To start the
New Year, it's always fun to look back on last year's work — if only to see
what stories most attracted your interest. Below I have listed ten selections
from 2016. Those choices are based entirely on the number of pageviews each
claimed, according to the Google. There is just one caveat: I have not included
stories posted during the past month, even though each attracted a large number
of readers. I felt they were posted recently enough to be easily accessed.
My
(admittedly incorrect) prediction that “Cathy Bennett’s Days in Finance are
Numbered” (the Minister has outlasted reasonable constraints on the word
"limited") garnered over 20,000 pageviews and the number one spot.
Still, the post warrants further comment.
Finance is a
key portfolio. And, for a long time, the Minister has been perceived by this
blogger as a politician in a rather precarious — even tenuous — spot.
Cathy
Bennett embodies not just her own claims to a superior level of business and
political acumen, but also the enormous public expectations those claims have
fuelled. In contrast, her performance tells a different story — one that has a
context akin to myth vs reality.
The Minister
has barely tackled the province's fiscal problems. Her Department has become
little more than an administrative conclave performing rote functions as it is
deprived of an essential strategic role that has always afforded senior Finance
officials the right to push more air. Now the real centre of power is the
Executive Council.
That's the
place from which has emerged "The Way Forward" — the government's
glossy propaganda piece that plans to get you eating more fruits and vegetables.
It pretends to have a grasp on solutions to our fiscal nightmare with similar
sleight of hand. Little wonder insiders say that, for much of the past year,
Bennett has been a very isolated figure within the Ball Administration.
My analysis
of Bennett's position was that if Ball didn’t push her out of the Finance
portfolio, she might deal with her own isolation and ineffectiveness.
After all,
why would a politician — ostensibly a savvy one — share the Premier’s
well-earned reputation for dithering... and the ignominy of history for having
failed to deal with the Province’s most difficult and deepening fiscal crisis?
Where does the word "savvy" even fit?
Bennett's
press conference — called just before the House of Assembly recessed before
Christmas and a "by invitation only" meet directed to four specific
female members of the media — has the markings of a final card played in
advance of a cabinet shuffle. It is true that few male or female MHAs exude the
Minister's confidence. Therefore, it must have struck all the media — female
and male — a bit strange that a "senior" Minister was having
difficulty putting a bunch of ignorant anonymous misfits on social media in
their place.
Finance is
inherently a powerful Ministry. But power applied in any context has a fleeting
quality: use it or lose it.
Notwithstanding
the expectations of Bennett already noted, her pedestal might have been given
elevation had she telegraphed that she planned to act as a counterweight to any
stray from the fiscal problem. She could even have marked her territory as
including a decisive say over Nalcor's right to squander money on the Muskrat
Falls project. She certainly would have needed to acknowledge that her early
cheerleading on the project was ill-advised. But had the Minister persisted as
a salesperson favouring fiscal common sense — and a plan to deal with a problem
for which the only Tory plan was "hope" — she might have been
regarded as a "Super-Minister".
In many ways
Bennett was not unlike former CEO Ed Martin — exposing inexperience in a job
far larger than that for which she is qualified. As a result, she could be seen
playing footsie with a Premier incapable of assessing policy options and their
consequences.
Just as poor
as her performance in the policy arena was the Minister's lack of skill in
power politics — she having failed to secure key support within cabinet and the
caucus for deeper cuts. Essentially she remained content in her self-importance
as her colleagues voiced concern about re-election — and their pensions.
In the end,
she gave her blessing to a litany of unpopular budgetary options, including the
gas tax, the special levy, and the libraries fiasco — earning her public
enmity. She has left a huge deficit largely unattended and the debt growing
rapidly. She has watched Ball sink into a political quagmire — without
demonstrating she is one bit more capable.
When the
Premier's politicos figured out Bennett had no easy "fix" for falling
polls, they cut her and her Department of Finance out of discussions as to how
the Administration might recapture the public's favour. Ball — not
surprisingly, given his own failings — decided that the insincere (fake)
"solutions" of PR types held more political currency than any offered
by his Minister.
Ball had
even managed to get the new Clerk of the Executive Council — a straight arrow —
to assume the Chair of the (fake) Muskrat Falls Oversight Committee. Just
before Christmas, the Telegram also reported the Premier saying that the Budget
was "full of tough choices and painful cuts" when, in the context of
the size of the problem, it contained anything but.
Clearly the
Liberals, like the Tories, have eschewed the truth as having any usefulness
except to assure bad polling.
In short,
financial leadership has given way to amateur hour — to the kind of deception
packaged by second-string players like Siobhan Coady. A "Super
Minister" would have none of that. Indeed, ambitious political types can't
expect their career to be graphed like a contrived Nalcor demand chart
justifying sanction. The public isn't always that blind.
Good
politicians take risks in their advance to a higher rung. Some even put
principle over politics. But Bennett could never perform the calculus of John
Crosbie or Clyde Wells — opposing an icon required real courage. Neither has
she taken the foolhardy gambit of Leo Barry in the Peckfor years. Risk is the
possibility of getting lost in the backbench. That, evidently, is too high a
price, when ostentation is an acceptable alternative to real power.
A more
clever Minister would have quit, leaving behind a serious financial plan with
real ideas, one that she — and the public — might acknowledge, later, was a
missed opportunity.
Of course, I
should stop having those fanciful expectations of quite ordinary people — and
wait for the Cabinet shuffle.
Now for some
acknowledgements...
I especially
want to thank David Vardy and James L. Gordon, P.Eng (Ret'd) for their frequent contributions
to the Blog, acknowledge articles written by Cabot Martin, Ron Penney, and JM,
and thank new contributors in 2016 including Phil Helwig, P. Eng. (Ret'd), Frank Wright, Karl Sullivan, Joe
Schell, P. Eng. (Ret'd), Gabe Gregory, and Bernard Lahey.
I have many
hopes for 2017. One is that this Blog will attract contributing female writers.
Now that third-party contributions have become a mainstay of the Uncle Gnarley
Blog, gender balance among the scribes is a vital next step.
The fiscal
position of the Province and Muskrat Falls will continue to dominate the news
(and this Blog) as will the machinations of the political parties.
Contributors
and I will attempt to explain the events and the issues, give them serious
analysis, suggest options where appropriate, and lay blame when expediency,
stupidity, and wilful deception are offered as substitutes for the public
interest.
Hopefully,
we will play some small role in inspiring informed conversation.
On that
note, here are the "Top Ten" Posts for 2016:
by A Concerned
Newfoundlander and Professional Engineer
CBC by J.P Schell,
P.Eng. (Retired)
by James L.
Gordon, P.Eng. (Retired)
9. STOPPING THE PROJECT NOW: WEIGHING THE OPTIONS by David Vardy
by Frank
Wright
The
“Editor's Picks” listed below represent stories that didn't make it into the
"most popular" category. They contain compelling content and (I
think) deserve another look.
TOP TEN MUSKRAY MYTHS (PART I) by "JM"
OUR FISCAL FUTURE: DAVID VARDY'S IDEAS FOR CHANGE by David Vardy
IS IT POSSIBLE TO MAKE MUSKRAT RIGHT? by David
Vardy
MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY DUE FOR AN OVERHAUL by
Karl Sullivan
Happy New
Year to everyone,
Des Sullivan
