Who is to blame?

Whose to blame for the state Newfoundland and Labrador is in? Former premier Danny Williams? No question he carries a lot of the blame. He has to. He had an iron grip on his government, and from what I can see over the years he had to - rarely has an entire caucus been so devoid of judgement and intellect that a first minister had to keep that much control over their every move. So sure, Danny Williams carries the blame for spending the vast majority of the $23 billion in oil wealth and the $50 billion of normal governmental revenue without paying out our debt or at a minimum saving a fair portion of it for a "rainy day". Irresponsible in the extreme.

But, and it's a big but, over zealous governments are often reigned in within a free and democratic society by a vigilant media and an engaged public. The truth of the matter is that the media in Newfoundland and Labrador is so utterly unprofessional that Williams and company simply did as they wished with almost no accountability. Whether it be the expropriation of Abitibi assets, which was so obviously a grab for the hydro assets of that company, or the far more catastrophic Lower Churchill project, Williams spun the move and the media lapped it up with little or no investigative reporting.

The media,  especially reporters like James MacLeod of the Telegram and David Cochrane of the CBC (now promoted out of Newfoundland) constantly berated and marginalized critics of the Muskrat Falls project for years - primarily on social media, but also in printed media. Whether it was me, Con O'Brien, Sue Kelland Dyer, Danny Dumeresque, or others the treatment was the same - "wack job". Those opposed to the spending and the Muskrat Falls project were officially classified by the government as "known critics", "nay-sayers", "merchants of gloom and doom". The media did nothing to counter that, and in fact perpetuated it, and still do.

So consumed are they by their own egos and their "place in the place" that they can't admit that they were the ones who were wrong. That they failed to properly investigate the facts surrounding the project. No, they loudly proclaimed that the "experts" knew what they were talking about and the "known critics" were but a joke - appropriate for mocking.

In a free and democratic society an informed and professional media is a necessity as it informs the public who may otherwise be too busy surviving to study and analyze topics of significant complexity - like over finances and the Muskrat Falls project. That's the same all over the world. Yet, for some bizarre reason, the media in Newfoundland and Labrador are essentially organs of the political backroom here. It's easy to see. Every election the media dutifully publish poll after poll on which party is ahead in the polls. They curtail any serious examination of the parties platforms, etc. They become like a newsmaker instead of being a news reporter. They don't investigate, but simply regurgitate what lines are fed to them by the "winning side". In other words, they lose their independence and become players in the game to stroke their own egos and sense of importance. By doing so, people like Williams simply played them like fiddles. Over and over and over.

Then came the day of reckoning. No mention in the media that the people fighting the spending and Muskrat Falls were right all along. Some, like Russell Wangersky wrote a column giving a passing mention to those who opposed what was happening, but no names. There is a reason for not personally acknowledging the critics who were right. The reason goes back to ego. The media were wrong to marginalize and personally discredit critics in the very first place. Now that everything the critics stated would happen is happening the media frankly look like the ones without credibility. They can't have that, so they leave the critics buried in the spot they left them in.

And, that's why the blame for the province's state today lies squarely with the media. They could have investigated the facts thoroughly when they had a chance to influence public opinion properly, but didn't. They acted as the PR agency for people like Willliams, glorifying him at every turn, even after he left office. They dog piled on the Liberals in the election of 2011, and then did the almost exact same thing to the PCs in 2015. They helped create the massive swings in governing parties that cause bad legislation and almost no opposition. Now the media will say: "don't blame the media", but the reality is that only serves to shield them from just criticism. Very convenient at times, especially times like today.

The truth is the media is to blame for where we are at today. They failed to hold a control freak premier to account. They failed to do research of any kind. They supplanted their opinions rather than the facts in the minds of the public. The public must be able to trust that the media is reporting the facts to them - after all, gossip is something we do at the corner store. We have to trust the media is independent and truthful, and informed. We rely on it. All democracies do. The media in Newfoundland and Labrador failed to hold a tyrannical government to account when it was needed, which gave the people the impression that all was well and the critics were loonies, and that's exactly the way the public responded. Now they have to pay the price of an egotistic and unprofessional press. For that, the press win the award for "who is to blame". Wear it well and learn.

Liberals Breaking Faith

What, exactly, does the Liberal Party in Newfoundland and Labrador think it's doing. In all seriousness. When the people of the province went to the polls just a few short months ago, they were promised a change in all the ways and means the PC Party had been governing. A short two months later and it seems those lessons have all been lost, and "creative manipulation" is the phrase of the day, because "leadership" sure isn't.

Let's start with the election itself. Now anyone with a calculator and a copy of the budget estimates for 2015 would know that the province's current deficit would be about $2 billion. Yet, when the Liberals finally got their wish, and were elected, they trot out Dwight Ball and Cathy Bennett with the deer in the head lights look saying "oh, nobody could have known it was this bad". What a load of you know what. The truth is, unless the Liberals have the stupidest research staff on record, that they just outright misled the public to get their hands on the reins of power. Simple as that. Obvious as the nose on your face.

Then Ball and company come up with the beauty of cutting 30% from all government spending. They have to they claim, otherwise the province will be done for. Well, that may be true, but during the election they sold the people on not cutting government. They were just going to "manage better". Again, referring back to the calculator analogy, they just outright misled the public and for the same reason.

Oh, but they are conducting some kind of "review" of Muskrat Falls. The problem is that Muskrat Falls doesn't need a review - it needs to be stopped. While in Opposition Ball and his now Justice Minister decried the lack of legal grounds for the Water Management Agreement that made the project even feasible. Now? Now they continue to go forward with it despite the challenge to it's fundamentals in the Quebec Superior Court, and my own action here in our Supreme Court to have the matter examined for its constitutionality. The very same reasons why the Liberals questioned it in Opposition. Now I find myself fighting them in the Appeal Court, rather than having them jointly requesting the Appeal Court examine the agreement. Their disingenuous ways certainly aren't all that sunny for sure.

Finally, we have the case of a female fire fighter being sexually bullied by her peers. Brenda Seymour, volunteer fire fighter and councilor for Spaniard's Bay, has been subjected to porn during an otherwise all-male training session, as well as sexual commentary during the same session. She fought against it for which she was ridiculed and bullied by members of her community. Her fellow fire fighters resigned enmass to protest her protest.  In other words, they circled the wagons to protect their own behinds, but they also tried to persecute the victim so to say. A small-minded, offensive action that matched the small-minded offensive treatment she suffered while in training. The story has made national news headlines.

The moral of the national story on Brenda Seymour is that Newfoundlanders are old fashioned bullies, sexist, and crazed enough to have their own children carry signs defending the men who refused to stand up for a fellow fire fighter being subjected to porn. An ugly and disgraceful mess. No doubt a time for a male Premier to stand up and show leadership right? Wrong. Ball disappeared into the wood work like Casper the friendly ghost, and instead had his female Finance Minister issue a memo saying "now-now boys, no porn during training". I twist the gist of it a bit, but you get the idea. The point is when leadership is required the Leader leads. That's not happening.

I suppose in some ways we shouldn't be surprised. Dwight Ball didn't exactly set the Liberal Party on fire when he became leader. Their was, and remains, no charisma in his bones. He's not that kind of leader, but what kind of leader is he then? The Liberal Party itself didn't set the province on fire with its visionary plan for the province. The opposite in fact was true. They weren't elected, the Tories were unceremoniously ejected. The Party, as a government, has just vanished into the weeds of the bureaucracy. It's readily apparent they don't have a clue about how to lead, or in fact how to govern. The 18 month public consultation on how the provincial deficits/debt can be tackled is a prime example. It almost reminds me of the PC's hiring a consultant to study if the government is hiring too many consultants. It's that ridiculous. And, that's the way they're looking - ridiculous.

All in all it looks like the Liberals might as well enjoy the next four years, because they're going to be a one term government. A one term government doomed to be mired in misery and ridicule as they pay the price of deceiving the electorate to gain those lofty heights of power. The price they will pay for breaking faith with the people.

The Twilight Zone

Remember that old show, The Twilight Zone? A place where fantasy imposed its self on reality? You know, "do not adjust your set". Well political events in Newfoundland and Labrador have been playing out that way for some time now, but no better an example can be had than this week's events.

Consider the news given to the province that the end of year fiscal deficit is estimated to be $725 million. That is not the accumilated deficit. That is a one year deficit. Nova Scotia coincidentally announced their deficit rose some $60 million to around $250 million. That is an accumulated deficit. It keeps growing. Then consider the provincial government is estimating next year's operational deficit to be $1 billion. Add the two of them together, and by the end of fiscal 2013 Newfoundland and Labrador will have an accumulated deficit of $1.725 billion, or about 28% of its annual revenue.

To give some context to a deficit that large consider the comparables. The federal government has a deficit of about $25 billion. If its deficit was the same proportion to revenue that this provinces will be by the end of 2013, the federal deficit would be in the range of $80 - $90 billion. Mind blowing. A deficit figure never seen by a federal government in Canada. It would trigger wage freezes, massive layoffs, large tax increases and a downgrade on the federal credit rating. Those actions would increase the deficit even more as unemployment rolls grew, the black market economy expanded, and costs to borrow new funds sharply increased. Wait. You say you've seen this movie before? Right. With a mucher lower deficit Trudeau, the older Trudeau, implimented wage and price controls, increased and expanded taxes, and the economy went into a ten year recession.

This is the new reality facing Newfoundland and Labrador. It is no longer the hypothetical. It is no longer the "naysayers" exclaiming the "sky is falling". Reality is here and the party is over. The inevitable result of gross fiscal mismanagement, flawed 1970's mega project thinking, and politicial corruption has rendered Newfoundland and Labrador as the proverbial "dead man walking". People in the streets are alarmed by the $725 million deficit. They can't quite understand how it came to this with such a booming economy. They don't understand its consequences. They are uneasy.

At the same time, and in the same universe, hyperinflation is affecting two key economic centers - Labrador and the Avalon. Avalon being the capital area with the primary population concentration, and Labrador being the sparsely populated resource centre. In these two areas of the province massive government spending on the civil service, and capital projects has fueled housing inflation. Along with that housing inflation has come large increases in personal debt and property taxes. Like a fire being fed by a warm wind these local economies have been pushed beyond their rational boundaries. On the one hand the provincial government has increased the civil service by 25% in the last seven years, with large wage increases, and on the other hand Nalcor, the provincial crown corporation in charge of hydro electricity production, has been spending hundreds of millions on the development of the Lower Churchill dams in Labrador. All of which has been fueled by oil revenues - one of every three dollars coming into the treasury is from offshore oil.

So, with the impending cutbacks to spending coming to deal with the deficits, the province is in the midst of sanctioning the largest ever publicly funded mega project in its long history - Muskrat Falls. At a projected cost of $7.5 to $12 billion, which doubles the province's gross debt, Muskrat Falls is a grand mega project that does the 1970's proud. Tom Marshall, Finance Minister for the province, states the development will not add to the province's debt and will pay for itself. A true bit of fantasy if there ever was one. He refers to the net debt, which is gross debt minus the "value" of "assets". Not unlike your personal worth on paper. However, as we all know too well, that worth is only on paper, and we still must pay those bills each month for evermore. It affects our spending, our financial decisions, our ability to acquire more debt, and so on. Marshall's ridiculous ponderance that the project will pay for itself, that somehow it won't be ratepayers and taxpayers paying it, in many ways sums up the tragic logic of our provincial government.

Marshall is so confident that the project will pay for itself, at no real cost to ratepayers, that his government will not allow the Public Utilities Board (PUB) to have a second look at the project's viability. In fact, as I write this, the provincial government is tabling legislation in the House of Assembly to force through a bill that exempts the PUB from setting rates for Muskrat Falls power. It is a thing of wonder.

So as we head into 2013, the year the equalization wars are to enter the national discourse, Newfoundland and Labrador is in a state of pre-financial meltdown unseen for some time in Canada. All those necessities like new infrastructure, hospitals, etc must somehow be carved out of an empty and otherwise overly committed treasury. All provincial labour unions have their contracts up for negotiation - for almost nine months now actually. The unfunded pension liability of the province continues to expand with no disciplined approach, or any approach other than to try and force unions to change their pension plans downward, in sight. Oil revenues are being clawed back by the feds now the exemption period is over under the Atlantic Accord. And just to give things that strange twist that is the twilight zone, we have a $5 billion land development that essentially creates a new city around St. John's. DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET. This twilight zone is for real.