren’t planning to release the budget until a month or so into the new fiscal year – it starts on April 1 – isn’t surprising.  It isn’t unusual.  And odds are very good it isn’t related to the fact the federal government has delayed its budget until around the same time.

Government by Committee #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 5

In the fifth and final  instalment in this series on politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, SRBP looks at the latest move in continuing efforts by politicians in the province to make the House of Assembly irrelevant.
_____________________________________________

If you want to understand politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, look no further than Bill 42.  That’s the plan to cut eight seats from the House of Assembly before the next election.

Don’t look at the reasons the politicians offered for the cuts. Just look at who did it, what they did, and how they did it. After all, actions speak a lot louder than words.

Elections and Voting #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 4

The politicians in the province share a lot of common views and tend to agree on most things despite being organized into political parties that are – theoretically  - supposed to have some sharp differences among them.  The House of Assembly itself is organized to minimise the chances that the government won;t get its way, quickly.  

In the fourth instalment in this series on politics in Newfoundland and Labrador, SRBP looks how elections work.
______________________________________________

Yvonne Jones was the first woman leader of the Liberal Party. 

She was the first woman to serve as leader of the official opposition and, more recently, she became the first women to represent Labrador in the House of Commons.

Yvonne Jones will go down in history for another accomplishment, though.  That one has nothing to do with chromosomes.

Yvonne Jones was the last person to be elected to the House of Assembly as an independent candidate.*

The Dysfunctional House of Assembly #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador (2015) – Part 3

In the third instalment in the series,  SRBP looks at the way the House of Assembly operates.
_____________________________________________

Liberal finance critic Cathy Bennett’s recent op-ed piece in the Telegram said that the provincial government’s current financial mess is about more than unexpected changes in the price of oil.
She’s absolutely right.

Bennett pointed to the Equalization offset transfers under the 1985 Atlantic Accord as the root.  The provincial government got about $4.6 billion under the deal.  “The province collected $4.6 billion in federal funding under the Atlantic Accord,”  wrote Bennett.  “A long-term financial plan should have been put in place to account for the future loss of those revenues.

Equalization transfers.

Sounds a wee bit familiar, doesn’t it?

One Big Party #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador – Part 2

The plan to cut public representation in the House of Assembly has drawn public attention to more than just the plan to reduce the number of elected representatives in the legislature by eight. 

In this new series, SRBP will examine politics in Newfoundland over the last 15 to 20 years The first instalment - “Making the rich richer” – and the second – “One Big Party” - look at the curious agreement among the parties on major public issues.

________________________________________________

Cast your mind back.

Go back to 2008. Yvonne Jones was the leader of the Liberal Party. She was one of three members, sitting right next to Kelvin Parsons and Roland Butler, the sole Liberal survivors of a near sweep of the province by the Conservatives in the 2007 general election.

Jones turned up in the Telegram with what is, in hindsight,  a fascinating suggestion.

I always say that we're such a small province, when you've got three political parties, there's always a lot of energy and time and expertise spent in, I guess, staking out everybody's turf in the political arena...

I used to say to myself, "maybe we're expending it in the wrong direction? [sic]"...Maybe if a lot of that was just put into strengthening policy for people, we might end up with a lot better result at the end of the day.

Jones didn’t see any differences at all among the political parties. The members all believed exactly the same things. They wasted time and money “staking out everybody’s turf”, whatever that means. So Jones thought aloud that maybe it would be better if there were no parties, just a bunch of like-minded people, all working hard “strengthening policy for people.”

Making the rich richer #nlpoli

Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador – Part 1

The plan to cut public representation in the House of Assembly has drawn public attention to more than just the plan to reduce the number of elected representatives in the legislature by eight.   

In this new series,  SRBP will examine politics in Newfoundland over the last 15 to 20 years  The first  instalment  - “Making the rich richer” – and the second – “One Big Party” - look at the curious agreement among the parties on major public issues. 
______________________________________________

The provincial government subsidises tuition fees at Memorial University for Canadian undergraduate students. They go to school for fees far less than the cost of providing the buildings, technology, and instructors need to educate them.

The annual cost of the tuition subsidy is about $40 million, according to the most recent report by the province’s auditor general.  That’s part of about $388 million the provincial government provides to the university to fund its operations.

All three political parties support the subsidy. The Liberals started it and the Conservatives continued it. The New Democrats back it enthusiastically.

The tuition subsidy benefits Newfoundlanders and Labradorians primarily.  Over the past five years or so,  Memorial has been able to attract growing numbers of students from outside the province.  They come for the cheap education, not the quality of the education, although there’s no reason to believe that Memorial University provides a substandard education to anyone.  So lots of people benefit from the subsidy, many of them from outside Newfoundland and Labrador.

The tuition subsidy costs about 20 times what the cuts to the House of Assembly will theoretically save annually.

Gil Bennett: fact checker #nlpoli

Gil Bennett, Nalcor vice-president in charge of the Lower Churchill project, took some exceptions to comments in yesterdays posts on Muskrat Falls and electricity prices.

Rather than go back and deal with his comments in a re-write of the original post, let’s deal with Bennett’s comments here and link the two together so people can get the full effect.

For those of you who didn’t read the original post, go back and do so.  It will help.  In this post, Bennett’s tweets are in bold print.  Your humble e-scribbler’s reply is in regular type.

Nalcor: the power of hubris #nlpoli

On the last electricity bill to arrive Chez Scribbler,  the price per kilowatt hour was a little over 11 cents, all in.

On Wednesday,  Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro applied to the public utilities board for a six percent reduction in electricity rates pending a thorough review of electricity prices now that oil has dropped through the floor.

Nalcor claims that Muskrat Falls is the lowest cost way of meeting electricity demand on the island in the future.  The truth is Nalcor didn’t produce any evidence that they compared potential sources of electricity before they decided to build Muskrat Falls in 2006.*

Acting Like a Leader #nlpoli

In his first major public appearance since cutting public representation in the House of Assembly last week,  Premier Paul Davis flatly rejected the objections of the province’s municipalities and a gaggle of academics.

The cuts to the House of Assembly will go ahead.

When another government asked a commission to go out, ask people and come back with alternatives, it didn’t work, according to Davis.  So this time we set clear rules.

Davis talked a lot about process with reporters during a scrum.  Everything was just the way it was supposed to be and people will get a say, even if the say is all but meaningless.

People can talk about the details of all this until they fall over dead.  This is not about cuts to the House, democratic renewal, saving money, or anything else of the sort.  This entire House cutting exercise is designed to show Paul Davis looking like a leader.

Opposition grows to antidemocratic House cuts #nlpoli

Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador,  the umbrella organization that speaks for the province’s towns and cities, doesn’t like the plan to slash the number of representatives the people of the province have speaking for them in the House of Assembly.

“We believe that a reduction in representation will have serious implications for municipal governments and the communities they represent, “ MNL posted to its Facebook page on Monday.

Easy and frequent access to our MHAs is critically important to municipal leaders. So much of municipal work is done in partnership with the provincial government, and any erosion of this relationship would set us back - particularly in rural communities. Effective democracy comes at a price. We need to think long and hard before we decide that price is too high.

A group of university professors also released a copy of a letter they sent to members of the House of Assembly.

A swing and a miss #nlpoli

The usual round of Saturday chores this weekend brought with it the usual accidental meetings with all manner of friends and acquaintances.  Even the least political among them wondered what went on in the House of Assembly last week.

Good news.  There is help for them.

Your humble e-scribbler laid out the positions of the various players before the debates started.  There was a comment on Tuesday, another on Friday, and a more detailed description of the political landscape the morning  the debate started in the House of Assembly.

On top of that, two news reports appeared over the past weekend – from CBC and the Telegram -  purporting to tell the inside story of last week’s emergency debate in the House of Assembly.  They cover different aspects of the goings-on.  The CBC one in particular adds a bit of detail but generally confirms what the Tories were up to.

Pull back from all the details, though and a much clearer picture emerges.

The Fraser Institute and Laughably Flawed Analysis #nlpoli

The latest Fraser Institute assessment of the financial management prowess of premiers is to sound economic analysis what homeopathy to curing cancer.

The Fraser Institute issued a news release on the first anniversary of Kathy Dunderdale’s departure from politics that declared her the best fiscal manager of all the country’s premiers. 

That wasn’t sarcasm.

That’s what they said.

Review faces stiff competition from province’s politicians #nlpoli

If Paul Davis and his beleaguered band of provincial Conservatives started the week on a high,  it didn’t last very long.

They opened the House on Monday to debate a bill that would reduce the size of the House of Assembly by 10 members.  They had the instant support of the Liberals and, going into the session, they knew that Ball and the Liberals had already agreed that the fall election would now come sometime in 2016.

They announced another ridiculous twist in the already ridiculous fight over European free trade.  The media reported the whole thing positively at first, although before the day was out major economic groups in the province had slammed the provincial government for their anti-trade stance.

On top of that,  the three maritime premiers were in town for a meeting of the Atlantic premiers council.  Reporters asked them about the feud.  We’d be ticked off too, in the same position, they agreed, but if there’s federal cash to be had, we want a piece as well. That does nothing except highlight why the provincial government was just plain dumb when they passed on the original deal and tried to turn it into something else.

Okay, so Monday wasn’t really all that high, but when this time last year,  the Conservatives were being burned in effigy for heat and light as people sat around in a blackout caused by the provincial energy corporation, Monday was pretty damn good.

Then Tuesday came and, in the hideous cliche of hack television reporters,  things went horribly wrong.

Abbott and Costello meet the Trade Deal #nlpoli

If you are confused by the provincial government’s struggle over free trade with the European trade, find comfort in the fact you are not alone.

Pretty well everyone is confused by what the government is up to. 

That includes, incidentally,  intergovernmental affairs minister Keith Hutchings and industry minister Darin King, who announced on Monday that the provincial government was pulling its support for every free trade negotiation Canada has going at the moment except for the European trade agreement.

Ballsiness #nlpoli

Before Christmas, Liberal leader Dwight Ball had been calling for an election as soon as possible.  After Christmas, faced with the chance to chop a few seats from the House as he had already pledged to do, Ball was quick to agree both to the cuts proposed by the Conservatives and to a delay in the election at least until November. 

Ball’s hasty decision will cause him two very serious problems, as we have already noted.  Now that the bill is in the House there are new dimensions to the problems faced by Ball and the Liberals. 

Not fit for it #nlpoli

It’s not surprising that the provincial Conservatives and their supporters want to reduce the representations the people of the province have in the House of Assembly.

After all, the plan to cut 10 seats from the House of Assembly and make other changes in the interest of “modernisation” fits their pattern of behaviour over the past decade.

But there’s a bit more to it.

Anti-democratic, regressive, and unprincipled #nlpoli

The idea of reducing the size of the province’s legislature because the provincial government has a massive financial crisis didn’t get any smarter when the provincial government announced its plan on Thursday to slash the House from 48 seats to 38.

People who want to start government cutbacks at the top should expect a reduction in the number of departments and a cut to the size of cabinet and the senior ranks of the public service. 

What the government is proposing is to slash the board of directors in response to a problem with the company caused by lousy management.  In other words, they want to start by cutting the people responsible for keeping an eye on management in the first place.  That sounds just as screwball an idea as it is… if your goal is to get the company back on a sound financial footing.

Cutting the House to save money – the government’s goal, endorsed wholeheartedly by opposition leader Dwight Ball – is anti-democratic, regressive, and unprincipled.  The New Democratic party’s outgoing leader may be screaming now but she’[s already on record supporting the cuts for the same reasons.  She’s equally guilty of backing an anti-democratic, regressive, and unprincipled move.

SRBP dissected the idea on Tuesday.  That post still says it all.

-srbp-

Separated at birth: Boyle edition #nlpoli

 

Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle

NDP leadership rules screw local businesses #nlpoli

Any of the small, local printing companies who usually make a fair bit of cash from political campaigns can keep their printing presses chilled during the upcoming NDP leadership campaign.

Any candidates who make it past the other restrictions must print any campaign materials like flyers and householders in unionized printing plants. The campaign rules released on Wednesday are plain:

“Candidates shall not use non-unionized companies for the production of any campaign material.,  where such services are available.”

That’s great for the largest printer in the province but it shuts out pretty every other shop. 

Dictatorship of the CEO

The party executive will appoint a chief electoral officer to oversee the leadership contest.  Under section 13,  the CEO has the unrestricted right to expel a candidate based on nothing more than a written complaint that a written complaint from a candidate or party member who feels “feels aggrieved by the words or actions of another candidate.”

The CEO can “deal with the complaint in whatever manner she feels is appropriate, including, in severe circumstances, the disqualification of a candidate from the leadership race.”

There is no right of appeal for any decision by the CEO.

Membership

The campaign rules refer to a list of “active” members of the party.  Each candidate will get a list once they’ve been approved.

There’s no definition of “active” member in the party constitution. That leaves the door open for a Cabana-style manoeuver in which party insiders invent conditions and rules to suit their own purposes.

There’s no word yet on the convention itself and how that will run.

-srbp-

NDP votes for “More of the Same” #nlpoli

Gerry Rogers is smiling again now that Earle McCurdy has agreed to be the NDP Kevin Aylward.

If Earle had decided to stay retired,  Gerry was the substitute leader the key inside factions of the party had tapped to fill-in until after the next election.  Rogers would have had to take one for the team, just like her Liberal namesake did in 2007.

Now that McCurdy is in, the party executive will announce some leadership process that either completely avoids a convention (like the Conservatives in 2010) or puts up a sham competition (as in the NDP 2014 leadership review).

Drew Brown recently likened the next NDP leader to the Liberal’s last-minute substitute in 2011.  Fair enough.  Any possible change for the party will come in the future.

All NL parties agree to anti-democratic, regressive cuts to legislature #nlpoli

Whenever the provincial government gets into financial trouble, someone will suggest that one great way to save money would be to cut the number of members in the House of Assembly.

Some people make the suggestion because they think members of the House doing nothing anyway. Others suggest that cutting the House is a way of sharing the pain of cuts coming to government generally.  And others justify proposed cuts to the House of Assembly because other places with a larger population have fewer politicians to represent them.

None of those are valid reasons to cut the House budget.  Reform of the House of Assembly should be about representing the people of the province more effectively. It should be about reducing the control of monied interests, including unions, and increasing the influence of ordinary people.

Cutting the number of members  as proposed by Dwight Ball, Lorraine Michael, and Paul Davis, is solely bout appearing to save money or share the pain of government cuts.  In truth,  such a move will only serve to concentrate power in our province into the hands of an ever smaller group of individuals, many of whom are unelected and unaccountable.  It is as regressive and anti-democratic idea as one may imagine.

Roger Grimes: savage political attack dog #nlpoli

Maybe it was the headline on John Ivison’s opinion piece in the National Post that threw them off.

Spat over $400M N.L. fund could make federal government look bad to European trade partners

Provincial Conservatives, their patronage clients, and their paid staffers were all over Twitter all weekend tweeting touting the support in Ivison’s piece for their fight with the federal Conservatives over a federal cheque for $280 million.

Pay up feds, says Ivison, and end this dispute because it looks bad.

The problem for the Conservatives is that if you read the whole Ivison column, this is not a great endorse of the provincial Conservatives’ desperate political ploy.  It offers sensible advice in that both sides need to get this dispute settled now,  but Ivison gets there based on all sorts of half-baked ideas.  That much of it shows the extent to which observers both at home and outside the province don’t really understand what’s going on here. 

And if you follow the piece through to the end, you see just exactly how bad a position Paul Davis and his crowd really are.

The challenge of Hebron and old people #nlpoli

The C.D. Howe Institute released a policy brief on Thursday that argues that demographic changes will hit the people of Newfoundland and Labrador very hard in the years ahead.

This is not a new issue, as the report notes right at the beginning.  In fact,  the crowd at the C.D. How Institute make it pretty clear everyone knew the problem was coming.  The only question was whether the impact would be gradual over time or we’d hit it like a wall.

Pay attention to this little report. If you have been asleep for the past 10 years take the few minutes to skim the words, charts, and graphs.

Cluck, cluck, cluck #nlpoli

Say what you want about Lorraine Michael,  but you have to admit that she knows what she wants to do.

Lorraine has spent her adult life as an advocate.  That’s another word for someone who talks about things.  She’s done it quite a bit and, as she made clear Tuesday, Lorraine intends to keep talking about stuff.  Lorraine doesn’t want political power.  She just wants to advocate stuff.

When other people do something Lorraine has been talking about, then she counts that as on of her accomplishments.

And if someone threatens Lorraine’s position as an advocate, she has been remarkably adept at screwing them up.  She did it again on Tuesday.

Lorraine says good-bye, sort of #nlpoli

Her voice tinged with emotion,  Lorraine Michael announced to a gaggle of reporters and her supporters at Confederation Building on Tuesday that she would step down as party leader as soon as the party could find a replacement.

Lorraine would stay on in politics, though, and promised to run in the next provincial election. 

Interestingly enough, there have been rumours of growing discontent within the party with Michael’s leadership since last spring.  And in December, rumblings started that some within the party wanted Lorraine to go.  They were supposedly shopping around the idea of an interim leader.  Other versions, as turned up by the Telegram’s James McLeod on Twitter had Michael thinking about quitting.

Whether or not any of that scuttlebutt was even remotely true, Lorraine Michael’s decision puts the NDP in a rough spot, as if being a political void wasn’t bad enough.

Comparative Hydro Costs #nlpoli

Konrad Yakabuski’ s column in the Monday Globe is an interesting one for people in Newfoundland and Labrador for a couple of reasons.  ‘

First of all,  Yakabuski pointed out the “broader credibility problem facing all of Canada’s provincially owned electric utilities.”

Second of all,  for all those people in this province who are complaining that the Liberals won;t release any of their policies before the election, we have had lots of time to debate the energy policy of the current administration for a decade.

For all of that time, the people currently bitching about the lack of policy debate didn’t want to debate that energy policy despite the mounds of evidence that what the provincial government was doing with the former hydro corporation was headed for bad policy.

Fishing for support #nlpoli

When the going gets tough, the tough go fishing.

In this case,  a bunch of politicians in a tough spot with voters are fishing among a small bunch of politicians in Ottawa for support in their campaign to turn a deal achieved in 2013 into something else entirely.

This isn’t really news, by the way, but in the world of the provincial government these days, intergovernmental affairs minister Keith Hutchings sent out a news release on Friday to tell  everyone what was reported before Christmas.  That is,  Keith and Premier Paul Davis are trying to get federal members of parliament and senators a from Newfoundland and Labrador to back the provincial government in its latest war with Ottawa.

10 years later #nlpoli

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the first Sir Robert Bond Papers post.

In July 2004,  I wrote and released a paper that tried to “examine offshore oil revenues and the Atlantic Accord in light of what the Accord actually provides.It was an attempt to evaluate the provincial government's proposal based on what had been made public to that point.”

Which is to be master?  was supposed to be the first of a series of papers on different public policy issues.  Each would have a different author.  They would appear from time to time in order to foster “public discussion of issues affecting Newfoundland and Labrador.”  The title of the series was going to be The Sir Robert Bond Papers.

The Void #nlpoli

For its last editorial of 2014,  the Telegram decided to discuss the fate of the province’s New Democrats.

A quick summary:  things were good for the Dippers.  Now things are not so good.  This isn’t just a local thing.  It’s happening nationally.  Lorraine Michael has said in year-end interviews she likely won’t be around for long after the next election.

Lorraine has been wonderful, the editorial says. It good that she’s going to leave.  After all , why “would Michael want to obscure her legacy by presiding over such lean times?”

Talk about ending on a wrong note.