TRUTH RUINS NARRATIVE FOR WILLIAMS, MARSHALL AND COADY

Life might be so much simpler if, like innocents on Christmas Eve, we would only believe.  

Stan Marshall, Danny Williams, Siobhan Coady — each one has a narrative that doesn’t fit with the facts, that can’t stand up to the scrutiny even of youngsters. Interestingly, the truth could easily favour Marshall and Coady, but they are unable to resist “spin”; other versions, supposedly, are more worthy of gratitude and acclamation. 

For Marshall, it’s this comment to reporters following Nalcor’s AGM: “Any megaproject in the world would be happy to be where we are.” Presumably, the CEO is referring to the progress made on Muskrat in 2017 which he, ostensibly, influenced. Problem is, he omits that productivity for its major contractor is still only around 22% (that's an average 2.2 hours of work on a 10-hour shift) and that much of this performance is related to poor management by Nalcor. Should we await another multi-million dollar claim by Astaldi?

SIOBHAN COADY'S BEHAVIOUR PUZZLING

When the Minister of Natural Resources, Siobhan Coady, released the report of the Muskrat Falls Oversight Committee last Friday — the first in fifteen months — she tried to leave the media, and the public, with the impression that a new impetus was at work in matters of oversight.

The Minister was not being honest.

Given the evidence that, both prior to sanction and afterwards, the MF project estimates were falsified, it is reasonable to think that the Minister would not want to be mired in the deceitful culture that has grown up around Nalcor and her Department. But the Minister demonstrates no such caution.

It is one thing to say, as she has, that the government has questions about the project estimates, as did the whistleblower engineer. But a verbal expression of concern, alone, is not enough.

One might expect that Coady would not only want to know the origins of the alleged deceitfulness, and who is responsible, but that she might set new standards of disclosure for her officials to follow.

She has shown no interest in doing any of those things.

SIOBHAN COADY: WAITING FOR GODOT?

Waiting For Godot is a celebrated play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Valdimir and Estragon, are waiting for a person — Godot — who never arrives. The Ball Administration serves as parody for the tragicomedy. Like the government, as one writer says of Waiting For Godot, “the sheer emptiness and randomness of the plot causes the audience (or reader) to wonder if anything is going to happen”.

Ball and Coady especially resemble Valdimir and Estragon — though possibly the tramps, Didi and Gogo, too because, like them, they seem to have no part to play.  

Our play departs from Beckett’s a little, but only because Coady can expect an appearance from the Auditor General, just not with the package she pretends he is carrying.

The Minister knows he will offer no guidance on the “falsification” issue over which Nalcor’s whistleblower has sounded the alarm. Her performance is simply the pretense that he will.

WHO IS DWIGHT BALL AFRAID OF?

When malfeasance on a grand scale is alleged against senior government officials by credible people, what are we to make of it?

According to Stan Marshall, the decisions were directed at a senior level, but he says he doesn’t know who is responsible and doesn’t want to find out.

Yet the consequences are enormous. NL society has been laden with an unspeakable debt and a failed project, fallout from which will cause great social and financial pain over many decades.

The situation begs another question: do the authorities have an obligation to investigate and to hold the complicit to account, in keeping with the laws of civil society?

Is the Ball Administration’s seeming disinterest in the matter proof that what is still — if only barely — obscure should remain that way; that a higher standard applies to those wielding power?

We will return to this question. 

EY REPORT: BALL CAPITULATES TO NALCOR CLIQUE

Written by Cabot Martin and Des Sullivan

Yesterday, the Minister of Natural Resources, Siobhan Coady did not release the Review promised in January, on the Muskrat Falls project; one that was supposed to have been completed by March 31, 2016.

What we have, instead, is an INTERIM, or unfinished, flawed, and incomplete, Report from EY. 

While the Minister acknowledged, yesterday, the project is suffering major problems and is concerned about the situation, the Premier has given the project the green light anyway - a response that is completely inconsistent with the financial risk to the Province implicit in EY's findings. 

It seems Premier Ball and his Minister concluded, long ago, that whatever the Report contained, they would not put the project on hold and delay a restart - not even for 45 days - when the full EY Report would be finished. 

With timing one would only expect from Nalcor, Coady dropped the EY Report in our laps two days before the very day on which a painful Budget will be delivered by the Finance Minister.