The Sir Robert Bond Papers

Today marks SRBP's anniversary.  The first post appeared on January 3, 2005. Events of the past few weeks are a reminder of both how m...

"We need to find a way to bridge us [from] where we are currently until the commodities rebound and be [sic] the significant contributo...

New governments often wind up in a bit of a pickle. They walk into a new job where they are supposed to be the folks in charge, but they v...

Apparently, they do. In four randomised field experiments , researchers at Columbia University found that lawn signs increased vote sha...

1.   The Dunphy Shooting:  Serious questions   In January, we are supposed to get the results of the police investigation into the shooting ...

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First, anyone who keeps talking about the two percent HST cut simply has no idea what the hell is going on in provincial finances. Serious...

The new Liberal administration is firmly, irrevocably committed to completing the Muskrat Falls project regardless of the final cost to the ...

Members of the House of Assembly had the good fortune of having two fine candidates for Speaker. While SRBP endorsed Scott Reid, the H...

The comments section at SRBP is gone,  this time for good. The theory was great. People could offer their own views on your writing and ...

Liberal member of the House of Assembly Scott Reid is a candidate for Speaker of the House. By the looks of things,  members will have a c...

A very short post by James Gordon at Uncle Gnarley contains a whole lot of information about the dam Muskrat Falls. Gordon is a retired...

A month ago,  a CBC “analysis” by David Cochrane warned against a band of Liberals running the government with too much power. Two weeks ...

15 minutes. That’s all Tom Marshall said it would take to sell out the bonds on Muskrat Falls. He also said that a federal loan guarant...

Last spring,  SRBP looked at some speculative budget projections using some different prices for oil and  assumed growth in revenue fro...

The new Liberal administration will take power later this morning. Dwight Ball will lead a cabinet of 12. This is only the fourth time ...

Some people are upset that the provincial sales tax won’t be going up by two percent. The current harmonized sales tax rate is 13%. If ...

And there it was. Top of the front page.  Screaming headline. Economist warns Liberal plan doesn’t make sense. Right underneath ...

According to a statement from the federal finance department on Wednesday,  “the federal government will take any necessary steps to ensure ...

CBC and the Telegram   carried a story on Tuesday that the province would be hit by a “mild recession” next year. There’s not much real new...

“A new government has a very small amount of time in which to lay the groundwork for its term of office. It has about six months to show thi...

Last week’s post on the political narrative war currently under way was a combination of two separate, but related ideas. The incoming Li...

Political scientist Stephen Tomblin is concerned about the low voter turn-out in the recent elections. Tomblin thinks it is a sign that vo...

The information the Conservatives leaked to David Cochrane Tuesday on the budget update confirmed the extent to which they are actually the ...

The day after a massive Liberal victory in the general election,  CBC’s David Cochrane posted an analysis piece on the new administration. ...

Doing things differently. That’s what the Liberal campaign was all about. Now we have to see if Ball and the Liberals actually put that ...

This is the year of the youtube election. Some of them, like Alison Coffin’s recession pitch or Dan Crummell’s “ I live in the district ”...

The Telegram did voters a valuable service the last weekend of the campaign by printing responses from candidates in metro districts to two...

If you want to know why Forum Research’s poll is out of line with the other polls done on the provincial election, you need look no further ...

Residents of Newfoundland and Labrador awoke Thursday to a massive sucking noise as amateur pundits, media commentators, and newsrooms acros...

The provincial election campaign a decidedly nastier turn on Monday. Conservative leader Paul Davis is trying his best to save the party’s f...

  “It was a previous Liberal government that wanted to actually privatize Hydro. This particular government wants to strengthen Hydro, wan...

Corporate Research Associates’ latest poll is in line with polls by MQO and Abacus. The table below shows CRA’s quarterly poll results si...

The mighty Muskrat Falls turned up a few times in the leaders’ debate on Monday night. Now that the project’s huge problems are plainer,  ...

The only winner in the debate was David Cochrane.  He’s no Paul Wells but he did a fine job of wrangling the three leaders. And that’s t...

Muskrat Falls has been the big issue in two successive elections. In 2011, the parties wanted to talk about the project, while voters didn...

The only people who think this is a dull election don’t know anything about politics. Seriously. On the day before nominations closed fo...

The province’s major media outlets have taken different approaches to political coverage in this election from what they did last time. Th...

While the townie media are clamouring for details from people who don’t have the details, it’s important to look at what the people with the...

In all the elections in the 21st century, the three political parties in Newfoundland and Labrador have proposed what are essentially the sa...

In his major interview with NTV on the first weekend of the formal provincial election campaign,  Premier Paul Davis insisted that his part...

If the polls are right, we could be looking at an unprecedented shift in politics in Newfoundland and Labrador. We could be looking at lot...

A third poll has confirmed that the provincial Liberals have the support of an overwhelming majority of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. ...

The provincial election campaign is barely a week old and already we have seen certain themes and interpretations emerging that are the prod...

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If you want to get a sense of how accurate polls were in the last federal election take a look at the ones we have in public and compare tho...

Over the past couple of weeks,  some people have been questioning the accuracy of public opinion polls. People have questioned the polls i...

On Day Two of the official provincial general election campaign, a new poll by a different polling method lines up with the Abacus Data pol...

No surprise that the Liberals are way ahead in the latest Abacus horse race poll. No surprise the NDP have fallen and the Tories have held...

While Paul Davis and the Conservatives were launching their official election campaign,  Ryan Cleary turned up in a recorded interview on NT...

Last Friday, CBC’s David Cochrane asked Ryan Cleary about information Cochrane had – apparently from NDP sources  - that Cleary had tried to...

The news release on the government’s generic offshore royalty  wasn’t exactly a model of clarity and accuracy. The headline and first sen...

The provincial justice ministry had to increase spending to put a new judge in the Provincial Court in Clarenville even though the caseload ...

Ryan Cleary didn’t become the punchline to any New Yorker cartoon at 3 :00 PM last Friday afternoon . Peg Norman and other local New Demo...

Elections Newfoundland and Labrador released the 2014 party financial reports recently.  That let’s us take a look at trends over the past f...

In preparation for the coming general election battle, the provincial Conservatives are digging in their headquarters within sight of the he...

“A positive, optimistic, hopeful vision of public life isn’t a naive dream,”  Justin Trudeau told Canadians after he won a truly historic vi...

Paul Davis and his cabinet were all smiles and chuckles last week at the election of a new administration in Ottawa. Optimistic for the fu...

The province’s largest public sector union met last week in St. John’s for its annual convention.  They started out their first day with a s...

SRBP told you on Tuesday morning that the federal election did not bode well for the New Democrats and Conservatives in the province. The...

From Newfoundland Power’s rate application to the Public Utilities Board. Uncertainty : The interconnection to the North American gr...

Nick Whalen killed a giant. That’s the story of the 2015 federal election in Newfoundland and Labrador, bar none.  People told Whalen he...

This is Craig Westcott’s editorial from The Pearl newspaper, reproduced with permission..   This is a tough column to write. Taking a...

Two polls taken during the recent campaign showed Scott Andrews was losing in his old seat in Avalon. Decided and leanings ...

If the numbers from the Liberal campaign in St. John’s East are right,  then New Democratic Party incumbent Jack Harris is in serious troubl...

As the federal election winds down to the last day,  the result is likely going to be nothing any of the pundits expected. Okay, the elect...

There are times you read stuff and you just have to wonder what brought that on. There’s Telegram editor Russell Wangersky explaining ho...

Muskrat Falls will ensure consumers in Newfoundland and Labrador pay much higher electricity rates than they otherwise needed to pay. The ...

/What a difference 36 years makes. There’s  New Democrat strategist Robin Sears in a National Post piece complaining about the way the Li...

  In 2004, Danny Williams fought for three months against a federal government decision that had been settled – at least for the federal g...

At the heart of the ongoing civil war between Danny Williams’ provincial Conservatives and Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives is the cla...

Since people are wondering if Muskrat Falls really is still the cheapest way to make electricity for local use,  let’s take a look at it. ...

Last week, provincial fisheries minister Vaughn Granter held a news conference at a local restaurant known for its seafood dishes to announc...

  The average consumer in Newfoundland and Labrador should expect to pay 51% more for electricity compared to their current  rates once Mu...

Any oil company seriously interested in bidding on an exploration license offshore Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t likely to need the hyped ...

The latest progress report shows that Nalcor had a productive summer, but an extrapolation by the researcher and writer  JM of information i...

‘”Pride is a big factor”  a manager at Muskrat Falls told the Telegram’s James McLeod on Monday during the latest media junket to the Big D...

Sixteen of the province’s 22 full-time provincial court judges are either already in or are on their way to St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Th...

2002. Stephen Harper said that his party had a program that would help change the dependence in Atlantic Canada on government spending, a ...

New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair likely never imagined that an insult he threw at a couple of Parti Quebecois politicians in the Queb...

Not surprisingly, Darin King has decided to leave politics after only eight years. King is just the latest in a long line of pensionable C...

A new high school has put the better part of a thousand young people on Topsail Road opposite a raft of fast food outlets and a major mall. ...

hard to believe but it has been five years since Hurricane Igor ripped through Placentia Bay and into Trinity Bay. What stands out most ab...

Tom Mulcair will not be coming back to Newfoundland and Labrador again during the current federal election. He certainly won;t be coming b...

Sometime late in the last century, Bloc NDP leader Tom Mulcair said something in the Quebec National Assembly about Newfies. Mulcair apolo...

Hearings at the pubic utilities board revealed that senior executives at Nalcor received hefty bonuses again in 2014 as they have in other. ...

The next provincial general election finishes on November 30, 2015. Not the way you are used to thinking of it, right? You think the ele...

As you look ahead to the fall election, the bigger political addicts among you are likely trying to figure out different aspects like how th...

The Liberals have decided to skip the provincial leaders debate sponsored by VOCM and the St. John’s Board of Trade. The reason, according...

There is a problem, apparently. A very big problem. In the current federal election, none of the federal party leaders have visited the ...

Thursday was one of those days where you felt like you had dropped down the rabbit hole with Alice. Or maybe had indulged a bit too heavil...

In June,   SRBP used the CRA poll from the second quarter of 2015 as the basis for a bit of “what if” thinking. Consider that the Liber...

“My Government will harness the desire among Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to cultivate greater cultural, financial and moral autonomy vi...

Orders in Council up to the end of August 2015, show that the cabinet has made on 13 appointments at the rank of deputy minister and assist...

Clyde Jackman is the latest provincial Conservative to quit politics. That’s not surprising.  He was supposed to go in 2011 but hung aroun...

The federal and provincial governments need to sort out a royalty regime for the areas of the seabed outside the 200 mile exclusive economic...

On Tuesday, the provincial Conservatives launched their election campaign. It was to be built solely on the image of Paul Davis as a great...

The word that comes to mind when you look at the new provincial Conservative party website or the davis165.ca site isn’t fresh, new, reboun...

The New England governors and eastern Canadian premiers were in town on Monday for a quick meeting. The only thing that seemed to make loc...