The Sir Robert Bond Papers
The real political division in society is between authoritarians and libertarians.
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About Sir Robert
Churchill Falls and Muskrat Falls - Background
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13 February 2017
Captain Sweatpants and the future of news media #nlpoli
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The numbers are so large they take your breath away. In a poll conducted for The Public Policy Forum for its recent report on Canadian new...
10 February 2017
The Doldrums #nlpoli
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MQO conducted a little poll in late January and found the party standings among voters remains where it was in November. No surprise. N...
09 February 2017
Sweat Equity - panel discussion #nlpoli
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ISER Books and the Queen Elizabeth II Library will hold a panel discussion on the recent ISER publication Sweat Equity: Cooperative House Bu...
08 February 2017
The Classroom Jungle #nlpoli
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CBC aired the first of three half hour programs on Monday night featuring a bunch of teachers talking about problems in the Newfoundland ...
07 February 2017
Words and Violence #nlpoli
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Canadian writer J.J. McCullough used a column in the Washington Post last week to ask a very useful question: why it is that the progressiv...
06 February 2017
Cultural Replicant Fade #nlpoli
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The people of Gambo held their first mummers' parade the December before last. The Gander Beacon, the weekly newspaper that covers e...
03 February 2017
Full of sound and fury #nlpoli
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Pity Earle McCurdy. The provincial New Democratic Party boss is rightly getting raked over the political coals for his Twitter comment...
02 February 2017
What British soldiers ate in the Great War #nlpoli
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01 February 2017
No Market Research Required #nlpoli
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In the House of Commons, members can put questions to cabinet ministers several ways. One of them is called Questions on the Order Paper. ...
Populism: the lesson from Venezuela #nlpoli
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Born and raised in Venezuela, Andreas Miguel Rondon is an economist who now lives in Madrid. He wrote for The Washington Post last week ...
31 January 2017
What is it about Quebec and mass killings? #nlpoli
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Compared to the United States, there haven't been a lot of mass killings in Canada. Period. Full stop. Canada is predominantly ...
Local news media in the post-factual world #nlpoli
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Chris O'Neill-Yates is a veteran CBC journalist. Like most people in her line of work, Chris is on Twitter plugging both her own work ...
30 January 2017
Duff in the hole encore #nlpoli
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Oh dear. The CBC has gone off to the mainland to get Duff Conacher to make a comment about the need for political finance reform in Newfo...
Mean Tweets #nlpoli
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In the United States, a late-night television program created a regular feature that has celebrities read the comments made about them on T...
27 January 2017
Feehan, electricity prices, and the bigger problem. #nlpoli
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Jim Feehan's proposal to change the way we price electricity in the province got some media attention -over the past 24 hours. Feehan ...
26 January 2017
Faroese fishermen skirting Canadian port ban via St. Pierre #nlpoli
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Fishing boats from the Faroe Islands are getting around a ban on shipping through Canadian ports by unloading their catch in St. Pierre firs...
25 January 2017
Kevin, Donald, and Danny #nlpoli
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A Forum poll released on Monday showed 27% of those surveyed thought celebrity businessman Kevin O'Leary would make the best leader of...
24 January 2017
Ratings trump truth: Justified edition #nlpoli
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Updated (scroll to the -srbp-) Someone in Gander Bay has been catching and selling quantities of smelt. The Department of Fisheries and ...
23 January 2017
Sovereignty #nlpoli
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Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the very few countries on the planet that got itself into such a financial mess that it gave up self-gov...
20 January 2017
Another premier... same health care facility #nlpoli
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A gaggle of provincial politicians representing districts along the west coast of Newfoundland turned up in Corner Brook on Friday for anoth...
Ratings trump truth #nlpoli
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Sometimes the universe delivers you the magical set of circumstances you just can't ignore. Danny Williams turned up at the St. John...
19 January 2017
New French anti-terror measure impacts Newfoundland #nlpoli
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A group of 35 young people traveling from St. Pierre to Corner Brook at the end of the month are going to be affected by a new French anti-c...
Actions and Words (2016) #nlpoli
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The provincial cabinet has known since January - at least - that the powerhouse at Muskrat Falls is only 15% completed despite a huge payout...
18 January 2017
A bail out, a bail out ... #nlpoli
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Conversation about the province's financial state in the past couple of weeks have turned to talk of bailouts and threats to the provinc...
The Narrative War (2015) #nlpoli
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The day after a massive Liberal victory in the general election, CBC’s David Cochrane posted an analysis piece on the new administration...
17 January 2017
The last man on the moon
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Gene Cernan died on Monday. He was many things in his life but Cernan will be best known as the last man who set foot on the moon during...
Cognitive Dissonance (2014) #nlpoli
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People like things in life to fit together. When things don’t fit together, people get upset. They get fidgety. They try to make thin...
16 January 2017
A muskrat by any other name... #nlpoli
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Memorial University economist Jim Feehan proposed in the December issue of Canadian Public Policy that the provincial government should cha...
The Keystone Kops Ride Again (2013) #nlpoli
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We already knew that the provincial cabinet had abandoned their budget before the document had been debated in the House. That happened la...
13 January 2017
Conservatives and Millennials #nlpoli #cdnpoli
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The talk was supposed to be about the political culture in Newfoundland and Labrador. Does it ever change? What Tim Powers wound up spen...
Toward a fair and just society (2012) #nlpoli
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The December 2008 expropriation bill was not the right thing for the provincial government and the House of Assembly to do. The expropri...
12 January 2017
Debt servicing and revenue, 2013-2016 #nlpoli
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There are lots of ways of looking the government's budget. Here's one that's a bit unconventional. Rather than look at how mu...
Torque wars: media, politicians, and the Muskrat Falls loan guarantee #nlpoli (2011)
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Some people will tell you there the federal and provincial governments have a deal for a federal loan guarantee on Muskrat Falls. The prov...
11 January 2017
Campaign Finance Reform: shifting attention #nlpoli
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Until 1996, there were no campaign finance laws in Newfoundland and Labrador at all. In 2003, the Conservatives promised to make dramati...
Williams announces political exit plan (2010)
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Danny Williams always said that building the Lower Churchill was the only thing he wanted to do before leaving politics. He took a huge ste...
10 January 2017
If only we were New Brunswick... #nlpoli
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Premier Dwight Ball has talked about it. CBC's Peter Cowan tweeted about it Sunday night. If only we were like all those lucky provi...
Behaviour Patterns #nlpoli
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January 2016. Dwight Ball tells reporters in year-end interviews that "everything is on the table" to deal with the government...
Rumpole and Justice Delayed (2009) #nlpoli
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There is no question that our system provides a great method for adjudicating questions of fact and law, but given the expenditure of publi...
09 January 2017
Oil downturn slams petro-provinces' jobs #nlpoli
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The four provinces heavily dependent on oil and gas resources took a major hit in jobs in 2016, according to seasonally-adjusted figures rel...
Media Donations to NL Political Parties #nlpoli #cdnpoli
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Steele Communications and its subsidiary VOCM made a combined total of $23,600 in contributions to political parties in Newfoundland and Lab...
The poverty of "we so po'" rhetoric (2008) #nlpoli
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“People need to understand government cannot write a cheque for everything,” said Williams. “We can’t be all things to all people.” “On...
06 January 2017
Putting the sunk in sunk cost #nlpoli #cdnpoli
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Muskrat Falls is basically an $800 million tax on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. That's roughly the amount you get using numbe...
Williams concedes on royalties (2007) #nlpoli
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As Bond Papers noted on Thursday, part of the Hebron deal will involve a change to the provincial royalty regime local media are chara...
05 January 2017
Public Support for Muskrat Falls #nlpoli
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Corporate Research Associates isn't the only pollster in the universe, no matter what some people locally seem to believe. CRA release...
The Danny Brand (2006) #nlpoli
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The defining characteristic of Danny Williams' term as a politician - and particularly his term as Premier thus far - has been his rel...
04 January 2017
Books, tents, fishing rods and such #nlpoli
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Don't ask why but Statistics Canada groups books in with sporting goods, hobbies, and music. The picture shows total sales in Newfound...
Taxing our understanding #nlpoli
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Over the past week, there's been a flurry of comment about gasoline prices and the fact that, as of New Year's Day, a provincial sa...
Spending the future (2005) #nlpoli
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" [The change in the province's financial outlook] That's very dramatic ...Some people are going to stand back and say 'Oh...
03 January 2017
Newfoundland and Nutrition in the 1940s #nlpoli #cdnpoli
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Scholarly papers seldom get news media attention. When a paper combines a well-known, emotionally charged issue – aboriginal residential s...
On Meaning #nlpoli
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Brexit supporter and insurance magnate Arron Banks got into a tussle on Twitter late last year with Cambridge classicist Mary Beard. Banks t...
02 January 2017
Praying for a miracle #nlpoli
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People are talking about austerity but the simple truth is the people talking that way have a vested interest in exaggerating what is going...
30 December 2016
2016 in books #nlpoli
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1. Brand Command by Alex Marland. The book that political marketing and communications academics will be quoting for a while to come. ...
Top 10 Posts of 2016 #nlpoli
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These are the posts you read the most of all. 01. Balls digs himself deeper into hole - May 2016 and yet another twist in the tale of E...
29 December 2016
Reality Check: gas tax and debt/deficit #nlpoli
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Comment on Twitter: "If my household spends too much and goes into debt I don't expect others too pay for my mistakes, yet govn m...
Fact-checking CBC and Food Banks #nlpoli
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The headline on the CBC story just felt wrong. The kind of over-the-top exaggeration that just sounds biased. Distorted. Wrong. &qu...
The Tibb's Eve Accord #nlpoli
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Health minister John Haggie said that the health deal signed with Ottawa on Tibb's Eve was the best deal that could be got. Haggie...
28 December 2016
Bullying and Bennett #nlpoli
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Cathy Bennett is the finance minister. She's one of the most powerful and influential people in the province, bar none and certainly sh...
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