TERRIFYING CONCLUSION FOLLOWS RELEASE OF NEW BERNANDER REPORT ON NORTH SPUR

Guest Post By PlanetNL

PlanetNL6: Latest Bernander Report on North Spur Leads to Terrifying Conclusion

If there is one topic in the whole of Muskrat that is truly clear as mud, it’s the North Spur. Equally murky is Nalcor’s plan to use this natural formation across the Churchill River as the largest dam holding back the reservoir.  

PlanetNL’s agenda has deliberately left this challenging topic to others, choosing instead to concentrate primarily on the financial disaster that awaits the people of this Province upon Muskrat completion in 2021.  The others who have written on the North Spur are better researched on the subject and have written passionately about the North Spur on this blog and elsewhere.  

FISCAL CRISIS BIGGER THAN ACCOUNTED FOR IN EMPLOYERS' COUNCIL PLAN

“Another Way Forward” is a policy document recently released by the NL Employers’ Council. It is a response by the province’s largest business organization to our desperate fiscal crisis. It purports to contain suggestions for a “better way forward” than the one released last year by the Ball Administration.

High on the agenda of the Employers’ Council is a reduction in taxation on both business and individuals, cuts to government programs and services, and a reduction in public sector employment by attrition. 

The NLEC concludes that “government could remove more than a billion dollars in spending and we would still have:

1.       the largest spending per capita

2.      the highest paid public service and

3.      the highest spending on health and education of any province in Atlantic Canada.”  

JIM LESTER GETS ADVICE FROM THE BARD

From the Bard of Pynn's Brook

LESTER, MHA

Jim Lester leaves the family farm,

The Mount Pearl seat, to keep it warm.

Knows the turkey, and it’s charm;

Manure that clings will not alarm.

Let’s pray his time up on the hill

Will more than just his pension fill:

Perhaps he’ll work to change instil? -

And lower future heating bill.

- John Tuach

November 22, 2017

JUDGE LEBLANC NEEDS CHANGES IN INQUIRY MANDATE TO DO A PROPER JOB

Guest Post by Cabot Martin

WHY WORDS REALLY MATTER – The need to amend the Muskrat Falls Inquiry Terms of Reference

Way back in the 1980’s when I was hanging out in the Premier’s Office on the 8^th floor of the Confederation Building as Senior Policy Advisor to the Premier, I noted that there was one group that everyone respected – the Legislative Drafters.

As politicians with policy to implement, the Cabinet (with the help of the Cabinet Secretariat) would draft, debate, amend and finalize what they thought the proposed new Act or Regulation should do and contain.

As a next step, the measure was put into the hands of the Legislative Drafters, as specialized a group of legally trained professionals as you will find.

JAMES MCLEOD IS LEAVING. TIME TO LAY BLAME.

I had never thought James McLeod to be one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. In last Saturday’s Telegram, he telegraphed just that. 

In mortal terror, he’s leaving the province. And I know I’m the one responsible.

McLeod had interviewed Uncle Gnarley for a story in September that he called “Meet Uncle Gnarley: Muskrat Falls’ prolific doomsayer blogs in turbulent times”.  I had no idea that, after just a few hours with him, McLeod would want to ‘cut and run’ — hightail it — for the mainland!

Already wearing his unemployment boots and heading for the Marine Atlantic Ferry, he left this advice:

“Here’s the honest truth: It’s in the economic self-interest of every man, woman and child in this province to do the same thing I’m doing: pack up and move literally anywhere else. The province has a demographic problem and a geographic problem. There are too many old people…

LOW RESERVOIRS POSE GREATEST OUTAGE RISK SINCE DARKNL

Guest Post Written By PlanetNL

PlanetNL5: Low Reservoirs Will Strain Thermal Generation This Winter

Uncle Gnarley suggested readers be given a respite from the gloomy Muskrat analysis series and instead asked PlanetNL to provide a critique on a different energy concern: the impact of low reservoir levels on this winter’s energy supply needs, as just revealed in a recent NL Hydro report.

The first concern is the cost of unplanned high fuel consumption at Holyrood and the standby combustion turbines over the winter and possibly well into 2018, a cost that NL Hydro is certain to want to recover through rate adjustments.  A considerable pre-Muskrat rate hike will result. 

BARD OF PYNN'S BROOK TACKLES "MR. BIG"

MR BIG

By John Tuach

“Develop or Perish!” - Smallwood.

A former ‘Main Man’ steering ship?

The files will have a familiar flip:

Churchill River hydro mill -

Cash for Provincial coffers fill!

Offshore oil, mines, forestry,

Energy, and fish - all travesty!

Industrial avarice in major plays,

Who abets the give-aways?

Power to run the metal mines,

Windmill spins atop the Barrens,

Making pellets - a money burn,

Old projects, each in turn.

An alternate agenda is a toot:

Prolong the Muskrat money loot

To obfuscate some other theft -

And perished public more bereft.

And some suggest conspiracy:

Plunder planned (a resource spree?)

A Nalcor asset fire-sale feast

When entrails stirred of Muskrat beast.

Did ‘Canada’ steer the scam?

To issue bonds to build the dam,

To grab a slab of finance loot,

Perchance a numbers game afoot.

Is there ‘The Man’ for subterfuges?

(The latter crowds only stooges).

That sat around at Federal tables,

Investment lucre now enables.

Media manipulator extraordinaire,

To move and shake the political air.

Knows the people (to burn) too green -

A puppet-master behind the scene?

October 30, 2017

OSBORNE: NO PRICE TOO HIGH FOR POLITICAL PEACE

Mercifully, Finance Minister Tom Osborne kept the Budget Update short. It won’t get much ink here, either.

Osborne has confirmed what most people seem to have concluded: he has no intention of tackling the deficit.

The former Finance Minister, Cathy Bennett, told a reporter that “I wish we had had better information going into the election campaign,” seemingly ignorant of the fact that, as an MHA, she was always expected to read — and to understand — the Budget Estimates. Of course, her search was for a scapegoat. Osborne, not four months into the job, hopes he has found one too. 

CHERNOBYL-LITE: THE PRICE OF DENYING MUSKRAT ECONOMICS

Guest Post by PlanetNL

PlanetNL.4 - Mothball Muskrat Now

Previous PlanetNL instalments have detailed how the uneconomic Muskrat project threatens to destroy NL Hydro and ratepayers or, if the subsidy route is chosen, Government and taxpayers.  The painful third alternative is to choose to stop the project and have the Premier call on Ottawa to act fully and promptly on the murky Federal Loan Guarantees of $7.9B.

Even with the federally guaranteed debt removed, serious issues remain.  Ratepayers still face large rate increases and the Provincial Government must record a total loss of equity. Emera would suffer contractual losses and demand compensation.  Ottawa would be divided on whether to act as many other provinces will not support the bailout.  A substantial and raucous debate is sure to erupt whenever Ottawa publicly considers this request.

…………………….

COADY MISINFORMED. SECOND SOURCE CONFIRMS FAULTY TOWERS

The Uncle Gnarley Blog stands by the source who provided information regarding the welding defects Nalcor has encountered on the Labrador-Island Transmission Link (LIL).

The existence of the defects has now been confirmed by a second source.

The blog post entitled Faulty Towers: Nalcor's Comedy (Of Errors),  published on Monday, reported that the problem is associated with the welds on a component part located at the base of each tower.

FAULTY TOWERS: A NALCOR COMEDY (OF ERRORS)

Newfoundland would have provided the perfect setting for the British TV Comedy series “Fawlty Towers”. Here, John Cleese would have had no need for inventive double entendres. And the laughs could have been on Nalcor’s dime.

According to an Uncle Gnarley Blog source, Nalcor is grappling with a new problem. And it is no laughing matter. As you might have guessed, the issue revolves around faulty towers.

Nalcor has discovered structural defects in an undetermined number of the towers on the 1100 km Labrador-Island Link (LIL). That’s the extension cord intended to deliver Upper Churchill recall power next year and, subsequently, power from the Muskrat Falls project.

According to the source, the structural integrity of a selection of 30 towers was tested recently. The tests produced a failure rate of 100%.

IS MUSKRAT FALLS A PONZI SCHEME?

Guest Post by David Vardy

There are remarkable similarities between the business model for Muskrat Falls and a Ponzi scheme, credited to Charles Ponzi, who instigated the first Ponzi scheme in 1919. 

Bernard Madoff was one of many who built upon the original Ponzi concept. Madoff met his Waterloo in March  2009, when he pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies, including securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, making false statements, perjury, theft from an employee benefit plan, and making false filings with the SEC. Will Muskrat Falls lead to such a wide range of criminal charges after the Commission of Inquiry has concluded?

The business model for Muskrat Falls is built upon fictitious energy sales which created unearned revenues. Electricity consumers were conscripted to participate in these fictitious sales through amendments to the Electrical Power Control Act which conferred monopoly power upon Nalcor, so that all large consumers of power were required to buy power generated at Muskrat Falls.