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.

DON'T EXPECT NEW OVERSIGHT MEMBERS TO BE WALLFLOWERS

The Ball Administration recently made four new appointments to the Muskrat Falls Oversight Committee. Two — professional engineer Jason Muise and Memorial Economics Professor Dr. Jim Feehan — are longstanding anti-Muskrateers, “naysayers” in the idiom of the Wiliams/Dunderdale era.

Now the Committee has three who tried their best to warn successive Tory administrations of Muskrat folly, including Bern Coffey — the Clerk of the Executive Council, who is the Chair.

While those appointments seem a step in the right direction, for the present I am inclined to counsel caution that they actually represent a shift in the way oversight is performed.

Two others — an accountant and a former bureaucrat — were appointed along with Muise and Feehan.

The four joined the Deputy Ministers who have inhabited the Committee from the very beginning. Of course, the latter should only be ex-officio, available solely to give support to the independent members of the Committee.

"COLD EYES" ARE BLIND TO MUSKRAT OVERSIGHT

A Project Oversight Committee is often referred to as a “Cold Eyes Reviewer”. Cold Eyes denotes impartiality and independence.  They evaluate project plans, procedures, and safe work practices giving emphasis to design, management, work quality, project costs and schedule. 

The Muskrat Falls Oversight Committee has been given a far smaller mandate than the one just described.  Its role is essentially “reliable and transparent oversight on the cost and schedule performance of the Project” and as a “direct and effective communication channel to Cabinet and the general public”.

This limited oversight role ought to permit the Committee to perform good work; but, it hasn’t.  The information it claims to have analysed comes not from the performance of its own financial or technical audits.  It is provided by Nalcor. Pete Soucy, Host of VOCM Back Talk, recently equated the practice with ‘the foxes watching the foxes’. He is right.

IN NALCOR WE TRUST

Written by: "JM"

Oversight is one of those complex words in the English language, an auto-antonym, a word having multiple definitions which are opposite in intent.  Oversight can be defined as either (i) the action of overseeing something or (ii) the unintentional failure to notice or do something. 

Is there no better word to describe the current government committee which is entrusted with overseeing the giant Muskrat Falls project?  

Originally, the Oversight Committee was formed by government to strengthen and formalize existing oversight of the Muskrat Falls Project. It was mandated to provide reliable and transparent oversight so that the public could have confidence in the management of project costs, schedule and risk.  Premier Marshall was clear in this intent when he originally announced the formation of the committee in March of 2014:

"We're listening. We're hearing what people have to say," he said. “It is a big project. It’s the people’s project. We sense that the people want to have more information, they want more oversight, and that’s what they’re doing.”  

For those of us who remain interested in the Muskrat Falls project, the second quarterly report was issued by the Muskrat Falls Oversight Committee last week.