Eleven months later in Newfoundland

So yesterday, Shawn Skinner released something which his press release grandiloquently calls "Phase One Report on Energy Innovation Roadmap".

Don't bother looking for it under that name at the link provided, though. It is cleverly disguised under the more prosaic heading of "General Reports", with the even more prosaic title Innovation Priorities Report.

There's a lot to digest in there.

No, wait: there's not. The thing is only 41 pages long, including title and table of contents. But here's one very intriguing passage:

In addition to the above categories, two other categories should be noted:
• Barriers which it would be valuable to overcome (locally or internationally), but where the required innovation is not technological. These barriers may include policy, regulatory, market, taxation and other challenges. This finding applied to all energy types, and in the case of energy efficiency, it was found that the barriers were exclusively of this type.

This would seem worthy of further discussion — maybe in Phase 26, component 43 of the "Energy Innovation Roadmap", whatever that is. What policy and regulatory barriers does the province throw in the way of energy industry innovation?

Darn good question, innit? Someone should ask it.

But in the absence of any serious discussion of such matters in this heavy 41-page tome, let's instead turn to perhaps the most interesting passage of all.

The date. Right on the cover: "Final Report, August 2010".

For anyone not keeping track, it is now July 2011. And for anyone who might have forgotten:

A Progressive Conservative government will ... release to the public every government-commissioned report within 30 days of receiving it, indicate the action government will take on a report's recommendations within 60 days, and ensure prompt public access to all government reports in hard copy and on the Internet

Why, oh why, might The Most Open And Accountable Government In The Solar System have been sitting on this Very Important Report for almost a year?