Dissatisfaction
at the media’s handling of the PUB's Interim Report consumed much of
the space afforded DARKNL: WEAK MEDIA NO MATCH FOR DAMNING PUB REPORT on May 19th. The media's coverage of the Report was brief to the point of being inconsequential. I thought the public
had a right to expect additional detail and analysis of the PUB’s work into the causes of the January 2014 'Blackouts'.
Why? The chief
reason is the sheer scale of the outages and their impact on so many lives and
businesses.
Another is that
the level of condemnation by the PUB of Hydro management was unprecedented.
While the
media admittedly are an easy target, no one should think that it is solely their
role to ask questions and to inform.
The
Opposition Parties and their leaders, and others, play a vital role in the
process, too. When media are not
prodding them they ought to be prodding the media. Typically they don’t, but now and again, as
in the Humber Valley Paving affair, the Liberals show occasional energy.
If this Province boasted a more mature democratic infrastructure, a House of Assembly Committee represented by all three Parties, would have already begun the process of holding public hearings into the PUB Report. Witnesses from Hydro and Nalcor would be required to testify and to answer for the litany of failings the PUB cites.
The red face
of Ed Martin would be appropriately served up for the evening news (if only following
the weather forecast). We would know why
Hydro V-P Rob Henderson receives less attention than Nalcor’s Christmas lights,
which have not been taken down, though it is the month of June.
We don’t
have that oversight infrastructure. We
don’t have many people even minimally prepared to challenge the
political or bureaucratic leadership. Many are ready to be 'cheek to jowl' when their is occasion for boosterism, such as on Muskrat Falls; anyone can be a suck-up, but it takes a far different pedigree to put authority in its place.
Indeed, most people have remained as silent as the lambs.
No one can use
the excuse that the PUB Report was too technical, that it exceeded
comprehension.
Indeed, one
of the striking aspects of the PUB’s phraseology is that it is fairly easy to
understand. The following, the PUB states, caused or contributed to the outages:
Hydro’s deferral of
scheduled preventive maintenance and testing of key transmission
system equipment,
including the 2013 scheduled and recommended testing and
maintenance on the
transformer and circuit breaker at Sunnyside, which failed.
Hydro’s failure to
properly execute repairs and maintenance.
Hydro’s failure to
ensure the availability of qualified resources and vendor support.
Hydro’s failure to
procure critical spare parts for its generation assets.
Hydro’s decisions on
timing of generation asset repairs, notably the Hardwoods and
Stephenville gas turbines.
The Report continues:
“…the Board finds the
number and nature of equipment failures that occurred is unusual, raising
questions as to Hydro’s operation and maintenance of its equipment especially
given that this is the second consecutive winter that customers on the Island
Interconnected system have experienced widespread outages.
There is
more, but those excerpts serve as proof of the PUB’s clarity; they demonstrate
that Hydro failed, in its duty of care, to its customers.
Many
rightfully ask why heads have not rolled, why ‘performance’ bonuses to senior
Nalcor management have been doled out in spite of such high level failure and
incompetence. These same questions are now repeated. Why has the CEO of Nalcor Ed Martin not been
asked to account? Why is he still in his job?
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Related Reading: LIBERTY REPORT SHATTERS NALCOR'S CREDIBILITY
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Related Reading: LIBERTY REPORT SHATTERS NALCOR'S CREDIBILITY
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It is strange that we have the capacity for complaint when we are being inconvenienced but not the willingness to offer sustained and direct challenge when specific politicians and bureaucrats screw up.
It is strange that we have the capacity for complaint when we are being inconvenienced but not the willingness to offer sustained and direct challenge when specific politicians and bureaucrats screw up.
I can think
of knowledgeable people in Memorial’s Engineering and Business Schools and Departments
like Political Science who ought to possess those skills. Officials of the
Boards of Trade, the City and Town Councils surely have a stake in the issue,
too. What about the Law Society or the Association of Professional Engineers? Is it too risky for them, in the current political
environment, to elevate public policy issues above the level of private chit chat?
Some of them
can teach management or electrical engineering, defend legal rights while
others organize ‘warming centers’ but,
on matters that relate to the basic governance of a society, they are all tongue-tied! We subsidize Memorial to the tune of tens of millions; yet, our intellectuals are no more generous with their expertise at bridging our political deficit than are welders and longshoremen.
Some
citizens commenting in the case of the HVP affair have noted that the
politically connected are a force unto themselves, that they set their own
standards, however offensive they may be. As a consequence the rest of us, including the
media, just watch; too passive, too financially conflicted, or too scared of what
we might lose to fight back.
No one
should be content that this small society, notwithstanding its wealth and
education is incapable of defending its most basic economic, political and
moral interests against a deficient and frequently incompetent governmental
leadership.
The ballot
box was never intended to be the sole underpinning of democratic government,
the sole expression of distain for poor leadership, or even the sole
manifestation of personal responsibility, in our relationship with the State.
While we ought to be hard on the media, we should demand more of ourselves, too.
If we are afraid to require politicians and public servants to account, cower under those who take advantage of their power, flinch against bullies who diminish the integrity of our public institutions, or if we live life always in mortal fear of derailing the gravy train, we deserve to
be called lambs.
We will pay
for that silence.