The Waiting Room
She coughs and sneezes - virus strews,
Guest Post by Ron Penney
The following segment is the third of three containing speaking notes from my presentation to the Wessex Society on October 14, 2020. The presentation is available at the Wessex Society of Newfoundland, wessexsociety.ca - Ron Penney
The Democratic Deficit
While the Commissioner declined to get into the broader issues which we urged him to consider he did have a short chapter titled “Dealing with Opposition to the Project” which focused on the reaction of project proponents to the critics and naysayers, or, as my brother Neil, described us - the Muskrateers!
The Commissioner described the project proponents response to the critics as “at times unbalanced and disproportionate to the commentary.”
In particular he referenced Mr. Williams characterization of us as “bottom feeders”.
Guest Post by Ron Penney
The following are two segments containing speaking notes from my presentation to the Wessex Society on October 14, 2020. A third part, dealing with the Province's democratic deficit, will be posted on Monday, November 23. The presentation is available at the Wessex Society of Newfoundland, wessexsociety.ca
Part 1
Setting the Stage:
Unfortunately the delayed release of the Muskrat Falls Inquiry Report on March 5 of this year coincided with the worst public health crisis since the Spanish flue of 1918, which had the effect of dampening public interest in the report and its conclusions. So aside from a few interviews in March this is the first opportunity given to me to comment on the report in some depth.
The main thrust of my lecture is to deal with a fundamental issue which the Commissioner declined to examine, which is what democratic deficits in our society allowed “a Misguided Project”, to proceed.
An auspicious start to a new career on the global lecture circuit recently occurred, your scribe having answered in the affirmative an invitation to address a small public policy group, called Ballicatters. The venue was a well-established local Pub, a perfect place to soberly test new and old material, in preparation for the big leagues. Naturally, I selected a barnburner of a title: “Fiscal Crisis: Will ‘hope’ repair a mess too deep?” Pretty catchy, eh? In pursuit of not just their heads but their hearts, too, I even added a subtitle and chose this one: “The Inevitability of Death by a Thousand Cuts”.
Soon after, the fight broke out.
(That’s not actually what happened, but it is as true as the Government’s accounting of the public debt I had planned to discuss.)
Chair of the “Premier’s Economic Recovery Team”, Moya Greene, is the last person I would have expected to be duped by the politicos on the 8th Floor. Yet, for all her experience, she managed to be taken in, placing at risk an urgent requirement to deal with our large and immediate fiscal crisis.
No one can argue that the Team is composed of
talented and successful people. Among the group is David Vardy who has been a
frequent – and valuable - contributor on this Blog. That said, the expertise appointed for the
purpose is terribly lopsided, especially considering the expertise required to examine a Government
“broke” - unless the exclusively financial people on the Team are weighed.
The Premier’s mandate letter requires the team to create a “comprehensive plan to address [the province’s] ballooning debt, deficit, and expenditures”. It ought to have been the sole requirement.
Sometimes an easy “fix” to a problem is wanted so badly that people will delude themselves with the sheer mention by partisans of the next best thing.
One recent example. The Federal Throne Speech announced the “Atlantic Loop”, an expansion of electricity transmission capability entering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Immediately, it was embraced by Newfoundland worthies as one of the long-awaited answers to the Muskrat Falls debacle. Yet, it contained not a shred of evidence that this Province has a role to play.
The word “Atlantic” has historically enabled locals to distinguish the four most easterly provinces from the “Maritimes”. The inclusion of “Quebec” would naturally assume nomenclature like the “Eastern Canadian Loop”. Presumably, that would have allowed too much transparency to a plan in which the Government of Canada is involved.
Still, what is it that inspires locals to think that the “Loop” is about them and to give it an air of credibility in which the truth is missing?
Guest Post by Cabot Martin
The recent Opinion piece on our offshore natural gas resources by journalist Ian Esau in the international publication Upstream (reprinted in Uncle Gnarley last Monday) seems to have received considerable interest in this embattled Province.
So it seems a good time to revisit the issues set out in my piece on offshore gas published on the Uncle Gnarley Blog back on May 28th.
Let’s get the main proposition in both articles on the table right away – our oil and gas industry has to develop “decarbonization” strategies to fight climate change - or die.
As Mr. Esau so clearly put it – any offshore strategy that is not founded on a sensible decarbonization strategy cannot hope to gain the support of oil companies (let alone Ottawa) because increasingly the financial resources to implement such strategy will not be forthcoming from private capital markets.
Guest Post by Cabot Martin
Uncle Gnarley is a fine fellow.
I was supposed to do a piece on one of my favorite issues – why an law suit against Emera for “Civil Deceit” regarding their role in the Muskrat fiasco would make a whole lot of sense and just might get us off the hook for billions.
I’ve written on this on Uncle Gnarley before but was going to take things a step further by broaching the idea of getting a Civil Deceit “Class Action” case going – every rate payer in the Province would be eligible to participate - and surely there must be some sharp young lawyer (or lawyers) out there willing to tackle such a case.
But like I say – Uncle Gnarley is a fine fellow, so when a couple days ago there was “breaking news” re our offshore gas resources in the international oil & gas press, I simply had to go back to him and plead the case for a change in topic. He agreed.
Another big deficit Budget and a Total Public Debt of $29 billion means simply that a grim reality show, "Death By A Thousand Cuts", has been given a new chapter; this one is written by Finance Minister, Siobhan Coady. Like her predecessors, she does not understand the concept of "can't afford". We are, therefore, brought a step closer to the opening act of a "Play" that will open soon in every neighborhood in this province.
The essence of the annual Budget ritual is captured in
Statement I of the 2020-21 Estimates. The Government is spending $7.65
billion against only $5.43 billion revenue.
The math confirms a cash deficit of $2.2 billion
(which includes $332 million of capital works).
Forecast revenue is down by approximately $0.5 billion, reflecting 44.6% lower oil royalties than received last year, exposing a severely impacted domestic oil industry.