Come by Chance and the Politics of Inertia #nlpoli

Is *this* the real El Dorado?

More than six months after they shut it down, the company that owns the Come by Chance oil refinery wants to sell it.

 And they want provincial taxpayers to pay.

According to Saltwire, “Glen Nolan, president of the United Steel Workers Local 9316 union, said that in recent conference calls officials of the province’s energy department indicated Silverpeak had floated” the idea that the provincial government would pay to keep the plant in hot idle mode.  

Between 150 and 175 workers have been laid off from the facility since February.  Another 60 or so are working to keep the plant ready to run.   

A deal with Irving – reported by Canadian Press and others as a done deal in late May – came apart for reasons that aren’t clear.

So while they are trying to sell the refinery Silverpeak wants the provincial government to pay to keep the refinery idled in a state where it could get back into production very quickly.  The alternative will be to mothball the refinery and lay off the remaining workers at the refinery.

The only company interested in buying the refinery – Origin International – doesn’t want to run it as a refinery.  But that hasn’t stopped the provincial government from talking it up and for representatives of the union at Come by Chance from being excited at the prospect.

It’s hard to imagine the provincial government won’t put up the cash.

Opening the taps #nlpoli

Opening the Taps by Edward Hollett on Scribd

-srbp-

Building on our successes #nlpoli

"First and foremost, be totally honest with the electorate,”  former Premier Clyde Wells told Anthony Germain on CBC’s Sunday Edition last weekend.  He was giving some general advice to the next Premier on how to handle the provincial government’s enormous financial problems.

“Don't go sugar-coating anything. Fully disclose what you're doing [and] why you're doing it. Have a logical plan that will treat everybody fairly.”

Right after honesty,  came communication in Wells' approach.  Hes told Germain that he took every opportunity to explain what was going on and why it was happening to the public.  He made a couple of televised province-wide addresses to do just that.   

People didn’t like it at first.  The opposition parties and the unions criticised everything.  That’s what they are supposed to do.  But, as Wells, pointed out, “the people of the province come around. In my case, it was proven that they come around, because in the 1993 election, after four years of the most severe cutting, we had an increased majority.”

Few Premiers have done that in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1855 and none have done it since Wells.  In 2007, with bags of cash, great times, and no opposition to speak of, the governing Conservatives won more seats than they did in 2003 but they did it with fewer votes.  In 1993, the Liberals got *more* votes than they received in 1989.

But that doesn’t really tell the whole story.

What started in 1989 was a change in strategic direction for the provincial government and the province. 

The provincial government didn’t just cut spending and eliminate jobs in the public service.  Reforms to health care and education organization and governance were supposed to shift power out of the bureaucracy in St. John’s and hand it to people in the regions where they lived. 

Education reform was tied to improving economic performance and opportunities laid out in the Strategic Economic Plan.  The plan was the product of a two-year-long process spearheaded by the economic planning group, appointed by cabinet in the summer of 1990 under the chairmanship of the Premier's chief of staff, Edsel Bonnell.  The group brought together a diverse set of individuals with an equally diverse set of ideas. There were within the group contending ideas, as former chairman of the Economic Recovery Commission Doug House describes in his book Against the tide. 

The process the SEP team used overcame those differences and built a consensus on a future direction found on three fundamental changes, as laid out in the introduction to the plan:

• A change within people. There is a need for a renewed sense of pride, self-reliance, and entrepreneurship. We must be outward-looking, enterprising, and innovative, and to help bring about this change in attitude we will have to be better educated. During the consultation process, most people agreed that education is essential to our economic development.
• A change within governments. Governments (both politicians and the bureaucracy) must focus on long-term economic development and planning, while still responding to short-term problems and needs. Government programs and services must place a greater emphasis on the quality of the services provided and on the client. Changes in education, taxation and income security systems are also considered critical to our economic development.
• A change in relationships. To facilitate the necessary changes in the economy, new partnerships must be formed among governments, business, labour, academia, and community groups. In particular, better co-ordination between the federal and provincial governments in the delivery of business and economic development programs is needed to eliminate duplication and to prevent confusion for those who use them.

What happened in 2003 abandoned that strategic approach in favour of (once again) using provincial spending as a substitute for economically and environmentally sustainable private sector development. Megaprojects were all the rage and economic development became basically an exercise in handing out cheques.  Changes to education and health care governance put power back in the hands of the central bureaucracy and minimised the connection between schools or hospitals and the communities they served.

In every respect, the current financial and organizational mess of the provincial government is the result of the strategic change of direction after 2003.   Dwight Ball’s “Way Forward” stays within all the same strategic premises. Not surprisingly, it hasn’t fixed the problems.

Any proposal from any political party that doesn’t change the strategic direction of the province won’t succeed in fixing the current financial problems the provincial government faces.  That doesn’t mean going back to the 1992 strategic plan, which was designed for a different situation. 

It means using the same integrated approach, though, starting with the understanding that only a strategic shift will work.  The process is important as:  strategic change is only possible with a consensus across the province. A strategic consensus is essential because making strategic changes will require a commitment that will last beyond one four-year administration.

That consensus will only come with a lot of public discussion and debate. There will be differences of opinion.  There needs to be a lot of disagreement to make sure we explore all the options before setting on a new strategic plan made up of elements that can work.  

The new strategic plan must shift the focus of economic development from government to the private sector.  Government needs to create the environment in which the private sector can succeed while protecting the public interest through proper regulation.

The plan needs to focus not on specific topics – like substituting “tech” for the current obsession with oil – but on creating an environment in which the private sector can respond to market forces.  We cannot know what will be important in the future.  Instead, we need to create the economy that can best respond to shifts.

The lesson from the 1990s is that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can solve their own economic and financial problems. Wells’ interview this past weekend is the first he’s given in almost 30 years and it is a reminder of what happened here, not in Saskatchewan or Iceland. 

We’ve been ignoring what happened in the 1990s in Newfoundland and Labrador.  People are casting about for some easy answers to their current problems that don’t involve actually changing anything. Unfortunately for them, more of the same simply isn’t an option.  

Well, the answers are right in front of use.  We just have to decide to build on our past successes rather than continue with tales of doom and gloom that get us nowhere. After all, it’s not like we haven’t faced bigger problems than the ones we have today and solved them ourselves.

-srbp-

Guiding Principles for Economic Development

from the

1992 Strategic Economic Plan

1. The Province must focus on strategic industries. With increasing competition in world markets and limits to growth in primary- resource industries, the Province must target high-value-added activities in which we have, or can develop, a competitive advantage.
2. Our education and training system must adapt to the changing labour market demands for a highly skilled, innovative, and adaptable workforce. In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, it is critical that governments, business, and labour work together to improve the level and quality of education, training, and re-training.
3. Newfoundland and Labrador must be competitive both at home and in world markets. To improve our prospects for economic growth and  development, and to maintain and expand local and export markets, the province must diversify its economic base by producing goods and services that are internationally competitive in price, quality, and service.
4. The private sector must be the engine of growth. While it is the role of government to create an economic and social environment that promotes competitiveness, it is the enterprising spirit of the private sector that will stimulate lasting economic growth.
5. Industry must be innovative and technologically progressive to enhance productivity and competitiveness. A competitive advantage can be created by integrating advanced technologies in the workplace with the innovation, skills, and creativity of our people.
6. To achieve economic prosperity, there must be a consensus about the need for change and a commitment from governments, business, labour, academia, and others to work together in building a competitive economy.
7. Government policies and actions must have a developmental focus where the client comes first. The structure of government must be streamlined, efficient and responsive to public needs and to changes in the economy.
8. The principle of environment must be managed to ensure that development can be sustained [economically and environmentally] over the long term.  

 

Continuing continuity #nlpoli

In the face of thousands of well-informed people telling Dwight Ball that the provincial government must change direction to survive, in the face of mountains of evidence that the province has been on the wrong course since 2005 or so, and lately, in the face of dire warnings from the folks who advise others about the value of the government's bonds,  Dwight Ball will continue to do what everyone knows doesn't work.

The provincial government is abandoning its economic plans, as the Telegram's James McLeod would have it last Friday.

Well, not really.

Developing a sustainable, diverse economy #nlpoli

When it comes to developing a successful economic development strategy, Edsel Bonnell has advice worth heeding.

He co-chaired the team that developed "Change and Challenge," the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan. The SEP "called for a transformation of culture, away from a dependence on government initiatives and government control and toward one based on individual initiative and private-sector entrepreneurship.

"The plan did not promise easy answers, nor did it fixate on one sector of the economy or on large megaprojects. Change and Challenge represented the result of a long development process that was itself crucial. The long period of discussion and consultation both inside and outside government helped to develop a consensus among those who took part in the discussions."  

Everything in the SEP represented a departure from the unsuccessful approaches we had already tried in the province,  all the ideas we knew were unsuccessful and yet the ones that the  Conservatives put back in place after 2003.  In many respects, it's how we got into our current financial mess... again.  

The process  - "the long period of consultation and discussion" - was an important part of the SEP's success.  The discussions helped build a strong agreement throughout the province about what needed to be done to develop a sustainable, diverse economy.  Not surprisingly,  Edsel recommends we try the same thing again.  He's described the approach very simply in two recent letters to the Telegram:  June 13 and June 18.   

Edsel may be a bit optimistic about how fast we might develop the plan:  this fall would be very fast.  But there is is merit in the idea of bringing all the parties together to set an apolitical task force on the track to build a plan to get us out of the very big hole in which we find ourselves. The politicians can't do it alone.  The bureaucrats can't,  and the business community can't. Nor can ordinary citizens fix things all by themselves.

-srbp-

Up the harbour and down the shore, again #nlpoli

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 much has changed - we have a new government party - and at the same time, how little has changed.  Read on and you will see how little has changed.

Danny Williams and the Conservatives won the 2003 election promising to cure all the province's financial ills by "growing the economy."  Danny Williams said time and again that he was all about "jobs, jobs, jobs."   They'd attacked the Liberals over their poor financial management and promised to do things better.

In the middle of 2006,  CBC updated the world on Williams' progress. "These days," SRBP wrote, "the Premier is feeling a bit beleaguered, at least if a piece that aired recently on CBC is anything to go by.

The Premier's own take on things doesn't really have any evident shred of optimism. 

Rather the Premier appeared to be speaking defensively: gimme credit for saving the place from imminent bankruptcy. We have things going on that no one can control. In the meantime,we are working on planning to plant seeds for future growth. 

Interestingly enough, the province was never facing imminent bankruptcy: that was the Premier's fiction. The other factors he mentioned [in the interview] were specific to ... some companies in the fishery alone. The same factors - like Chinese competition and high exchange rates - don't affect other economic initiatives or don't affect other industries in the same way.  

The segments with the Premier were an interesting clue to Danny Williams' current state of mind. If March was manic, then June is borderline depressive.

That June 2006 post continued:

What was pretty clear in 2003 was the province could get out of its budget woes with some careful planning and with the continued economic growth coming from the offshore and Voisey's Bay. We all knew that growth was coming. Danny knew it too and that's why he ran the election on the up-note of growth. 

What no one knew was that oil would hit US$70 a barrel and the cash would be pouring in at a rate no one in the province had ever seen before. That allowed Danny Williams to avoid making a whole bunch of good decisions and to crank up spending to unprecedented and, and in light of the economic slowdowns, likely unsustainable heights. 

These days, though, there is no mistaking the point that the provincial government is in a hard spot. There are some factors in the economy that are beyond Williams' control. The stuff that is within his purview either foundered for one reason or another or simply have never existed. 

And that goes to the core point of this piece from shortly after the 2003 election: government needs to focus on what government does. 

In largest measure, since 2003 Danny Williams has focused his considerable talents in areas where, as Premier, he simply can't have an impact. He has been trying to run in the business sector rather than applying his managerial skills to running a government that will in turn create an environment where the private sector will develop the economy.

If he wanted to create jobs, he should have stayed in the private sector and put together the deals to create jobs and generate wealth. Instead, we have wound up with a mismatch between Danny Williams' considerable skills and the challenges at hand. 

Worse still, the centralizing tendency of government bureaucracy merely reinforces the most pernicious attributes of Williams' own hands-on leadership style. This has slowed down government's processes such that many policies are done one at a time rather than in parallel.
 Government has slowed to the point where it has taken three full years to get even the vaguest idea of some policy areas - like widening Hydro's mandate - and others, like the role and impact of the Business department or Danny Williams' own economic development seeds still haven't been seen at all.

... 

Running government is like drinking from a four-inch firehose.
 The most important thing for an incoming administration is having a way of figuring out how much to drink so it can avoid getting drowned. An incoming administration has a list of the things it definitely wants to accomplish and sets to work on them right away. For everything else there is a framework that identifies what is important, what is not important and gives a guide that helps triage the stuff that pops up along the way. 

In a sense, we are looking at a Premier and a government, three years into its mandate, that is increasingly being driven on some major issues instead of doing the driving. It's a variation on the idea discussed in another "Outside the Box" column from early 2004.

Back then, it looked like those columns were just penetrating insights into the flipping obvious. In hindsight, the observations seemed to be all too relevant.

2006.

Government spending ramped up to unsustainable heights based on oil at US$70 a barrel.

Now here we are in 2016 with Danny Williams' legacy of unprecedented financial mismanagement staring us plainly in the face.

And just to show how timely a column your humble e-scribbler wrote for the old Independent in late 2003,  here's that column again for your anniversary reading pleasure.  Note the bit at the end.  That isn;t what Dwight Ball talks about when he refers to consultations, but it is the sort of thing that would change the way government operates in this province fundamentally.

---------------------------------

Up the harbour and down the shore 

If Danny Williams wants to solve the government deficit problem by producing new jobs, as he said he would, he will have to create something between 50, 000 and 100, 000 new jobs in the province over the next eight years. 

To put that in perspective, there are about 219, 000 full-time equivalent jobs in the province today according to the Economics and Statistics branch of the provincial government. Since 1996, the economy produced about 31, 000 new jobs. To meet his commitments, Danny Williams will have to produce twice or three times as many jobs in the next eight years as the province could create in the past eight. 

And he will have to do that while providing increased health services to an aging population, providing education, services, roads, water and sewer and all the other things people expect from the provincial government. And he can'’t lay off government employees or increase the deficit. 

Sounds impossible? 

It is. Just look at our collective experience in the province and you can see why making promises like "“Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" ” is nothing short of silly. Politicians seem to forget that whenever government tries to create jobs, it fails and fails miserably. 

Stupidity, someone once said, is doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome. To stop being stupid, politicians need to focus not on creating jobs - something they can'’t do - and focus on politics, something they can do. 

That'’s why, a decade ago, the provincial government decided to get out of the job-making business. It decided the best it could do is creating a climate where entrepreneurs - – people with ideas - – could focus on making jobs that last. There was a bit more to it, though. The regional economic boards were supposed to be a way to let people in the different areas of the province decide for themselves what they would do to develop their local economy. 

The boards were also part of a wider move toward more regional control over a number of things, including health care and education. After all, politics is about who decides. In a province as big as this one, with a very small population, the "“who"” who decides often shouldn'’t be someone hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the issue. One major problem is that it has been hard to wrestle power out of the hands of bureaucrats and politicians in St. John'’s who want to keep deciding just about everything, right down to who can and cannot ride the local school bus. 

But the logic remains. Take Eastport, for example, or other areas of the province where local fishermen have had a greater say in how the resources they depend on are managed. They make sensible decisions based on science, their own knowledge and their own interests. They virtually eliminate poaching. They close fishing in areas where it needs to be closed and develop new ways to improve the price they get for their product. 

Maybe it is time to take these ideas a step farther and create a form of regional government that promotes economic development and administers health care, municipal services, education and even social welfare programs. New regional councils, elected regularly, would sort out local priorities and make decisions on that basis. The provincial government can look after setting broad strategic goals, much like the federal government set down basic principles for Medicare and then lets the provinces actually deliver the services. But the decisions on where hospitals go, or indeed if a new hospital is actually the best way to deliver health care in that particular region are left to the people who will be directly affected. 

Transferring power for some decisions from St. John'’s to new regional governments wouldn'’t be a magical solution to job creation or anything else. It also won'’t guarantee equal success everywhere. What it will do is involve more people in deciding what the future will look like in Newfoundland and Labrador. In an odd way, a new approach of regional government -– a county system - might help people realize that the issues up the harbour are much the same as the ones down the shore or in the four distinct regions of Labrador. 

For the provincial government, those politicians can look at projects like Voisey'’s Bay or the offshore for the government revenues they generate, rather than the number of jobs. The deficit problem might just get sorted out by thinking outside the box for a change.

-srbp- 

Diversity #nlpoli

Labrador economy must diversify to survive, say opposition parties.

There is a CBC headline to conjure with.

Pure political magic for the two parties promising something different from what has gone on before.

Liberal leader Dwight Ball told CBC that we “must look at the other advantages that we would have available to us, things like power.” 

"This government talks a lot about the export of power. I want to talk about using that power as a competitive advantage for us."

Lorraine Michael, for the New Democratic Party,  said that "Government has to have long term plans that will deal with helping communities and workers when the issues arise."   Michael thinks that we have been too dependent on private sector corporations in Labrador.

No one has ever heard those ideas before

The Problem Described #nlpoli

One of the major factors affecting economic development in Newfoundland and Labrador is the literacy level of the population.

If you want to see the extent of the problem in one area, consider the case of Bell Island.  According to a May 2008 briefing note released as part of a recent Access to Information request:

“…50% of the population age 20 years and older has less than a high school graduation certificate or equivalent diploma.  Less than 30% of the population possesses a diploma in skills or trades….”

-srbp-

Annual GDP Change #nlpoli

A release on Friday from Statistics Canada showed that the provincial economy shrank by almost 5% in 2012.  They even supplied a lovely chart to illustrate the GDP changes in each province as well as the national average.

This wasn’t just modest growth or even a  modest drop.  We are talking one of only two provinces with a drop in GDP and the biggest change – positive or negative – of any province or territory in Canada. 

Alberta is even more dependent on commodities than Newfoundland and Labrador and it still managed to see gross domestic product grow by almost four percent.

Not so in the former Republic of Dannystan. 

Down.

By almost five percent.

 

We can get there from here #nlpoli

People across the province are astounded that some students at Memorial University cannot correctly identify countries, continents, and oceans on a map of the world.

Geographic illiteracy shocks people.  Well, it should, just like they should be appalled that 44% of the people over 15 years of age in this province read below the minimum level needed to function in modern society.  And they should be left speechless at the idea that 66% of the people in Newfoundland and Labrador over 15 years of age lack the numeracy skills for modern society.

Putting selective “facts” on the splitting table #nlpoli

Premier Kathy Dunderdale wants to have a  “conversation” about the provincial government’s financial mess and the ways we might fix it. That’s what she told CBC’s David Cochrane in her year-end interview. 

One of the things Kathy wants to talk about is taxes, specifically the number of people not paying the bulk of the taxes the provincial government collects.

Kathy doesn’t really want to have a conversation, of course.  Kathy likes jargon.  She uses jargon a lot.  She thinks it makes her sound smart.  It never has.  Kathy uses jargon so much that It just makes her sound like someone trying to sound smart.

Remittance Work and the Newfoundland Economy #nlpoli

For those who have been following the issue, SRBP and others were talking about remittance work back in 2007.

It remains a key part of the current administration’s economic policy.  The proof is in an airport in western Newfoundland that offers parking facilities for patrons who may be gone for upwards of one year.

-srbp-

GovSpeak Translator #nlpoli

A “forgivable loan” is another way of saying that a private-sector company is getting a free gift of public-sector money.

-srbp-

The Enduring Principle of Newfoundland Mining Development Policy #nlpoli

If you want to understand the provincial government’s mining policy, look no further than Joe Smallwood and a speech he gave to the local chapter of what was then the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1979.

Some help for the St. John’s Board of Trade #nlpoli

…who have suddenly discovered that the provincial economy is in serious need of diversification: a 2010 series called the Fragile Economy.

• Staying the course (March 2010)
• Reductio ad argentum (April 2010)
• …and two steps back (April 2010)
• Now three steps back and loving it (April 2010)

If they really want to get a handle on economic diversification, BOT chair Steve Power and his colleagues could start by reading the 1992 Strategic Economic Plan.  What the Board of Trade has been slavishly been supporting since 2003 is diametrically opposite to the 1992 SEP and its call for diversification based on  – gasp! – entrepreneurship, competitiveness, and innovation.

Frankly, it’s been pretty bizarre since 2003 to have a bunch of business owners who endorsed excessive public sector spending and clammed up about entrepreneurship, competitiveness and other subversive ideas.  In November 2010, here’s what the chair at the time said:

Chairman of the Board of Trade, Derek Sullivan said government contracts give a competitive advantage for local businesses and “can be a very powerful and reliable revenue stream.”

-srbp-

The politics of logic and history #nlpoli

“Government does not work on logic,” a wise man once told your humble e-scribbler.  “It works on the basis of history.”

When faced with a new problem, people tend to do what they did before, not what might make sense in the new circumstances.

You can see that the preference for history over logic in Kathy Dunderdale’s comments on Monday about what she and her colleagues would do for communities where the town fish plant had closed.

Mr. Speaker, we are doing the same thing for these workers, and will do for others the same thing we did in Stephenville, Grand Falls-Windsor, and Harbour Breton.

That would include moving in some provincial government jobs to stuff some cash into the local economy.  So if adding more provincial government employees is an integral part of Kathy Dunderdale’s response to the problems in these six communities, you can be damn sure she won’t be chopping any jobs.

Then again, regular readers of these scribbles already knew that claims to the contrary were bullshit.

The rest of Dunderdale’s comment are just routine political drivel:

We are committed to communities in this Province that find themselves in economic distress. We do not always have the answers at hand. There are not easy answers to be found by anybody, but we walk the walk with communities, Mr. Speaker. We do not just talk the talk.

And when she was done with drivel, she just popped out some truly vacuous bullshit:

Wherever the journey takes these people, their government will be there with them, and we do our best to diversify the economy and meet their needs in the meantime.

Diversify the economy.

Yeah.

Well, the economic development record of the current crowd is exactly zilch.  They spent so much time obsessing over polls and the Lower Churchill after 2003 that they simply didn’t do anything to diversify the economy.  And what they did try – giving away public cash by the bag-full – simply didn’t work. They haven’t been able to pay people to create jobs here.

Here’s how SRBP put it a couple of years ago comparing government spending in the mid-1990s with the current practice:

The province’s business development and economic diversification efforts – ITT then and INTRD and Business today – take less of a share of the budget now.  That’s despite government claims that it has a plan to expand the economy and that the plan is in place.

Mind you, the amounts spent have increased.  For example, the cost of operating the departments has gone from about $50 million for the Industry, Trade and technology department to about $66 million spread over Business and Innovation, Trade and Rural Development today.

The amount available for business investment is also up:  $18 million then compared to $29 million. Even then, though, the province’s business department -  the vehicle through which Danny Williams was once supposed to personally reinvigorate the provincial economy – actually doesn’t do very much with the cash in the budget.  Sure there are plenty of free gifts – like Rolls Royce – or the apparently endless supply of cash for inflatable shelters.

But as the Telegram discovered two years ago, the provincial government spent nothing at all of the $30 million budgeted for business development in 2007. And earlier this year the Telegram confirmed that in the past three years, less than one third of the $90 budgeted for business attraction was ever spent.

The result is that we have a very fragile economy.

Government does not work on the basis of logic.  They go with what they did before.

Like that has worked so well  for them so far.

-srbp-

Government cash give-aways #nlpoli

CBC’s Rob Antle has updated work done over the past couple of years on government give-aways to private sector businesses in the name of economic development:

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has funnelled more than $20 million into grants, loans and the direct costs of business-attraction initiatives that have provided a net benefit of fewer than 100 new jobs — a quarter of them seasonal.

Faithful readers will notice some familiar names in the story and the associated documents posted with the online version of it.

Kodiak got $8 million to expand its operations at Harbour Grace.  They laid off workers instead.That isn’t the only example of that sort of thing happening.

Then, there’s Dynamic Air Shelters,which has more government cash in it than many Crown corporations

None of this is surprising since Newfoundland and Labrador is the only province in Canada where the private sector prefers to be publicly funded.

It’s another way in which the provincial economy has grown increasingly fragile over the past eight years.

- srbp -

Ridiculous is all the rage #nlpoli #cdnpoli

Fresh from her triumphant speech about co-operation and consultation as the way to develop the north, the potential for developing uranium in Labrador and  - of course – the glories to come from Muskrat Falls, Premier Kathy Dunderdale is off to Atlanta as part of an Atlantic provinces’ trade mission.

Regular readers will recall then-business minister Paul Oram’s insightful interview on Newfoundland and Labrador history during one of his trips to Georgia.

Yes, friends, this is not the first time people from this province have gone off to the southern United States to see if we could increase trade with the Americans.  It has been a popular destination.  Danny Williams took one of his last over-seas trips to Mississippi as part of one of the trade junkets.

As you can see from that post on Williams’ trip, the Americans are looking for people to come to their states, invest money and start creating jobs for their people. There could be no better time to talk to them about investing in our province and creating jobs here.

Obviously.

And if you wanted to find some place to sell stuff we make then surely there can be no better time to do that than when our largest trading partner  - the United States – is struggling to come out of a recession. 

Again, a bit obvious, but apparently not quite so obvious to some people.

In a province where even the finance minister said the economy was fragile,  the provincial government can’t quite seem to get the concept that looking for new markets might be a good idea.

Other people certainly get the point.  Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been talking about expanding trade with Asia and Europe.  In British Columbia, they’ve got a new natural gas strategy  - h/t to David Campbell in New Brunswick – that talks about developing natural gas as an export to places like Asia.

Meanwhile, in Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s no serious interest in finding new markets for stuff. A couple of years ago, the current provincial government refused to take part in trade talks with the Europeans.  The locals were more interested in the seal hunt than in creating jobs. Just last year, one local politician said it would be like doing a “back-room deal with a group of serial rapists”.

You can see the level they are working at.

As for natural gas, developing it for any practical use at all is about as popular an idea in government circles as a one cheek sneak sliding across the pews on Sunday morning.

Any talk of it as a means of generating electricity gets them raising the completely absurd idea of buying liquefied gas from somewhere else and importing. 

Too expensive, the government’s favourite economist clucked, to be a viable alternative to the favourite economist’s preferred project. He didn’t really even need to hold a match to his straw-man to watch it burst into flames.

And the local natural gas? 

Well, it’s just not possible.

Because, well, it just isn’t.

Never mind that you wouldn’t have to liquefy the stuff to bring it ashore.

Never mind that there is enough of it out there to power a 500 megawatt plant all day long, every day, all year long for a century.

Never mind that they could get it from one field today where it is getting costly to re-inject the gas they get during oil production. 

Never mind that the provincial government need take only as much gas as they needed to run a gas-to-electricity plant. 

Never mind they could put a price on it and take the gas as a partial credit for offshore royalties.

Never mind there’s likely tons of it onshore Newfoundland.  The same people pushing the very expensive electricity scheme actually found gas in 2011 in not one but two wells drilled at Parsons Pond. Nalcor shut down drilling on a proposed third well because they found gas, not the oil the company hoped for.  And, as CBC reported:

Vice-president Jim Keating said there is no need for a third well as it would likely produce the same result.

Same result being gas.

Gas?

What could they possibly do with gas?

Sheesh!  <insert eye rolling>

The government crowd want to go with their Labrador project and that is really the end of it as far as they are concern.

It is a green project, you see.

Just don’t bother to notice that their “green” scheme includes building – wait for it – more oil-fired generation than the current plant they want to replace with the hydro one.

Not gas.

Oil.

Yes, their argument is ridiculous, but then again, it’s no more ridiculous than giving up a market worth billions for new products in order to posture about a product almost no one wants any more.

Or heading off to the sort-of recessionary United States for the umpteenth year in a row to talk trade with people we already trade enough with.

Ridiculous, you see, is all the rage.

- srbp -

The value of education, redux #nlpoli #cdnpoli

The most recent report from the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada shows that Grade 8 students in Newfoundland and Labrador score among the lowest in Canada for tests of mathematics and below the national average score for English.

Education minister Clyde Jackman, a former teacher himself, has tried to shift attention away from what the results are:  yet another reminder of the dismal state of the province’s educational system.
None of this is surprising.

As SRBP noted in August 2010, the province’s population consistently scores poorly in national evaluations of reading comprehension and mathematics scores.

Reading and writing is a challenge. 

Almost half the adult population of Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t have a literacy level that would allow them to “function well in Canadian society.”  

Basic math skills are an even bigger problem. 

Almost two out of every three adult Newfoundlanders and Labradorians don’t have the skill with numbers and mathematics – they call it numeracy – to function well in Canadian society. 

Numeracy is actually a far greater problem because it involves not just an ability to add, subtract, multiple and divide.  Numeracy also involves logic and reasoning, probability and statistics.

The problem is not a lack of money.  The provincial government spends significant amounts on education.   Ask any provincial Conservative and that’s about the only bit of informational they will cite that rings true.

Other politicians want to spend even more money on education.  In a  demonstration of the findings about problems with logic and reasoning, these well-intentioned souls advocate policies that would not produce the desired result.  In fact, evidence suggests that the ideas like free university tuition would make worse the issue of access for people from low income families.

The problem is not that we don’t spend enough.

The problem is  that we do not recognise there is a problem in the first place.

Clyde Jackman’s response is typical.

Nor do we collectively seem to appreciate the extent to which education is the foundation for future success both individually and collectively. 

Social  progress.

Economic development.

Improved health.

Innovation.

All come from improved education.

The third order problem is that what changes or reforms we have pursued in the past decade have been the wrong ones, driven entirely by the wrong motive.  The collapse of the educational system in 2005 under the Conservatives to a series of five super educational districts was entirely an exercise in bureaucratic consolidation of power.

The current school districts are too large, as former education minister Philip Warren noted in 2008.  Additionally, the 2005 reforms took the community out of education.  The reforms that Warren and his cabinet colleagues initiated in the 1990s aimed at increasing local control of education and of giving parents a greater level of involvement in education.

Recent changes to the school system in the metropolitan St. John’s area are an example of the pernicious, deleterious effect the 2005 school board re-organization has wrought. Education bureaucrats in the government department and the school district concocted a plan among themselves, discarded an earlier understanding with parents and then engaged in a cynical manipulation to force their pre-conceived outcome on those directly affected by their decisions.

It is no accident that all of this took place in an environment in which political leaders and their associates took every effort to stifle debate, ruthlessly attack those who dissented and pushed attention instead toward crusades that were, in truth, little more than political Punch and Judy shows.

Some of those who fought most zealously for the political theatrics are now shifting their stories, trying to ignore their own past involvement in making the mess. Others have not. They all still rattle around in the Echo Chamber.

The state of education in our province, like the state of our politics, is a sign of the extent to which we have turned away from the values that we once shared as a society.  We have lost sight of what is valuable and lasting and replaced it with the superficial, the trivial.

The first step to changing that is to recognise there is a problem.

And with yet more evidence that the provincial education system is failing, the problem is getting harder and harder to ignore.

- srbp -

Locke warns of financial problems

Wade Locke’s been making the rounds of local media in advance of his talk tonight at the Harris Centre of Memorial University.  Your humble e-scribbler posted the details of it on Monday.

Some quick observations on this Telegram version:

1. There is nothing new in Locke’s presentation that hasn’t been in the public domain  - in some cases – for a couple of decades.
2. That said, the fact that the government’s favourite economist is now undermining the economist’s favourite government might be enough to get these issues into wider discussion.
3. Once that happens it should be fairly obvious the current crowd have helped shape the current mess and their intention is to make a bad situation even worse.
4. Locke’s solution – we need a plan – is a penetrating insight into the obvious. The current crowd got us into this mess precisely because they had no plan.
5. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of any pressure to create a plan in the near term.
6. Politicians – like some of the people on the panel with Locke tonight - will continue to deny there’s anything here that needs attention.  others, like the current administration will talk about doing something constructive and then either do nothing or make the situation worse.
7. There’s no sign any of the political parties in the province are ready to deal with the provincial government’s financial mess.

Put all that together with the volatile political environment and you have the potential for one of the most dramatic political years in the province’s history.

- srbp -