Anger, personified

The raw scrum video, via cbc.ca/nl of the response by Premier Danny Williams to an ongoing story at Eastern Health.  There’s also the full cbc.ca/nl online story on the ongoing controversy.  If that doesn’t work, try another link here:   http://tiny.cc/TEJTJ.

CBC news obtained documents through the province’s access to information laws that shed more detail on the release of information in early April related to the ongoing breast cancer testing issue.

Officials  - especially communications vice-president Jennifer Guy - at Eastern health,  New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael, all on the receiving end of the Premier’s anger including an accusation of  political opportunism on the part of the NDP leader. 

This is radically different from anything ever fired at people like Stephen Harper.  There’s none of the characteristic hyperbole, for instance.  You can feel the anger coming clearly through the audio portion. Eastern health chief executive Louise Jones held a newser later in the day;  that isn’t available online yet.

Williams recently criticised the province’s access laws for bogging down government officials with “frivolous” requests and used that an excuse for failing to deliver whistleblower protection legislation in the first session after the 2007 general election as Williams promised.

In a scrum with reporters last Friday, Williams also claimed there was not much experience globally with whistleblower protection laws

He also accused an unnamed witness at the Cameron inquiry into the breast cancer scandal of being motivated at least in part by a personal vendetta. Williams said someone “came on pretty strongly” and decided “to have a crack at government after they did not get their own way’ on employment for a relative with government.

Political opportunism by opposition leaders is not an unusual phenomenon in Newfoundland in Labrador, by the way:

“We told them it was only print-sharing and that there was no threat but, regardless of that, they did take the action they did,” he said.

“What happened wasn’t a breach. Their staff, we believe, knew it wasn’t a breach.”

The action referred to there by a police officer was a public accusation a Liberal political staffer had attempted to hack into the opposition Progressive Conservative computer system.

The story broke in early February 2002:

"The premier's office knew right away that this had happened and, in my opinion, they've acknowledged that a political staffer has interfered with our (computer) system," Conservative Leader Danny Williams said Friday.

"That's very serious stuff."

The language from then opposition leader Williams was strong and, as it seems people in his office knew at the time their version of the story was nothing that would warrant the over-the-top language their boss used:

"Here we have a political staffer trying to break into our computers," Mr. Williams added. "It's very disconcerting to us. There's strategic information in our offices."  [“Liberal tried to hack our computers, Tories say: Newfoundland probe”, National Post Richard Foot, Saturday, February 9, 2002]

or from a Telegram story headlined “Tories sweep offices for bugs”:

"An attempt at access is just as serious as access - no different than attempted robbery is as serious as robbery itself," said Williams, who is a lawyer.

"From our perspective, we're treating it as a very, very serious matter."

 

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Phoenix

The provincial Liberal Party convention looks for all the world like the first big sign of a political party on the come-back trail.

A relatively large turnout – upwards of 200 people – and the election of a raft of new faces on the party executive suggest that interest in the party is rebounding after a few years of the doldrums.

Lawyer Judy Morrow replaced Danny Dumaresque as president. For all the concerns expressed around these parts about Dumaresque’s leadership intentions and the deferred leadership convention, the fact is the Danny and the old executive managed to keep the party alive and out of financial ruin. That was no small feat over the past four years. The old crew have passed on a pretty good foundation on which the new crew can start rebuilding.

One of the big tasks will be fund-raising and to handle that the party elected a new treasurer - John Hogan - to replace the septuagenarian senator Joan Cook.

One of the surest signs of revival is the speculation about Dean Macdonald as potential leader. Dean would normally not [inserted the word "not" which was left out of the first draft] be considered leadership material but the fact that some people are pushing him and the fact he’s been flitting about again over the past couple of weeks are a sign that the opportunists are sensing a potential vehicle for their own agendas.

Oddly enough, Macdonald told a Young Liberal breakfast meeting why he wouldn’t be a good leader. Differentiate yourselves from the other guys was his good but hardly novel advice. Coming from a guy who has already publicly stated his support for the other guys and for continued Dannyism, it’s pretty much impossible to differentiate yourself when all you offer is more of the same.

A new leader will turn up; he or she just won’t be one of the names that have cropped up already. In the meantime, politics in the province may get back to some sort of health if the Liberals can continue rebuilding and start offering a competitive challenge to the current set of policies from the Provincial Conservatives. Politics doesn’t work when one side dominates the agenda so completely.

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Manley ponders rot

Former federal fin min John Manley compared the recent provincial budgets in Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ontario took full advantage of the anxious times in which we live, and with the help of Ottawa tackled some of the toughest structural problems in its tax system. At the same time, it made a virtue of necessity in announcing stimulus spending that will end the short succession of surplus budgets and lead to predicted deficits of $3.9-billion and $14.1-billion over the next two years.

Ontario's tone was in sharp contrast to that of Newfoundland and Labrador, which treated Canadians to another blast of icy rhetoric about how Ottawa was screwing the Province by "unilaterally" changing equalization. (Equalization is a federal program — decisions to alter it are enacted by Parliament alone, so of course it's unilateral.)

Too bad Manley didn’t look beyond the superficial rhetoric of the past several months to see some curious things that rest beneath. Like say the source of the faux outrage which was carefully orchestrated for the media effect.

Turns out the provincial government timed its switch to O’Brien 50 (50% of non-renewables counted) in an effort to maximise its cash take from the program.

They presented a budget in 2008 which showed the fixed formula calculation but – and this is the crucial bit for later – they knew full well that:

• they had the option to switch to O’Brien retroactively; and,
• they’d planned to switch to O’Brien and pocket as much as $800 million in cash.

As the Premier put it in one media interview, they’d even foregone $65 million extra the year before just to set the whole thing up. That was the year the finance minister originally predicted a switch and then switched back at budget time.

The language at the time of the switcheroo obscured what they were up to:

"We conducted a thorough review of this updated information, and determined that it was no longer in the long term financial interest of Newfoundland and Labrador to elect the new formula for 2007-08…"

The rest of the release rabbits on about the great screwing supposedly done to the province.

The truth only became clear this year.  In order to generate the magical sums expected in 2009 through a combination of O’Brien and the 1985 Accord, they would have had to take in about $800 million from O’Brien 50 in 2008.  That’s the sort of forecasting they were using in 2008 when they made the decision and set the 2008 budget plan.

Unfortunately for the little project, world oil prices shot through the roof.

That brought in so much cash that the projections went off. Now they still switched to O’Brien 50 for 2008 and pocketed $116 million for from Equalization for 2008 which they’d never even hinted at before.

But remember that in November 2008, the premier proclaimed the province was off Equalization at that point. At the time he had the calculations  - even if only from his own provincial officials - that showed cash flowing from O’Brien in 2008, even if it was less than they’d originally projected.

And, odds are that he already had a very good idea that the government would elected O’Brien 50.

Reporters and others who looked at the whole claim of a second Equalization screwing in January 2009 all assessed it based on a very limited set of numbers and a very short-term perspective.  They didn’t see the long term sequence.

Case in point:  federal officials always share budget projections with their provincial counterparts. If there is a major change coming, they typically pass that on as well. There’s no indication they didn’t share projections with all the provinces through November, especially considering that the federal government planned a major budget reform in early December 2008.

Everyone forgets that little aspect.

If the federal opposition parties hadn’t scuttled the original Harper plans, the Equalization changes brought down in January would have actually occurred in December.

But if all that weren’t enough, there’s no sign the provincial government went looking for figures they normally get.

That alone should have sparked some local questioning, but it didn’t.

Not a peep.

If you accept the provincial version of events, not only did the numbers not come from the feds – as they always, invariably  do – but the provincial government officials never went looking for them.  That seems like an awful (incredible) dereliction of duty on the part of the public servants and – even more startling – an opportunity missed by the snarliest provincial government in Canada to accuse the federal government of perfidy when there was time to maximise the political damage that could be done.

Imagine the uproar if Danny Williams had howled in late November or early December?

By January – when they supposedly discovered a shafting - there was no chance the “problem” would be fixed. There was lots of posturing but nothing of a sustained value.  As it turns out, and contrary to the interpretation we gave it here at the time, the provincial government knew they had cash in hand and nothing to really worry about financially in the short term.

New information changes everything.

The locals also seem to have forgotten that the whole “have” province thing morphed as time passed.  By the time the 2009 budget emerged, “have” status was from that point forward, not from November as originally presented.

Is there something rotten, as Manley suggests?

Not really.

There’s just some really skilful political manipulation, lots of information kept from the public whose money is in play, and a raft of people  - reporters and politicians alike - who simply don’t bother to ask simple, obvious questions like “what did you know” and “when did you know it”.

Part of that situation likely comes from not knowing what ought to happen. 

Part of it comes from not wanting to ask.

Part of it comes from people who are in on the whole thing or willing to play along for their own purposes and own reasons.

That’s not rotten.

That’s just politics.

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S-92 nosed in

Lead Transportation Safety Board investigator Mike Cunningham told news media today that a preliminary review of evidence collected of the Cougar S-92 crash suggests the aircraft experienced a major problem at about 800 feet above sea level.

"There was something that happened very suddenly and abruptly after the aircraft got down to 800 feet and levelled out," Cunningham said. "After that the helicopter went into the water and it was a fairly significant rate of descent, which resulted in a pretty bad impact with the water. That's why we have the extent of damage to the wreckage that we have."

This is generally consistent with information available to date, including a log of indicated air speed and altitude for the flight.

Cunningham is quoted in other news media (link above to CBC) as saying it appears the aircraft struck the water nose first.  This is based on an assessment of the damage to the recovered portions of the aircraft.  The cockpit portion is reportedly heavily damaged. There is also a suggestion from some of the comments that while the main portion of the fuselage is in one piece, it is damaged considerably as well.  This may have hindered the passengers from escaping. 

These comments today – which are based on a preliminary examination of evidence – suggest strongly that the aircraft inverted immediately on or very quickly after impact.  This would explain a number of details including the apparent absence of signals from personal electronic locator beacons worn by each of the 18 souls on the aircraft. The locators do not work underwater.

In an initial news conference (either the first or second) the search and rescue spokesperson reported that aircraft on the scene had reported beacons from the aircraft itself (it is equipped with three) and from the two bodies of two people observed in the water by the first aircraft on the scene.

Both were recovered by the first search and rescue helicopter on the scene.  The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board mandates that offshore operators (oil companies) keep one helicopter within 30 minutes of St. John’s to provide search and rescue coverage.  Contrary to some media reports, this meets the recommendation of the Ocean Ranger Royal commission.

The cost of the helicopter operations  - including the search and rescue service provided to meet the Ocean Ranger commission recommendations - is borne entirely by the oil companies operating offshore, including the provincial government’s oil company which has an interest in White Rose and which will have an interest in Hebron, once it is built.  Canadian Press reported last week that the operators have tried to shift the search and rescue cost entirely to the federal government.

Misinformation on both safety and search and rescue issues has fuelled a frenzy of media speculation and political opportunism (two links) since the crash last week.

This misinformation persists despite information from many sources, including some apparently knowledgeable comments on CBC’s website that the current issue immersion suit was developed and improved in part from testing offshore Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

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