WHY ARE NALCOR OFFICIALS IN HIDING? "VISION BUILT ON DELUSION" BY JM REVISITED

Hydro Quebec's legal challenge to Nalcor's interpretation of the 1969 Upper Churchill Renewal Agreement is, again, in the news.

A clause in the deal makes it subject to adjudication by the Courts of Quebec.

Nalcor officials have been issued a subpoena to answer questions as part of the judicial process.  They have refused to participate notwithstanding the expectation the Company will defend Nalcor’s legal position when the case is called, this Fall.

The issue has major implications for the Muskrat Falls project and for Nalcor’s claim to the effectiveness of the Water Management Agreement (WMA). 

Make no mistake, underpinning this legal challenge is the very viability of the project.

If Muskrat fails to generate the load requirements of Island and the Nova Scotia Block, because the facility is not permitted to operate as an integrated system with the Upper Churchill, the power will have to be generated at Holyrood; Island consumers will pay twice.

Nalcor hid the project from full review by the PUB.

In the case of the WMA, it has gone from warning the PUB, in 2009, Muskrat would be required to “chase the flows” if the Agreement was not imposed, to a position where Nalcor Vice-President Gilbert Bennett claimed, in 2013: “there will be no significant difference in how water is managed on the Churchill River, even if Hydro-Quebec wins the court case”.

Not once did Nalcor explain to the public the basis for this contradiction.

A CANCELLING WE MUST GO

Guest Post By Cabot Martin

A conversation on Paddy Daley these days might go as follows:

Caller: “We should get out of Muskrat! Cancel her! Cancel her - right now!“

Paddy: “You want out?

You want to cancel?

Do you know what you are asking for?

How much do you think that is going to cost?

And where is the money going to come from?”

Such a conversation would neatly encompass the existential question facing us.

Yeah “existential” – big word - as in “if we don’t get this right, we are toast”.

As noted below, we are not well placed to answer such questions.

But we can make a start.

First thing is to size up the hole we are in.

2015 BUDGET: WHO IS AFRAID OF THE FISCAL CLIFF?

Minister Ross Wiseman called the Budget “a measured approach to dealing with the fiscal realities facing…” the province. 

No, it wasn’t. 

It was an awful example of political leadership.

Worse, virtually every group cheered him on. The exception was the NL Employers’ Council.

"We're here for a spending issue not necessarily a revenue-generating issue and if taxpayers don't hold them accountable they'll be back again — whatever government is in power — looking for tax increases again."

That’s Richard Alexander. He is spot on.  He’s just bloody late.  His bosses at the Employers’ Council lost their tongues over Muskrat Falls.  None had the courage to help stop this madness right from the beginning. 

It is hard to win back credibility when it is squandered. But they should keep trying.

DOUG LETTO BOOK A WARNING ABOUT WEAK LEADERSHIP

“Newfoundland’s Last Prime Minister: Frederick Alderice and the Death of a Nation” authored by former journalist, Doug Letto, chronicles the final stages of economic crises, which ultimately led to the loss of responsible government in Newfoundland.

The book places more than just Alderdice under a spotlight; it illuminates the attitudes that prevailed among the political and business elites of the day, whose views mirrored Alderdice’s own. 

An impoverished society is cut off by its bankers, and unable to pay the semi-annual interest due on the public debt. Alderdice proposes a partial default, an idea rebuked by Britain which offers the timid and deferential Prime Minister a Hobson’s choice: limited financial help but only if the Government agrees to vote itself out of existence.

WANGERSKY COME BACK: WHEN MUMBLING IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Guest Post written by Cabot Martin

There was a time, as they say, that I tended to agree with most of The Telegram’s Russell Wangersky’s editorial pieces.

But he had one in the Monday Telegram that, how do I put it, was pretty far out.

Says we are not in a “police state” unless they are dropping pregnant women out of planes and disappearing thousands of people without a trace – heavy darts.

Davis, it seems, cannot be put in the same category as Pinochet, Franco and Marcos - so don’t cheapen the debate by using the term.

Well excuse me.

REFLECTIONS ON A SOCIETY SADDENED

Death by police, whether some place in the U.S.A. or in Mitchells Brook, NL evokes a range of emotions that transcends all the normal reactions of people especially when transparency is tattered.

Though the victim’s family will suffer all the pain and loss of a loved one, society also has a lot at stake, if the state has erred or engaged in aberrant behavior. 

A collective loss of confidence in authority figures is the first casualty. If the actions of the police and those of politicians have overlapped, as in the Dunphy case, unwittingly or otherwise, the fear is that not just an injustice the rule of law has been undermined. 

For democratic society, such a jolt to certainty is compounded by a sense of shared responsibility of the need to make sure the process that led to the wrong is repaired. 

Bonds of trust between the governors the governed are always tenuous. An Inquiry under the Public Inquiries Act (and not the more restricted Fatalities Investigation Act) ought to have been immediate.  That did not happen.

A PLEA TO PREMIER DAVIS

Guest Post By Cabot Martin

A Plea to Premier Davis: call a Public Inquiry into the Dunphy shooting - NOW

On Friday past, the RNC officer (so far unnamed) who shot Donny Dunphy sent out a letter that sped through the provincial consciousness like a bitter March wind.

As a result, in the midst of tragedy, we are confronted with the unwelcome need to push on down a road of inquiry that seems to open into a place we have not been before.

It is a place far from those days, not very long ago, when it was our happy boast that our very own RNC was the only unarmed police force in North America.

We evidently have not paid enough attention to policing matters and to what the RNC has been up to with this PSU business.

For instance, how did this letter, this extraordinary intervention by Officer “X” , an officer subject to an ongoing police investigation, get written in the first place?

IS RCMP TRYING TO ISOLATE ITSELF FROM RNC IN DONNY DUNPHY SHOOTING?

The public is aghast that a man who issued a number of innocuous tweets on Good Friday could be shot dead on Easter Sunday by the Premier’s bodyguard, an RNC Officer. 

What is troubling, is that an immediate Judicial Inquiry was not called, in the very same manner that inspired three previous Public Inquiries where deaths had occurred at the hands of the police. Had the Premier directed the Attorney General to commence such a process, the multitude of questions which abound might have been muted.

A man has been shot dead. The decision-making chain which led to his death began in the Premier’s Office. I can think of no Government that would not have ordered a Judicial Inquiry immediately, in the circumstances.

We need that judicial process to provide certainty that the rule of law has not been breached by the shooter and by others. 

DONNY DUNPHY TRAGEDY: ANYTHING LESS THAN A JUDICIAL INQUIRY IS UNACCEPTABLE

The shooting death of Donny Dunphy by an RNC Officer of the Protective Services Unit (PSU) is a tragedy. In the circumstance, it demands nothing less than the thoroughness and independence afforded by a Judicial Inquiry. 

The late insertion by the RCMP of long retired Judge David Riche as an “independent observer”, an apparently new species of “oversight”, is no replacement for a full Judicial Inquiry – especially when it is inappropriate for the RCMP to be conducting the investigation in the first place. 

The process speaks to damage control both for the RNC and for the Government. The RCMP is a non-arms-length Agency in this case. 

An apparently defective chain of decision-making placed the PSU Officer in Mr. Dunphy’s home. The very first decision in the matter originated in the Premier’s Office. There have been inappropriate statements by the Premier.

All this has added a distressing political dimension to the case; one that begs for complete transparency.

"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.