Way too good to be true

From CBC

He said a competing network will lead to other benefits, but "it is not possible to quantify the benefits exactly because the number is so huge and so enormous that you cannot quantify it. It is in the hundreds, and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars," Williams told the legislature.

If even a fraction of this is true then it truly is hard to pass up a deal like this.

And if all of it is true then there are too many inconsistencies just on the face of this whole matter to accept easily. The fact is that claims like this raise more questions than they answer.

First, if a government can’t quantify the benefits of a public policy decision then government has no business making a decision to proceed. The only numbers too big to quantify are in rarefied and obscure corners of cosmological physics and even those practitioners can give you a number of some kind.

The fact that Premier Williams is willing to stake his reputation for good business judgment and his government’s reputation for competence on a public policy decision whose benefits are unquantifiable is hard to accept. He must make the effort to quantify the benefits otherwise it’s just gut instinct – a spectacularly bad way to spend public money.

Second, to whom do the benefits accrue? If they accrue to the 3 firms involved, then his decision to put public money into this project directly benefits, to the tune of hundreds of millions, his former business partners.

If this is the case then, protestations about legalities notwithstanding, this is an ethical conflict of interest on a monumental scale.

And if the benefits are so humongous as to be unquantifiable, then why did the partners need public money when private investors would have been lined up around the block for a small piece of this project given the enormous potential returns.

But if the benefits are to accrue to the public at large, how will they do so and where is the analysis showing this to be the case?

I’ve worked on public policy for prior provincial governments and I have had a hand in preparing materials for cabinet decisions. One this is for sure – nothing is left to chance and all claims of benefits are analyzed, researched and documented.

If the Premier says there are hundreds of millions of dollars of potential benefits, then that claim too has been analyzed, researched and documented by either outside analysts or internal resources.

So the question is this: wouldn’t it be worth releasing that analysis which outlines the millions upon millions of dollars of benefits, and to who they accrue, in order to put this matter to bed?

What could be sweeter, from the government’s perspective, than to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and to show the province that the complaints of Gerry Reid and the Opposition are hollow, politically motivated, empty and meaningless noise?

Cool it!

When you watch the House of Assembly, or any other Legislature for that matter, you have to remember that you are watching a piece of theater.

Not all the time - some debates really are for the benefit of the other members. But most times the show is for the benefit of the cameras and the media and Question Period is at the center of it. It provides the most interesting drama because it's short, compact and conflict-driven.

For the media, it's the highlight of the House day - they show up for the sitting, watch QP, do their scrums with the MHAs afterwards and then, as often as not, head out to cover other stories.

I'm not saying that anything would change if the media devoted more time to covering other parts of the House operations. I doubt it would. But because the media attention is concentrated to that time, MHAs have every incentive to make the best of it.

One thing that's important to understand is that it's called Question Period and not Answer Period for a reason. A well-prepared Opposition will ask questions with the point of just getting the question on the record; whether they receive an answer or not is besides the point. Just getting the question out can be enough because they know a well-prepared minister will never get pinned down.

It's a game and when it's well played, it's really something to watch. If you ever get the opportunity, watch the Prime Minister's Question Period on Friday nights on CPAC. Prime Minister Blair stands up in the the mother of Parliaments and takes on questions from all comers. It is a true display of dazzling parliamentary virtuosity; he's cool, collected, informed and informative and dances like a master.

Part of the game is the emotional tone. Around here the Opposition acts outraged that they even have to raise whatever question they are asking and the Government acts outraged that the Opposition has the nerve to bring up something so inconsequential and irrelevant.

Sometimes they do vary the tone and veer into wildly different areas like umbrage, self-righteousness or they act affronted, aggrieved, incensed, infuriated, injured, insulted, scandalized, shocked or indignant

But most of the time it's just outrage and that constant diet of outrage can be wearying at times. It would be more interesting if the folks in the House could come up with something else but outrage is where they're comfortable, it's what they can do, so it's how they perform.

Most times it's just feigned - the Opposition *acts* outraged and the Government members respond in kind.

Then there are other times when the House becomes a well and true rat's nest of intense negative emotions, when members lose control and their cool and all sides get into things that they shouldn't.

There are some Opposition members who are masters at baiting Ministers and, especially, the Premier. They know just what buttons to push and just how to needle to make their victim spin out of control.

The game for the Oppostion is to make their victim lose control; the game for the victim is to stay cool and never lose control.

One of the giants of this game, on the victim side anyway, was the Rt Hon. Herb Gray. When the Opposition would ask him a question, he'd get up slowly and just start talking so the "Gray fog" descended upon the chamber obscuring everything, especially the issue at hand.

He never lost his cool and never become upset; he was a master of the game.

You only have to watch a couple of QP's of the local House to see that Premier Williams can be easily provoked into a high-speed top-like spin. And since his definition of what constitutes a "personal attack" is so broad (anything he's not keen to hear), it makes him especially vulnerable to provocation.

So when Premier Williams loses his temper and challenges a member to "repeat his comments outside" (more likely to see pigs flying overhead) and says "I'll sue your ass off", he has thrown up the white flag, announced to the world that he's lost control and that he's lost the argument too; he's given up the fight.

Govt in a bad spot

A dilemma is defined as having limited choices, only those choices and all of them are bad.

On the matter of the fibre optic deal and the Lobbyist Registration Act, this government is in a dilemma.

On one side, government can make the argument, and not without merit, that the Lobbyist legislation does not apply in this case when the partners in the deal put forward an unsolicited proposal for government to drop $15m into a cross-province fibre optic installation.

If that's true then what's the point of the Act, so goes he popular thought, if it doesn't cover things like this?

On the other hand if the Lobbyist Act does apply, and the principals of Rogers Communications, Persona Communications and MTS Allstream did not register, then the fallout will be unpleasant for government.

In fact the Lobbyist Act was a poor idea that was poorly executed to resolve a problem that was poorly understood; it solves problems that didn't really exist here (the stereotype of corporate giants wining and dining government officials to gain influence) and ignored problems that do (close connections taking advantage of personal contacts in a province where most people know most other people).

But since the Lobbyist Act was oversold as the solution and cleanup to all problems of undue influence without ever defining what the problems were exactly, the public has read into the Lobbying Act what they think it should mean. And many think it should mean covering actions that led to things like this deal.

The fact that is does not, at least according to Premier Williams and I tend to agree given the provisions of the Act, means government is in a bad spot.

The fact that it's a political problem as opposed to a legal problem doesn't make the matter less problematic.

Iqaluit bound!

It's that time of the year - the Nunavut Territorial Legislature will open this Tuesday. That means this Monday I start the flight north, through Montreal, to my little corner of the Iqaluit Suites Hotel. From there I'll commute across the street to my office where I'll edit and index the territorial Hansard until the legislature closes.

I'll be there some 3 weeks and then I return home. This is my third time up and I've enjoyed it more and more each time. Iqaluit is a town of about 8-9000. It seems like 1/4 are Newfoundlanders so I'm not long finding people from home. One of them is the irrepressible Townie Bastard whose appetite for chocolate Timbits I'll make every effort to slake.

This is the building where my office is located. It's a pic I took last time I was there (early June) at roughly 2am. This was as dark as it gets that time of year. Given the choice between almost 24 hours night and almost 24 hours day, I'll take the former anytime.

The Legislature up there is a fascinating institution, especially compared to our own House of Assembly, and I'll post more about that while I'm up there. Not only to they meet longer and more than ours does, their internal operations are very different reflecting a different political culture and priorities. Our House could learn much from them.

So if I'm a little more sparse in my postings here, that's why. I know some people might be wistful at that prospect but I know there'll be some who will be overjoyed. In either case, it won't last long.

End of an era - Sprung lands sold

On November 15 the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation closed tenders for the Sprung lands in Mt. Pearl. For those of you who are too young to remember this notorious era in NL history, I direct you over to Premier Peckford's pickle palace, a CBC retrospective on the subject.

This scandal lowered the curtain on 17 years of Progressive Conservative administrations, and particularly on the Peckford government. A wave of public revulsion on the issue elected the Liberal government of Premier Clyde Wells which had the unexpected effect of profoundly changing Canadian constitutional history when he rejected Meech Lake.

A total of about 800,000 cucumbers were produced with a cost to taxpayers per cucumber of $27.50, compared to 50 cents for cucumbers produced out of province and sold in Newfoundland grocery stores.

In 2001, Globe and Mail columnist Heather Mallick wrote: "As scams to rake in government money went, it was the most embarrassing in Canadian history."

In the end the Sprung Greenhouse project exposed the conduct of the last years of the PC/Peckford administration as capricious and casual in its decision-making process, sloppy and self-interested in it's use of public funds, high-handed and vicious towards critical media and unrepentant in the short-sighted and wasteful expediture of roughly $25m of taxpayer's money.

This history should be taught to every student in the NL school system as a valuable civics lesson never to be forgotten. If we don't remember history like this, we are well and truly doomed to repeat it.

Thank you for your support

So far so good in the Atlantic Business Magazine Expert Q&A.

Traffic to the site has gone up and so far I've had 5 comments/questions in only 2 days. Come check them out and if you have one of your own, please feel free to contribute.

And thanx very kindly to Liam O'Brien for his kind words. I'm sure his endorsement of a position of mine is as much a surprise to him as it is to me.

I still have a few more questions to answer so I'll get those out as quick as I can.

In the meantime, give the article a read - leave me a comment/question.

Talking points gone bad - The Jane Stewart award goes to. . .

I listen to the news and talk radio differently than the casual listener. I've prepared public officials for these media so I can recognize the telltale signs of preparation in what they say and how they say it.

If they have any talent and they are well prepared, it's a joy to listen to: concise, clear, informative.

If they have no talent and/or been badly prepared it can be torturous. Try listening to Natural Resources Minister Dunderdale with her "cross-sectoral" and "drill-downs" and "doing due diligence." She crams more meaningless buzzwords in fewer sentences than any minister I've seen in some time.

Does anybody remember the Jane Stewart/HRDC scandal? Who could forget the sight of federal minister Jane Stewart in a scrum repeating her same talking point over and over and over again like a mantra in response to different questions. She sounded like a broken record and in the process became the joke of the nation's capital.

Last night nearly 300 people crowded into the school's gym at Paradise Elementary to voice concerns on mould and to demand answers from Eastern School District education director Darin King. Apparently it's a big problem in the school. Walls have been torn out and you can smell a strong smell of mould as soon as you walk into the place.

All of Dr. King's public comments and media work so far indicates that he is badly implementing poor communications advice but the capper came last night where one notable exchange went as thus:

Todd O'Neill (a father): "Can you smell the mould?"

Dr. Darin King: "I'm not qualified to answer the question."

O'Neill: "You've got a nose, don't you?!?!"

This was just another manifestation of the same talking point he's been using all along - that mould is not his field of expertise and that he's just following the advice of experts.

But talking points are supposed to facilitate, organize and clarify the flow of communication, not impede it.

Dr. King must have missed that lesson.

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Here is a great article on a very practical and mundane aspect of electoral politics - the removal of campaign signs after election day.

Around here it's not much of an issue at all. Within 24 hours or so of last year's municipal election, it seemed like every sign just evaporated overnight.

I know I lost a huge proportion of mine.

I hear many took them because they make great cabin insulation.

Here's hoping you had a warm and comfortable winter!

Public money in private sector - good or bad?

Atlantic Business Magazine has asked me to participate in their Expert Q&A under the headline Simon Lono to Atlantic governments: Stop gambling with the public purse.

This discussion questions the utility of any government playing with the public's money in the private sector announcing that, "In this online discussion forum, he challenges government hubris and cronyism vis-à-vis economic development in Atlantic Canada."

Give it a read - leave me a comment/question.

Lest we forget

Telecoms, government and money - Welcome to the party!

CBC radio today broke the story that information filed by the provincial Chief Electoral Officer show that Persona donated $9,500 to the PCs in 2005 alone, while Rogers donated almost $12,000.

You can poke around here, if you'd like, and check how much people have given each party but I've already taken the time to summarize the information for you, my gentle reader.

The table shows the money given to the PC party or candidates by the telecom companies involved in the fibre optic network that has attracted $15 million from the Newfoundland and Labrador government.

It turns out that the relationship actually goes back further and totals a little more than the CBC story says. In fact since the year 2001 up to 2005, Rogers has donated $15,600 while Persona donated $10,700.

All these money values are donations to the PC party, the PC election campaigns or to individual PC candidates only.

Donations by both companies to the Liberal or NDP parties were $0 over the same period.

So what does this all mean in the context of the news of the last few days?

To start, let's be explicit about one thing - notwithstanding a clear flow of campaign funds from these two telecoms to the governing party, there is no evidence that this government, or any member of government, has done anything corrupt or illegal. That might seem counter-intuitive but it's literally true.

First, all the monies were correctly donated and reported. Unless someone comes up with evidence of under the table political financing, there is nothing improper or illegal in giving money to a political party, campaign or candidate.

Second, there is no evidence of any kind of quid pro quo. Unless someone is willing to swear that the monies were provided with the understanding that material favours would be provided by government in return, there is no corruption involved.

Third, unless and until it can be shown that Premier Williams or any member of his government or their families will materially benefit in a personal way from this deal, then there is no conflict of interest.

So, since there is no evidence of corruption, no evidence of conflict of interest and all funds were provided legally and above board, what's the problem?

The fundamental problem is this: government needs to be responsible in all decisions regarding expenditures of funds. When that money is being spent to support a private sector enterprise, the standards for scrutiny must go up and government must take extra measures to ensure that the decision is sound.

And when the money is going to support a private sector enterprise that is so close to prominent members of government, the case for the expenditure must be iron-clad, extra open and transparent and in every way beyond reproach.

Government should not be surprised that they are being reproached for this decision.

Not too long ago I covered this issue in a post called Ethics, Law and Government and my point then was that:

No set of laws or codes will ever eradicate ethical transgressions on the part of elected officials. We can only try to elect persons who have that internal compass that tells them what is appropriate and what is not. We can only hope for leadership from the top that guides all members of government to closely examine if their actions are correct or not.

But when the top dogs define what is appropriate purely in terms of what is legal then that is the recipe for future problems. When a government can't tell what is ethically appropriate from what is merely legal, then you have a government that you have to watch twice as hard.

That point still stands.

Branding - revisited

With all the recent talk about branding (not to mention all the misconceptions), I thought it might be worthwhile to have a quick review of concepts.

Interestingly, government communications as a whole seems stalled at stage 4.

(From Marty Neumeier and his book Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands )

High speed insanity

According to Benjamin Franklin, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

By this definition the provincial government, in the recent decision to pour $15m into a fiber optic link in conjunction with three private sector companies, is clearly insane.

In principle and in practice, the primal urge of any government to meddle in matters which clearly belong to the private sector is one that should be restrained. Every government thinks it's smarter and better able to judge this kind of action better than any government which proceeded it.

History shows that's nothing but unwarranted public administration and political hubris.

There are patterns to when governments decide to put public money into what would normally be private sector enterprises; I've come up with four obvious ones off the top of my head. I'm not sure which one of these possibilities is the case here but it's worthwhile looking at them:

1) To provide services or facilities otherwise unavailable or unaffordable.

Provincial ferries are a good example of that; we wouldn't have too many of them if we depended on profit-making companies alone to supply those services. The same applies to roads.

However, in this case, government is putting public money into a project with the express purpose of competing with a private sector company (Aliant).

Right now, fiber optic lines and services are available and affordable so clearly this project does not fall into providing services otherwise unavailable or unaffordable

2) To spur economic development out of frustration with slow private sector action.

Governments work on a four year timeline and are under pressure to show results by election time. So governments are often tempted to goose investment by offering inducements or enticements to hurry the process along.

This is a public policy mistake and history across provinces and governments of all stripes is littered with the skeletons of politically motivated development deals of one kind or another.

We are not unique - other provinces have been at it too. Bricklin in New Brunswick, for one and there's a very long list in Saskatchewan.

In this province, you only have to look at Smallwood's attempts at chocolate, rubber boot and orange juice manufacturing to see that. Never mind the Come-by-chance oil refinery, the biggest Canadian bankruptcy up to that time. That project would not have been built without direct government contributions and loan guarantees.

I can hear the chorus saying that it worked out in the end but the reality is that the people of the province lost millions of dollars on the deal and one of the main reasons it's viable now is because is went bankrupt with the province eating the loss.

3) To make unviable projects viable.

Government keeps referring to this $15m as an investment. If it's an investment (defined as money expended for a return), then why does government have to put up the money at all? Why is the private sector not jumping at this opportunity?

Government funding does not make unviable projects viable but merely brings unviable projects into existence. In the long run, the subsidized enterprise needs continued government support over the long run to keep going.

So government is faced with two choices as money starts to eventually bleed out. First, they can cut their losses, get out and cut the project loose to sink or swim on it's own. Since government is reluctant to admit error, generally government will take the second option of continuing to provide more money.

So either the project is a sensible one which can be handled by the private sector or it's an unreasonable one which should not be undertaken with public funds.

4) To reward friends/allies of any kind

I'll leave this possibility for discussion by others.

The fact is that this province has a horrible track record in putting public money into private enterprises of all kinds. Too much money for too long has been thrown away in one politically motivated vanity project after another. We only have too look at Sprung, a provincial embarrassment which brought down a government of 17 years, to see that.

I'm not arguing that there should be no money every put into infrastructure projects not should there be a blanket ban on public-private partnerships. There are times and places when those kinds of expenditures make sense.

But decisions on public contributions to private enterprise have to be held to higher and tougher standards than other public policy decisions. Public investment into the private sector represents a fundamental departure from standard government current best practices and should be very closely scrutinized for the particular effects on the industry involved, the larger effects on the economy and the general wisdom of allocating public funds in this way.

Our history shows that it's too easy to make bad decisions.

Part of the problem is the way government is selling this. The fact that Minister Taylor admits that this decision was put off until because of the political storm which would follow shows government can't find a sensible way to sell this. The fact that it was released under cover of, and as a putative response to, the Aliant fire which knocked out communications in the capital region shows they still haven't.

In the end, government's claims that this $15m will have anything to do with increased reliability of the provincial communication system or it have anything to do with a more reliable 911 service are false; these claims have been widely demonstrated as bogus or simple fear-mongering.

Additionally, one word that can fairly describe this project is cannibalism - there's already more than enough broadband capacity so now the costs of two separate systems will have to be spread over the name number of customers. I'm not sure how that will reduce costs for anyone.

More than a few observers have noted the opportunity cost in doing this. Every dollar spent on this is a dollar not spent on pharmacists, bridges, schools, etc and that's a political problem for government. You can't help but wonder if this government feels it has more money than it knows what to do with.

Any long-term observer of the local political scene will have to be dismayed at yet another government kicking money into dubious ventures expecting new and different results. What's particularly disappointing is that few would have expected this government to go down that well-trod path.

Happy Guy Fawkes night!

(Shamelessly stolen from Jon Gushue's DotDotDot)

The Current - a worthwhile read

I always liked The Current. It's a kind of a fearless smartass publication. Not quite Frank (thankfully! Frank is generally too much and almost always too personal for my tastes), the Current go where most local mainstream media fear to tread.

They have two fine articles this month on current affairs. One, on an incident outside the recent provincial PC convention I've already alluded to here.

The second is a longer piece called In The reign of Danny Williams by Greg Locke. It's thoughtful and incisive and not only because the writer took the time to quote me all over the place - he talked to lots of other people too like Ed Hollett, Michael Temelini, a MUN political science professor and Jack Harris.

Greg Locke is one of our better informed local commentators and his thoughts are always worth reviewing.

You thought the Labrador highway was bad

Check out this images of a seriously bad road - just a Russian federal critical national highway; nothing too important.

So next time you cross the Trans-Lab road, just remember: it could be worse.

See here for more

"I was told, this is Dannyland"

I worked for Premier Wells in a period when he too was topping the polls at stratospheric levels.

During the Meech Lake time, he was as popular, or more popular, as Williams is now. Not just that, he was receiving voluminous expressions of support from right across the country in the face of vehement and aggressive oppostition from a powerful federal government.

The office was dead center between two powerful and implacable national forces.

It was a tense, high-pressure and heady time . . . But. . . .

If I had tried to bully some senior national party official into line with some remark like "You're in Clyde country now", I can safely predict the response from our wise old Chief of Staff - a smack in the head, a kick in the ass and a scathing reprimand for tossing around the Premier's name around for my own self-aggrandisement and for showing such utter disrespect to a visitor to our province.

And I would not have wanted to predict how much flaming shit would have rained down upon my head should word of my remarks reach the ears of then-Premier Wells himself.

My, how political mores have changed over time.

New Telegram website

It's nice to see the Transcontinental group finally update the websites for their newspapers. I use newspaper websites a lot and the telegram was a frustrating and almost useless waste of bandwidth - very little news content or web features.

The new site looks a bit better but that's not saying much. It still falls way short of the standards set by many other news organizations. The design can fairly be described as ugly and busy with too many ads in too small a space. The content is still weak and seems to have little more, if any, than the old site did.

Of particular frustration to me is the expensive news archive. One piece from yesterday's paper, for example, was only accessible to me upon a charge of $3.95 for a mere 310 words!

Outrageous.

By election day (results)

This is the post I did not expect to write - Lorraine Michael is the new MHA for Signal Hill Quidi Vidi succeeding Jack Harris in the seat.

This was the by-election that was their's to lose. The NDP were facing a high profile government candidate of an apparently very popular government and Premier.

A loss for Michael would have meant sitting out the next two or three House sessions before the next election. It would have left the NDP with only Randy Collins as the sitting MHA - a decent man who has other things on his mind right now other than fighting the good parliamentary fight. The NDP would also have lost critical staff funding for their parliamentary offices.

The next easy step could have been political extinction.

This was no small victory.

By contrast, this was government's test to win. Every surrounding seat for miles around is a very comfortable PC seat and the NDP is only a blip on provincial polls. They had all the levers of government at their disposal and all the city MHA's and ministers were brought out in a full-court press.

Nonetheless the evening belonged to Michael for a variety of reasons and associated repercussions. (Bond papers has also done an analysis worth reading.)

First, the results validates the decision made by Gerry Reid in not running a candidate. Under the circumstances, a Liberal candidate in the district would simply have handed the seat to Jerome Kennedy and the PC's. Reid gambled that the Liberal vote would go to the NDP rather than over the PC's and he was right.

This table (supplied by a poli-metrically inclined colleague) shows that to be the case: the previous Liberal vote went 8 to 1 to the NDP this time around.


Second, the by-election, from the initial announcement right from the moment of concession, had the Premier in the starring role and left candidate Kennedy as the supporting character. The campaign and campaign advertising was all about the Premier. This carried right up to when he and two staffers with Kennedy in tow appeared at the Michael headquarters to make the concession speech.

He couldn't allow his handpicked candidate the dignity of the spotlight to himself even in defeat.

By making the by-election all about him, the Premier has to be considered to have suffered a personal defeat. That would be his first political loss of any kind (unless you include the success of Fabian Manning in the last federal election) since becoming leader of his party.

Third, I believe a contributing factor was the job fair turnout of a few days before. I suspected that event might have political repercussions but little did I know how quickly they would be felt. There is no doubt in my mind that the sight of a line of 9000 people ready to head to Alberta for jobs sent a cold shiver up the spine of the city in general and the political establishment in particular.

That shiver mobilised the NDP vote to appear at the booth and made the PC vote disinclined to come out at all.

Finally, I have to tip my hat to Rick Boland and his crew. They ran a clean and (to my eye) flawless campaign in an uphill battle which met the ultimate test of quality - they won - and politics is a winner-take-all game.

This evening the Premier learned something that eluded him before: fastballs travel just as fast the other way around.

By election day (I)

I'll post on the Signal Hill Quidi Vidi election results later but for now I'll provide two small examples of campaign silliness in the current set of US elections:

In Alabama a candidate named Loretta Nall is running for governor for the Libertarian Party of Alabama. Part of her charming campaign swag was is a persuasive t-shirt featuring this:


If you want to check out her website it's here and you can support her campaign by purchasing this t-shirt as well as other items here.*

I kid you not.

When you've recovered from that, may I redirect you to this article in the New York Times on US candidates losing their cool in the late campaign pressure cooker.

Highlights include:

• Representative Barbara Cubin, a Wyoming Republican facing a strong challenge in what should be a safe seat, this week told an opponent who uses a wheelchair that she would slap him were he not disabled;
• Representative Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee used his campaign bus to interrupt a news conference of his opponent in the Senate race.

Again, truth is stranger than fiction.

Go vote.

===================

* Don't bother to send me hate e-mails - I don't make up this stuff.

Happy Halloween

Employment hollowing

In the last 72 hours I've received some sad news and seen some wider disturbing patterns.

First, we've received news that a good friend of the family will be relocated in the new year to Alberta. He had hoped to complete one more major local project in this province and and then take his retirement here - he's been here a few years and grown to love it.

He leaves this province with reluctance.

At the same time I learned that another senior exec in the industry will also be leaving early in the new year to go to a new post overseas. His only choice will be whether to uproot his young family in mid school year or to leave them here until June. They have settled into the local community, their children are stable in local schools and they all have developed local attachments.

They also leave the province with reluctance; I wish I could have gotten to know them better .

Yesterday a job fair was held in St. John's which saw better than 9000* or so people head down to the Capital Hotel overwhelming Alberta employers who came on a recruiting mission to fill a crying need for bodies in the Alberta oil fields, particularly the tar sands projects.

I'm sure that those who get job offers, and there will be more than a few, will also leave the province with reluctance.

That raises issues which are demographic and labor market related. That's not even mentioning the political repercussions.

The emotional response to this job fair is worth noting. It's been all over the news and talk radio with a volume and intensity of response a level of magnitude higher than we've seen before for similar events. And the reason for that, I think, is because just so many people appeared at the fair with such little notice.

And the fact that it happened in St. John's. We expect an exodus out of Stephenville and Harbour Breton but we've been able to rest easy and say that at least St. John's and surrounding areas are doing relatively ok.

Apparently some 9000 local residents don't agree with that assessment - turns out St. John's can't take the hit after all.

All of these things taken together, the job fair and the exodus of senior executives, has important and subtle implications for the economic future of the province.

First there is no escaping the fact that all this movement of people is due to greater oil employment opportunities in other jurisdictions. We could have better opportunities here but Premier Williams feels we are better off awaiting a better offer in government royalties and equity.

In the meantime, we have low barriers to labour movement in this country and people are taking advantage of that - they have families to feed today.

Second is the hollowing out of the local oil-related employment knowledge base. Over the last 15 years or so, we had built up a critical mass of people with experience and knowledge in the oil/gas sector. They knew what they were doing and had a good sense of the best way to proceed in future projects. That kind of expertise base took a decade and a half to develop and now it's hemorrhaging away.

It won't build back up at the same rate it's bleeding now.

Finally, the companies whose senior executives are leaving the province may not be closing down shop - they leave skeleton crews of far junior people. That means the decision-makers are gone out of this jurisdiction so, for them, projects in this province are out of sight and therefore out of mind.

It also means that the left-behinds are farther down in the management chain than those they replace with less influence and input into future corporate investment decision.

We had big dogs located here because we had big projects to keep them busy. With no new projects in the pipleline, the big dogs are pulled to where there are big projects.

Oil/gas jurisdictions are a combination of oil/gas resource and the experience and expertise of the workforce to develop them. If we hope to negotiate any kind of industrial benefits in the future, we have to ensure that we still have a local industrial sector to take advantage of that.

Government royalties and equity does little to generate economic activity for anyone but government employees and only ensures generous make-work, income support and old age homes for the people that are left behind.

We should aim higher.

================
* Roughly the same number as voters in a typical provincial district, say Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi

Bye election blues

I don't live in the District of Signal-Hill Quidi Vidi but, If I did, I would vote for the NDP for what would be the first time ever in my life as a voting adult. My reasons have to do with disquiet over generally giving government another seat.

The fact that Mr. Jerome Kennedy is the candidate on the other side makes that inclination a whole lot easier for me to swallow.

I have never hidden my disquiet with the political skills, positions and abilities of the NDP but, for good or ill (and don't get me started on the ills), generally what you see is what you get.

And while Mr. Kennedy continues his self-definition as the independent man of action and thought, at least in the political sense (and that is really what's germane here) his record does not indicate anything like that.

You see Mr. Kennedy pins his persona as the outsider through his very laudable work as a director of the highly respected Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, and he was pivotal in getting the wrongful murder convictions of Greg Parsons and Ronald Dalton overturned.

Great work that was too - I tip my hat to him.

He also finds much traction for his "little-guy" role in his charges of professional misconduct after a speech in July, 2003, where he opined that judges who "don't know what they're doing" are one of the many reasons why innocent people are found guilty.

Coincidently, that action echoes Premier Williams' attack on Judge Halley over the Ruelokke affair but no matter

But neither his work with AIDWC nor the attack on the judiciary nor his friendship with the arts community has anything to do with his appointment to the nomination of the PC Party in the seat of Signal-Hill Quidi Vidi.

It appears, from the perspective of an outsider, that it probably has to do more with his work on behalf of an organisation which, in effect has protected the financial interests of Premier Williams' former law firm and law partners as well as his past service to the PC caucus when it was still in opposition as their pet legal opinion for hire.

This work has received much less attention than his AIDWC and it's worth exploring in order to get a fuller view of the landscape.

To start, Mr. Kennedy is legal counsel to the Coalition Against No-Fault Insurance and their spokesperson.

Behind that organization is an interesting story.

You have to cast your mind back to 2002 when car insurance rates were climbing and the Grimes administration started an effort to reform the system. The response to those efforts was the rise of Coalition Against No-Fault Insurance headed by then-councilor Kevin Breen.

If that was all there was to it then it wouldn't be a very interesting story and I promised you an interesting story. The odd part about all this was that the Grimes administration never proposed a no-fault insurance system and was never going to; that was just never in the cards.

But that did not stop the coallition from waging a massive public relations war over the issue anyway.

At the time the leader of the Opposition was Danny Williams who was fresh out of his firm of Williams Roebothan MacKay and Marshall. That firm enjoys a wide reputation as the largest accident/injury law firm in the province and the overwhelming proportion of the firm's millions of dollars of income each year come from one kind of accident/injury in particular - car accidents. Therefore any substantive changes to the auto insurance system in this province would jeopardize this revenue stream.

Putative head Kevin Breen was always very careful to avoid revealing where the considerable sums of money came from to carry out their expensive campaigns.

Local rumors put the source of cash at the door of those with the most cash to lose.

In the end, the Coalition Against No-Fault Insurance was really a coalition to protect the car insurance litigation industry status quo, to preserve the income of accident/injury law firms and to take some pokes at a government already on the way out for partisan ends.

And today, Mr. Kennedy is their spokesperson.

Alone that would not establish a pattern of having carved out a secure place in premier Williams' pocket. There are also Mr. Kennedy's other forays into provincial political issues where he filled the role of Williams' apparently independent legal opinion for hire.

On December 3, 2001, the then-Opposition Environment critic Tom Osborne said in a news release that the Opposition has obtained legal advice that the Environmental Protection Act then before the House of Assembly violated the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In that release, St. John's lawyer Jerome Kennedy stated: "In my opinion, Section 94 of the proposed legislation empowers law enforcement officers to conduct warrantless searches in violation of the protection against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While the subsequent Section 95 does comply with constitutional standards for search and seizure, in my opinion, Section 94 can be used to obtain grounds to seek a search warrant under Section 95, thereby rendering the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure meaningless."

It's odd that the matter has not been raised since by either Osborne nor Kennedy. No House amendments have been proposed by the new government to right this wrong. I guess the matter just wasn't all that important an issue or principle.

But while one can easily accept Kennedy's expertise in the matter of Charter issues, Mr. Kennedy really stretched his credentials as an authority when he weighed into the matter of the House of Assembly debate on Voisey's Bay.

On June 18, 2002, the Western Star reported Mr. Kennedy's considered opinion that the House should not be debating the issue unless and until there was a legal agreement before it. In the story he stated "This agreement as it now stands is not worth the paper it's written on ... Why is the Premier engaging in a massive propaganda campaign to try to convince the average Newfoundlander that this is a good deal. Why not simply provide the information and let the people decide."

However, a cursory review of Mr. Kennedy's legal career would not lead you to believe that he has any special expertise in reviewing complex government-industrial mining benefit agreements. With all due respect, I'd call Mr. Kennedy in a heartbeat if I were wrongly accused of a heinous crime.

But his name would not be at the top of my list for reviewing complex industrial benefit agreements simply because there are just too many other names with much more experience and who do that kind of work all the time

Coincidently his position was almost identical to Mr. Williams' so it's hard to escape the conclusion that he traded in on his legal reputation to dispense an opinion for nakedly partisan reasons as an unofficial extra-opposition spokesperson.

All this makes the overall situation, and Mr. Kennedy, more complex and interesting than it first appears.

Other complexities has been the PC advertising and messaging machine aggressively taking dead aim at the NDP support base while the NDP play a defensive game of fighting to keep the arts community base.

Driving around the district you can't help but notice that no matter how good the PC air war is, the ground war has been weak. For many weeks, while NDP signs were hanging in windows, off houses and on lawns indicating true and deep party support, the PC signs were relegated to public lands. It looked as thought there has been a break in communication with previous PC campaigns in the district while the NDP's can rely on a continuity of campaign information over several elections - the NDP already know where there support is while the PC's started from scratch.

Some have mentioned to me that the campaign machinery is a "by-election in a box" run from outside the district.

No real surprise.

But in the end the factor that would decide where to place my vote is that I'm not sure the City of St. John's needs another MHA on the government side apologizing for their leader's policies, puffing wind up his skirts and passing him his shoe lifts to make him look even bigger than he is.

I think MHA Skinner already fulfills that role more than adequately I certainly wouldn't want to deny Mr. Skinner the opportunity to practice his skills when he does it so well.

The real voting question is this: How many independent voices from the government side have you heard lately?

I'd vote for Lorraine.

Dirty politics

Just when you thought that politics was a game where the dirt angle was as fully explored as it could be, this article appears in the New York Times:


October 28, 2006

In Clean Politics, Flesh Is Pressed, Then Sanitized
By MARK LEIBOVICH

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — Campaigns are filthy. Not only in terms of last-minute smears and dirty tricks. But also as in germs, parasites and all the bacterial unpleasantness that is spread around through so much glad-handing and flesh-pressing.

“You can’t always get to a sink to wash your hands,” said Anne Ryun, wife of Representative Jim Ryun, Republican of Kansas.

Hands would be the untidy appendages that transmit infectious disease.

Like so many other people involved in politics these days, Mrs. Ryun has become obsessive about using hand sanitizer and ensuring that others do, too. She squirted Purell, the antiseptic goop of choice on the stump and self-proclaimed killer of “99.99 percent of most common germs that may cause illness,” on people lined up to meet Vice President Dick Cheney this month at a fund-raiser in Topeka.

When Mr. Cheney was done meeting and greeting, he, too, rubbed his hands vigorously with the stuff, dispensed in dollops by an aide when the vice president was out of public view.

That has become routine in this peak season of handshaking, practiced by everyone from the most powerful leaders to the lowliest hopefuls. Politics is personal at all levels, and germs do not discriminate. Like chicken dinners and lobbyists, they afflict Democrats and Republicans alike. It would be difficult to find an entourage that does not have at least one aide packing Purell.

Some people find that unseemly in itself.

“It’s condescending to the voters,” said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat.

A fervent nonuser of hand sanitizer, Mr. Richardson holds the Guinness Book of World Records mark for shaking the most hands over an eight-hour period (13,392, at the New Mexico State Fair in 2002).

Indeed, what message does it send when politicians, the putative leaders in a government by the people, for the people, feel compelled to wipe off the residues of said people immediately after meeting them?

“The great part about politics is that you’re touching humanity,” Mr. Richardson said. “You’re going to collect bacteria just by existing.”

Still, politics can be an especially dirty place to exist.

“Every time you’re with big groups of people, you’re going to be exposed to rhinoviruses, adenoviruses and the viruses that cause gastroenteritis,” said Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and physician.

Mr. Coburn said he washed his hands whenever possible but did not use any antigerm lotions. Being a doctor, he said, he has been exposed to more bugs and, thus, enjoys greater immunity than most other people.

For what it is worth, Howard Dean, also a doctor and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said he did not bother with the stuff, either.

“If you’ve had children, you’re immune to everything,” said Mr. Dean, a father of two.

As with most things, this places Mr. Dean at loggerheads with President Bush.

“Good stuff, keeps you from getting colds,” Mr. Bush raved about hand sanitizer to Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, at a White House encounter early last year.

Mr. Obama, who recounts the episode in his new book, says that after rubbing a blob of it on his own hands, the president offered him some, which he accepted (“not wanting to appear unhygienic.”)

Mr. Obama has since started carrying Purell in his traveling bag, a spokesman said.

It is not clear when politicians became so awash in the gel. In one semifamous cleanliness lapse in the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton, who had just shaken dozens of hands at a tavern in Boston, was handed a pie but no fork on his way to the car. The ravenous Mr. Clinton promptly devoured it using his unwashed hand. He eventually became a serious user of hand wipes and lotions at the urging of his doctor, an aide said.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said he learned about hand sanitizer from observing Senator Bob Dole’s abundant use of it in his 1996 presidential run. Mr. McCain remains vigilant today.

“I use it all the time,” he said through a representative. “I carry it with me in my briefcase.”

Purell, which is made by GOJO Industries of Akron, Ohio, came on the market as a consumer product in 1997 and became popular in campaign vans, holding rooms and traveling bags in the 2000 campaign. Donald Trump, the billionaire germophobe who contemplated running for president, even distributed little bottles of it to reporters.

“One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands,” Mr. Trump wrote in his book “Comeback.” “I happen to be a clean-hands freak.”

Al Gore is, too. He turned his running mate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, onto sanitizer in 2000, and Mr. Lieberman became an evangelist.

“He said it was one thing he learned from Gore,” said an aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, Rebecca Kirszner, who became a popular dispenser of Purell on a senatorial trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Richardson said that if he ran for president, as he is considering, he had no intention of conforming to the norms of his antiseptic peers.

“I just won’t use the sanitizer,” he said. “I’ve been offered it, but I’ve turned it down.”

This positions Mr. Richardson as the early hygienic maverick of 2008.

“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty,” he said.

Even more on political advertising

Now that I'm on a roll, I might as well get a few more things out.

It's hard for a Canadian, let alone a NL'er, to understand the magnitude of the US political advertising industry. In the 2004 election cycle, television stations raked in more than US$1.6 billion from political ads aired by candidates, issue groups, and parties.

That's not a typo. That US$1.6 billion is apart from other campaign expenses like radio, paper literature, websites, rent, direct mail and other things a campaign spends money one. It does represent the lion's share of all US political campaign expenditures.

With so much at stake (high political office and power) and so much money being spent, there is a strong incentive to ensure that the money is spent as effectively as possible.

That means substantial investment in research - polling and focus groups. The research comes in at different phases in the process. Before the ads are produced, polling will test messages to see what might work and what might resonated with the target voters. Those results will shape and guide the ad's content, style, tone and messaging.

Once the ad is produced, it might go before focus groups for testing. This may lead to tweaking, scrapping or running as it.

When the ad starts to run, further polling might be done to evaluate results to see if people remember it and what impact it's having. Even after the ad run completes, some further research might be done to determine if it had lasting impact.

With US election timelines of 8 to 24 months, there's lots of time to be at that. In Canada and this province, election timelines are 60 days down to 21 days so we don't have the luxury of that much time. Our decision process are much more compressed and might have to change on a dime.

That's not to say that US campaigns take their sweet time at things. Even so US campaigns can still turn on a dime to take into account current issues in the news.

Here's a really good example. Keep in mind that the ad hit the airwaves within days of the story breaking that republican member of congress Mark Foley inappropriately contacted underage congressional pages with sexual messages and that the congressional leadership may covered that up. Minnesota's 6th District congressional candidate Patty Wetterling took no time to get these ads out.

Clearly her polling showed that the republicans were vulnerable on the issue. The republicans have tagged themselves as the moral party while assailing the Democrats as the party of degenerate defenders if not degenerates themselves. They were ripe for a counter-attack and Wetterling took full advantage of the opportunity.

Here's one a set from Tennessee - Bob Corker versus Harold Ford. It looks like a nasty race down there.

This one's low production values are intentional - it's supposed to look cheap and glib.



It sounds like Ford's polling showed that a class war was the way to go.

I really love this one. Corker skewers Ford for a variety of things in a very funny way:



More to follow . . .

More on political ads

If you hasn't read it yet, check this post on the Michael J. Fox ad on behalf of Claire McCaskill, democratic challenger to Missouri Senator Jim Talent and then come back here.

Here's the Republican response ad:



Does it have the same impact? Not to my eyes; it's cheap and fast and just a desperate response to getting caught in a very small spot.

There's also this ad:



Like me, you'll be sucked into believing that it's a genuine ad until the very very end.

This is a good example of two new phenomena. The first is viral advertising. Ed has well covered viral marketing here and this ad is a political example of that concept. It has never run in mainstream media and it never will; it was never intended to.

The other phenomena is the home-made ad. This ad was done on someone's personal computer using little more than the standard movie-making package bundled with Windows XP and then posted to YouTube.

Just add wicked imagination and you too can do a political ad.

We will see more of these.

Political ad

I love political advertising.

The problem with most local political advertising is their overwhelming sameness. Partially it comes from the fact that too many candidates want advertising that looks like what they think political advertising should look like. Combine that with the pathological fear of causing any political contraversy and it makes for much dull and dreariness on the local front.

The other problem is that local advertising agencies, while experts in designing and selling the latest design for milk cartons, are pathetically useless at producing the kind of political advertising that has the required impact.

Finally, our local political culture has a bias against the kind of hard-hitting political advertising that you see in the US. That doesn't mean they won't work here. It just means you need to approach the issues differently.

Here is an ad that is definitely worth viewing.

This article in the New York Times provides some background. The ad shows the actor Michael J. Fox calmly asking viewers to support stem cell research by voting for several Democratic candidates in Maryland, Missouri and Wisconsin.

The previous paragraph does no justice in describing the devastating impact of this ad although you might get some inkling when I remind you that Fox has Parkinson's disease.

Take a look.



Needless to say this ad has drawn much republican fire. As noted in the Times, Rush Limbaugh rushed in to discredit Mr. Fox. The conservative radio talk show host told his listeners that the actor either "“didn'’t take his medication or was acting."” Mr. Limbaugh later apologized for the accusation, but said that "“Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician."

That doesn't change the fact that this ad has the Republicans on the run by intensely personalizing, through a popular and likeable actor, an abstract issue like stem cell research.

This ad does what good ads must do: it cuts through the clutter and makes the voter pay attention.

Voisey's Bay: Avant Moi, le Déluge

This is probably one of the most famous historical remarks of all time. While generally ascribed to Prince Metternich, he borrowed it from Mme. Pompadour, who laughed off the warning of her ministers at her extravagance by saying, "Aprés nous le déluge"”.

In the original context she meant that all could fall into ruin after her; she was here for a good time. Anyone who ever visited Versailles can see what kind of good time was had by her and her court. Looking around you'll quickly conclude that these people were fairly asking for a violent revolution. She was right in the end - after her came much ruination.

Since then the meaning has changed. Now it's often given to mean that the speaker is the main force staving off ruination. In other words, "without me, all will fall into collapse".

While Premier Williams has not yet explicitly expressed this view that I've heard yet (lots of time for that to come - the election is 12 months away), another closely related view has frequently been explicitly expressed: "Avant moi, le déluge".

For those for whom core french was a challenge, it means "before I came along there was ruination".

That should sound familiar because it was just about the first major public policy statement issued by this government. On January 5, 2004, Premier Williams went on province-wide television to tell us that we were going bankrupt, that there would be no civil service pay increase and, by the way, Happy Holidays.

Since there we have heard a steady diet of stories about how miserable and incompetent all prior government have been before this one came along. Just think about all the disasters: not just general fiscal disaster and the Upper Churchill but also the Hibernia deal (gave up royalties for jobs),the original Atlantic Accord (not enough power and/or money) and the White Rose and Terra Nova developments (just plain bad).

We didn't even have any sense of pride about ourselves until Premier Williams and company came along to give it to us. Now we have a shiny new brand to admire and keep us warm on cold winter nights.

And of course there's the Voisey's Bay agreement - Grimes' Crime.

Premier Williams always insisted it had loopholes big enough to drive a truck through. He was against the deal at the time and roundly condemned it every opportunity he had. And that was fair, he was Leader of the Opposition at the time and that was his job.

Recently there was the quixotic quest by the provincial government to bully the federal government into giving environmental indemnity to INCO at the original Argentia site for all possible problems for all time. In other words, an open-ended commitment by the federal government to remediate whatever environmental problems there might be from the past, present of future without limit.

Little wonder the federal minister demurred. Taking on that kind of limitless obligation would have been irresponsible. Still the province pushed the case to the wall.

To this day the Premier continues to condemn it for being a bad deal. Lately he's gone on to be more specific: he expresses doubts that the nickel smelter will ever be built in the province. And he's more than happy to share those thoughts on a moment's notice.

The problem is that he seems to be the only one who thinks that way. Inco has repeatedly stated in no uncertain terms that there will be a smelter here.

Mind you there was some question as to exactly where it might be. It turns out that the original location required many kilometers of pipe though several watershed areas to take away the waste. That was never an appropriate spot to situate it.

Since then the company has found another spot just a few miles away that avoids constructing an environmental disaster-in-waiting. They are moving forward with the paperwork and public consultations to make it a reality.

It looks like there is a very real chance that this province will suffer from having a cutting edge nickel smelter with all the associated employment and royalties whether this government likes it or not.

Now the government, with the shameful backing of the opportunistic official opposition, has issued a vacuous and bogus call for "compensation" for the town of Argentia because the facility will be going to Long Harbour instead.

In watching government raise one issue after anther and throwing up one obstacle after another, one has to wonder if the government is hoping to create enough problems so that INCO will finally say "That's enough, we give up, no smelter".

Then Premier Williams will have been proven correct after all.

And at no cost to any of us.

Except of course all the capital expenditures so far, some considerable operational spending, jobs that will stimulate the local economy and a ragged reputation as a jurisdiction hostile to business investment.

Ethics, laws and government

In the interests of full disclosure, and this won't be news to my regular readers, I have worked within the political system from time to time. I have worked for and with provincial and federal politicians and prospective politicians.

One set of advice I'm always quick to offer is this:

1. Never put yourself into a conflict of interest situation;
2. If you break rule 1 then get out of the situation by eliminating the conflict.

Defense or stonewall on ethical issues always sounds hollow because the defense is almost always a legalistic one. A more fundamental problem is this: it is not enough to be ethically clean, one must also be seen to be ethically clean.

Unfortunately, basic ethical transgressions of government officials in this province are only defined in legal terms. That distorts our expectations.

So when the Commissioner of Member's Interests pronounces that it's perfectly ok for the Premier to appoint the legal representative of his family's oil/gas business interests, Bill Fanning, to a position which advantages those interests, he has provided a legal interpretation of the relevant Acts of the legislature.

That does not mean it's right, correct, proper or ethical; he merely means it's legal. Legal is a long way from appropriate.

You will hear from some a call for a revamped Act to close what is obviously a legal loophole. But the problem with that is that there will always be a way around any rules, regulations or Acts you put in place.

While there are always legal loopholes, there is no such thing as an ethical loophole.

In the end, this is an issue of ethics and a government which chooses to conduct it's behavior along the strict letter of the law is an ethically challenged one.

If you've ever gone sailing or boating, then you know there is a kind of sailor who, upon seeing rocks, will try to sail as close as possible to them just for the thrill. Other, more prudent sailors, will veer far away and not take the chance of running aground.

This government is that sailor who likes to skirt as close to trouble as possible. In fact, there is pride in that kind of behavior and media coverage is sought for it.

I was on the road the last few days and so was only able to review the last few days of the Telegram this morning. I was brought short by a story in Thursday's front page business section. It was a story the like of which I don't ever recall seeing before.

It came from the Aurora and the headline was"Sitting down with seniors: Building Committee introduces potential developer at public consultations".

The story went to describe the public meeting where Terra Nova MHA Paul Oram and his wife Karen Oram were in Labrador City last week to discuss the possibility of opening a seniors'’ complex. The Oram Group, the family company, already owns 2 seniors' homes and wants local support to open a third in the region. (K. Oram center, P. Oram at right)

Not only was a supposedly full-time MHA participating in public meetings to drum up support for a project of his family business, he was comfortable enough to pose for the media. In fact, the media coverage of his activities was a critical part of what he was trying to do.

I know that the quick response for the Oram defenders will be a legalistic one: he is not a member of cabinet and has broken no conflict provisions. And I'm sure that some will say that because he's up front and open about it, then it's ok. I am not saying that he has broken any provisions and he's certainly not trying to hide what he's doing.

And that's the problem.

Does anybody else see a problem with an MHA promoting his family's interests while still taking a public salary. And just to add a complication, it's in an area of business that many see as one where the government should be doing more rather than leaving it to the private sector.

When the cabinet and Premier consults with the caucus on important public issues facing the province (I'm not saying they do but they certainly claim to) such as the provision of senior's homes in the province, what happens then?

No set of laws or codes will ever eradicate ethical transgressions on the part of elected officials. We can only try to elect persons who have that internal compass that tells them what is appropriate and what is not. We can only hope for leadership from the top that guides all members of government to closely examine if their actions are correct or not.

But when the top dogs define what is appropriate purely in terms of what is legal then that is the recipe for future problems. When a government can't tell what is ethically appropriate from what is merely legal, then you have a government that you have to watch twice as hard.

And God knows you never want to let any government out of your sight for long.

Dunderdale strikes back

Late yesterday, as the story of the appointment of Bill Fanning, trustee of Premier Williams' business assets to to the Bull Arm Corporation board, the spokesperson of the department of Natural Resources Kathy Dunderdale issued a stirring defense.

In part, she notes that:

"To suggest that Mr. Fanning would use his new position to benefit his private interests is not only offensive, it actually calls into the question the integrity of every private citizen who is appointed by the government to a board or agency," said Minister Dunderdale. "Mr. Fanning is an exemplary example of the expertise that is required on these boards as we continue to develop the oil and gas industry. To suggest that appointed individuals are using their positions to benefit themselves is extremely unfair, and that type of rhetoric will only serve to discourage citizens who have a contribution to make to the betterment of this province."

Seldom were more irrelevant words spoken.

First, nobody is questioning that Mr. Fanning is qualified to help develop the oil and gas industry. That's like government defending him because he's a good citizen of Newfoundland and Labrador. Nobody nobody cares about that because that's not the issue.

Likewise, nobody is questioning the motives of Mr. Fanning in seeking advantage for himself. He is a businessman and his job is to seek advantage for himself and his interests.

As it turns out, his business interests are also the Premier's interests. Specifically we are talking about the Spectrol Group to whom the Premier has guaranteed loans and therefore has an ongoing interest in how the company is doing. He needs the company to do well and be a sucessful business otherwise he will lose his investment.

And we all know how the Premier is about money: ours, his or anybody's.

That's the issue: the Premier has used his office to give the legal representative of his business interests an appointment that will advantage the Premier's personal business interests.

So far the Premier has been sucessful in clearly showing that he is beyond reproach when it comes to using his political office for personal gain. Whether this is a case of conflict or not, it does not pass the famous sniff test - this whole thing smells very bad.

And now we have found that the white knight's shining suit of armour has a mean and dirty dent in it.

So when Mr. K. Parsons goes to the media and says that this appointment is questionable, the question he should go on to ask is:

Are there any other qualified persons in the province who could be appointed to the board of the province's oil/gas infrastructure facility who are not also the legal representative of the Premier's family business interests in the oil/gas service sector?

I can think of a few.

Beware of crazy eyebrows

Kelvin Parsons, Opposition Natural Resources Critic and MHA for the District Burgeo-Lapoile, really showed us, and this government, what he's made of.

First a bit of background: on Monday Premier Danny Williams appointed his good friend, Bill Fanning, the CEO and chief operating officer and general manager of Spectrol Energy Services, to the Board of the Bull Arm Site Corporation.

Mr. Fanning is not only the Premier's business colleague (Premier Williams is a major shareholder in Spectrol), he is also the trustee of the Premier's business assets, including his oil and gas related business assets.

Bull arm is the largest oil/gas related infrastructure facility in the province and will be the center of any oil/gas development work in the future.

You can just imagine all the different ways that this creates conflict of interest as the Premier maneuvers his business interests, through this appointment, into a position of advantage.

One would think the official opposition would be all over this like white on rice.

But one would be wrong.

Instead, Mr. Kelvin Parsons merely complains that the appointment is "questionable". Apparently it's not reprehensible, self-interested, self-gratifying, self-enriching, self-advantaging, morally wrong, approaching corruption or any other of the possible accurate descriptions he could have used.

It's merely "questionable".

Then he really drove the nail in the coffin with the sparkling CBC radio interview this afternoon where he let loose a thundering condemnation that this appointment "raised eyebrows".

I guess we better all watch out for those raised eyebrows. I bet those raised eyebrows are used to devastating effect in the House. Little wonder the Premier puts off opening the House as late as possible - he's afraid of those raised eyebrows.

If this matter is "questionable", then are you planning to actually ask the questions? Or is merely pointing out that one could question the appointment, if one was inclined to do so, sufficient to deal with this issue?

Or has the matter been laid to rest with a single arch of those nasty raised eyebrows?