Oh happy joy!

It's baaaaaaacck. The ludicrous, obscene, laughable, taxpayer-subsidized personality cult is back:

Patient Care Improved Through Funding for Clarenville Health Care Services

The Dunderdale Government continues to invest in a strong healthcare system for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians with funding of more than $1.9 million announced today for health care in Clarenville. Funding is being provided to the Dr. G.B. Cross Memorial Hospital for infrastructure upgrades and medical equipment, as well as for site work for the new protective care residence that will be built in the community.

This corner, for one — especially his snarky side — couldn't be happier.

All aboard the Happy Train! (Not so fast, Ray.)

One of the lead Ministers in this year’s July Parade of Funding Love is Susan Sullivan, leading a parade of local PC MHAs in (re)announcing health-care funding for a variety of projects from Corner Brook to St. Lawrence.

(The timing of the parade, just days before CRA goes back into the field for its summer quarterly, is purely coincidental, of course.)

On the 17th, it’s Kevin Pollard announcing funding for Springdale, Baie Verte and La Scie.

On the 18th, Sullivan, with her Local MHA shirt on, announces happiness for Buchans, and along with Fairity O’Brien, another dose of money for Gander.

On the 20th, it’s Clayton Forsey’s turn for the good people of Exploits, on the 23rd, it’s the entire greater Humber PC caucus making nice in Corner Brook, and on the 24th, Derrick Dalley joins the Minister for an announcement in The Isles of Notre Dame.

On the 25th, it’s former HealthMin Ross Wiseman spreading the joy in Clarenville, followed a few hours later by Glen Little in Bonavista.

And today, it took all three Burin Peninsula MHAs to help Sullivan announce $800,000 — that’s $200,000 worth of positive PR for each elected official — with a special one-off HappyTalk for Dr. Darin King. He’s a doctor.

But amid all the happy happy, there’s the $3.4-million blockbuster for Grand Falls-Windsor, the largest so far on the tour. O happy circumstance, it just happens to be in the health minister’s own back yard.

It was announced on the 20th by herself. Alone.

For the record there are two PC MHAs representing the town of Grand Falls-Windsor.

Surely the explanation is entirely innocent; the other MHA, whatever the devil his or her name is, was travelling on holidays at his or her own expense.

But it’s not as if it’s difficult to insert a “quote” into one of these boilerplate HappyTalks.

And if physically participating in one of these announcements is a prerequisite for getting worked into the release — in almost every instance, the Minister was, just like the release states, actually joined by the other named MHAs when the good news was delivered… you have to wonder what this means for the Directive from On High to stop all the expensive discretionary travel.

You know, to help achieve the savings of “tens of millions” on a budget that is billions of dollars larger than it was just a few short years ago.

By now, the austerity message, such as it was, must be thoroughly mixed.

Changing times

VOCM reports on the Premier's appearance before the microphone at Confederation Building today:

The Premier has ordered a stop on all discretionary travel after energy forecasts put oil under $100/barrel through 2013.


Kathy Dunderdale says the budget hasn't been revised just yet, but steps are being taken to adjust spending. Dunderdale says the hold for the next couple of months also includes keeping job positions open where possible. These measures she says will save just tens of millions of dollars when the province is looking at hundreds of millions in shortfalls.

For the record... the "Conservative" governments of Danny Williams and Kathy Dunderdale have increased public spending by a cumulative total of almost $16.4-billion, compared to the annual public spending in the year before the "Conservatives" took office.

Adjusted for inflation, that figure expressed in 2012 dollars is over $17.1-billion.

Against this astronomical increase in public spending, Dundergov is now aiming to save "tens of millions".

This is what "tens of millions" — nine of them, in fact — looks like, compared to the $17-billion "Conservative" government spending spree of the past near-decade.

Astronomical booms

A CBC report on the construction boom in St. John's repeats this old saw: 

The booming oil industry and mega-projects like the nickel processing plant in Long Habour are fuelling the growth.

“If you look back over the last ten years and look at what's going on now, it's astronomical,” said Hann.

Over the past ten year, per Statscan CANSIM table 282-0111, the St. John's metropolitan area has seen an increase of just about 19,400 full- or part-time jobs.*

The three entirely or predominantly public-sector fields of public administration, health and social services, and education, have accounted for 6,800 of that increase.

Primary resource industries, including oil, but also including mining, fishing, and forestry? All of them combined have added about 2,300.

The "booming oil industry" is fuelling the growth in St. John's. But it's doing so through provincial spending, driven by the oil-revenue boom... not by its really modest direct employment impact. And a certain proportion of that oil-industry employment of people in the St. John's metro area, is of people who reside in the region, but whose oil jobs are in Alberta.

So what happens when the oil royalty party is over?

That too will be astronomical.


* Three-month moving average for June 2012 compared to that for June 2002.

Convenient omission

Gormless Minister of Secrecy Felix Collins is vewy upset that people are still not getting the point of Dundergov's Bill 29.

In a letter published in today's Telegram, the Minister of Secrecy responds to columnist Pam Frampton:

Frampton also continues to assert that the provincial government can “protect itself from politically troubling disclosure” by deeming requests frivolous and vexatious. Again, this is wrong.


Being able to refuse a request because it is frivolous and vexatious was a recommendation by John Cummings, who undertook the review of ATIPPA. It is also a provision which several other provinces have in their access to information legislation.

The point that Frampton misses is that the public body must notify an applicant that the request is refused due to it being frivolous and vexatious and a reason must be provided for such a refusal.

The applicant then has the right to appeal that decision with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner or the court.

It is true that other provinces have "frivolous and vexatious" provisions in their access to information legislation. But the Minister of Secrecy, like John Cummings before him glosses over a very important point.

In every other Canadian jurisdiction which has such a provision, with the sole exception of Ontario, a request can only be deemed "frivolous and vexatious" with the prior consent of the information commissioner. (In two provinces, and at the federal level, there is no such provision at all.)

Bill 29, the Progressive Conservative Memorial Secrecy Act, provides:

43.1 (1) The head of a public body may disregard one or more requests under subsection 8(1) or 35(1) where

(a) because of their repetitive or systematic nature, the requests would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or amount to the abuse of the right to make those requests;
(b) one or more of the requests is frivolous or vexatious; or
(c) one or more of the requests is made in bad faith or is trivial.

By sharp contrast, here are the equivalent provisions in those other provinces' and territories' legislation, which all require prior consent.

Prince Edward Island:

52. If the head of a public body asks, the Commissioner may authorize the public body to disregard any request made under subsection 7(1), if the request

(a) would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or amount to an abuse of the right to access, because of the repetitious or systematic nature of the request; or
(b) is frivolous or vexatious.

New Brunswick:

15. On the request of a public body, the Commissioner may authorize the head to disregard one or more requests for access if the request for access

(a)would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body because of the repetitious or systematic nature of the request or previous requests,
(b) is incomprehensible, frivolous or vexatious, or
(c) is for information already provided to the applicant.

Quebec:

137.1. The Commission may authorize a public body to disregard applications that are obviously improper because of their number or their repetitious or systematic nature or an application whose processing could seriously interfere with the body's activities.

[N.B.: The Quebec legislation is silent on the question of "frivolous and vexatious" requests]
Manitoba:

13 (1) The head of a public body may disregard a request for access if he or she is of the opinion that

(a) the request is incomprehensible, frivolous or vexatious;
(b) because of their repetitious or systematic nature, the requests would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or amount to an abuse of the right to make those requests; or
(c) the request is for information already provided to the applicant.

Alberta:

55 (1) If the head of a public body asks, the Commissioner may authorize the public body to disregard one or more requests under section 7(1) or 36(1) if

(a) because of their repetitious or systematic nature, the requests would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or amount to an abuse of the right to make those requests, or
(b) one or more of the requests are frivolous or vexatious.

British Columbia:

43 If the head of a public body asks, the commissioner may authorize the public body to disregard requests under section 5 or 29 that

(a) would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body because of the repetitious or systematic nature of the requests, or
(b) are frivolous or vexatious.

Northwest Territories:

53. The Information and Privacy Commissioner may, at the request of the head of a public body, authorize the public body to disregard a request under section 6 that

(a) is frivolous or vexatious;
(b) is not made in good faith;
(c) concerns a trivial matter;
(d) amounts to an abuse of the right to access; or
(e) would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body because of its repetitious or systematic nature.

Nunavut:

53. The Information and Privacy Commissioner may, at the request of the head of a public body, authorize the public body to disregard a request under section 6 that

(a) is frivolous or vexatious;
(b) is not made in good faith;
(c) concerns a trivial matter;
(d) amounts to an abuse of the right to access; or
(e) would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body because of its repetitious or systematic nature.

Yukon:

43 (1) If a public body asks, the commissioner may authorize the public body to disregard one or more requests under section 6 or section 32 that

(a) would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body because of the repetitious or systematic nature of the requests; or
(b) are frivolous or vexatious.

Info delayed is info denied

Now, this is odd.

Very late on July 10th, the report of the Chief Electoral Officer on the 2011 general election was deemed tabled in the House of Assembly.

The report itself was finally published on teh intertubes on the afternoon of the 12th. Not gonna link directly to the 32 megabloat file.

The date on the report?

Who's been sitting on it for more than a month?

And why?

And why in samhain does it take the second-smalled province nine months to publish its detailed election results in the first place?

Open government at work

The Elections Act provides:

214. The Chief Electoral Officer shall publish within 9 months after each general election and each by-election a book containing pertinent statistics of the election, including poll-by-poll results of each electoral district.

The general election was on October 11, 2011. This statutory, mandatory, deadline expired yesterday. And, notwithstanding a curious addition to the Tabled Documents section of the House of Assembly website late on Wednesday, there is no sign that the "book" has actually been "published".

As of today, it's been 275 days since the provincial general election.

Yes, we've seen this film before.

By way of comparison, this chart shows the elapse of time between the most recent general election in each Canadian jurisdiction (except Nunavut), and the publication of the detailed poll-by-poll results.

The date of "publication" is the earlier of (a) the date on which provisional poll-by-poll results were released by the relevant electoral authority, or (b) the date on the transmittal letter of the official report. Nunavut is excepted because there does not seem to be a date on its final report.

The three Prairie provinces have taken to publishing provisional poll-by-poll results as early as election night, and in the subsequent days; their figures have accordingly been arbitrarily set at seven days for the purpose of this graph.

Electoral officials in the five provinces immediately to the west of Newfoundland and Labrador took an average of 90 days to publish poll-by-poll results of their most recent general elections. All but Prince Edward Island have larger voter populations and more polling divisions than Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ontario, the most populous province, took only a month and a half.

The final 2011 federal election results were published just 107 days after polls closed.

Very due credit

A most interesting table from this bit of fieldwork by Abacus:

It's hard to know 100% for sure without an historical baseline of similar data to measure against, but it's hard not to conclude that Newfoundland and Labrador placing silver in the "Most Beautiful Scenery" category, and bronze in "Visit on Next Vacation" is a direct result of the very successful, and visually stunning, tourism TV ad campaign of the past few years.

A final (for now) thought on polls

Another explanation for polling results from the Hon. Member for Twitters North:

Kennedeepee

Again, for the edification of the Hon. Member for Twitters, here's Jerome Kennedy speaking the truth about his own party, in the House of Assembly, back on May 3rd:

MR. BALL: The Leader of the PC Party in Nova Scotia has introduced a bill to protect ratepayers in that province from higher power rates. The bill would ensure that Muskrat Falls is reviewed by the Utilities Board after all the information is available.

I ask the minister: Will you allow our Public Utilities Board the opportunity to review the Muskrat Falls Project once all the information is available, just as your PC colleagues did in Nova Scotia?

MR. KENNEDY: These are not our PC colleagues in Nova Scotia. We are not one big, happy family in the PC Party in this country, Mr. Speaker. In fact, we are probably more closely aligned with Premier Dexter's vision of the future as an NDP Premier than we are with anything with the PCs.

The video (link) is also worth a watch. The exchange occurs about 21 minutes in.

Background, left to right, Glenn Littlejohn, Keith Hutchings, Dan Crummell, and Paul Davis listen intently as Jerome Kennedy informs the House that his so-called Progressive Conservatives are actually New Democrats.

Private for PaulLaneNL

If there was ever a Conservative government, ever in the history of politics, this has to be the most left leaning Conservative government since the beginning of time. I like to always say I am a red Tory. I certainly believe that as a group, we are collectively red Tories.

- Terry French, May 14, 2007

A film is a series of snapshots

PaulLaneNL, the Hon. Member for Twitter, expressed some skepticism about polls a month ago, when it was (correctly) rumoured that the quarterly CRA figures would show the PCs continuing to slump:

Polls are, indeed, only a snapshot in time.

But you can string a series of such snapshots together, and using clever graphing technology, examine mid- and long-term trends.

Like this. This graph combines the results of each general election since 1999 inclusive, along with the vote-intent result of published polls since early 2000, for each of the three main parties, as a share of decided voters. Most of the poll results are from Corporate Research Associates, with a handful of others such as Environics, Omnifacts, and Telelink.

[Click to enlarge.]

Each party's line reflects the traditional partisan colour scheme. Election results are marked with the annotation "E".

Two other important events — the 2004 public-sector strikes and the resignation of #FormerPremier — are marked "S" and "R" respectively.

If you're happy and you know it

Along with the vote-intent figures, the various pollsters sometimes include another question in their survey which attempts to quantify the public's attitude towards the government overall.

Corporate Research Associates, for example, asks a "satisfaction" question on the "overall performance of the provincial government", on a four-point scale from Completely satisfied to Completely dissatisfied, with two lesser grades of "Mostly" in-between.

Angus Reid asks if you Approve or Disapprove of the Premier's performance.

Environics, in its late poll, asked if the government is on the "right" or "wrong" track.

With the important caveat that the questions and methodologies of the pollsters are different, you can take a rough pulse of the public's level of happiness by subtracting the share of Grumpies ("dissatisfied/disapprove/wrong track") from the share of Happies ("satisifed/approve/right track").

For the purposes of this exercise, CRA's Completely and Mostly categories are combined, and all pollsters' undecideds are excluded.

This is the long-term net happiness index over the past decade and a bit. Green columns indicate a time of net happiness; red ones are net grumpiness.

While not quite in negative territory (yet?), net dis/satisfaction levels with the Dunderdale government are already worse than they were for the Grimes government in 2002-2003, a time when it seemed everybody had already concluded that the incumbent government was on its way out.

Ultimately, only one poll matters

Some further thoughts on poll results, from last month, from the Hon. Member for Twitters North.

Peach, squeezed

Then:

   Provincial cabinet ministers, senators, chanting supporters and a band crowded into the Holyrood Star of the Sea Hall Monday night, March 28.

   They were all there to welcome Tory Fabian Manning back into elected politics.

...

   Tourism Minister Terry French, was sitting conspicuously in the front row as Manning made his announcement Monday night.
   He said that it was hard to withdraw support from Manning and other Conservatives during the last election, but this time around they'll be out in full force.
   "An awful lot of us spent our lifetime campaigning for the Progressive Conservative Party and in turn the Conservative Party," he said. "I think the statement was made the last time with the ABC campaign, (but) I mean that was tough for an awful lot of us."
   To drive the point home, French was joined by Justice Minister Felix Collins, Transportation and Works Minister Tom Hedderson, and MHAs Keith Hutchings and Calvin Peach.

- "Manning gets back in the game", James McLeod, Transcontinental, March 29, 2011

 
Now:

   Bellevue MHA Calvin Peach says panic is growing in his district over how proposed changes to the employment insurance (EI) system will affect seasonal workers.
   "When it comes to the people who (are) making the decisions behind closed doors, I don't think they realize how complicated the whole system is when it comes to fish (harvesters) and the plant workers."  

...

   Peach sent a letter last month to federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley outlining his concerns in reaction to the contents of Andrews' mailout.
   "I wanted to explain the situation is much different with plant workers and fishermen, because of the down time between the catches."
   Commenting on her visit to the province last week, during which Finley was confronted by a plant worker in Witless Bay who said she was scared of the changes, Peach felt she did not shed much light on the matter.
   "It seemed like she was just listening. I guess a lot of the plant workers are voicing the same concerns I voiced in the letter to her."

- "EI changes could hurt seasons workers: MHA", Andrew Robinson, The Telegram, July 5, 2012

On recent polls

Changing landscape (II)

Today's Environics provincial vote-intent poll, reported by The Telegram, would notionally yield the following province-wide results, based on a uniform swing model.

The NDP would vault from third place to a slim minority government of 18 seats, with the balance of power held by the also-vaulting Liberals, with 12. Opposition holds are indicated here in saturated colours, with pickups from the governing party indicated in paler shades.


The governing Tories would be reduced to 16 seats, half of which would have a notional margin of less than 10%. Of particular note, they would be wiped out in the bookends of the province, Labrador and the City of St. John's. Tories in the suburban municipalities around St. John's would fare little better.

Two other seats, both in central Newfoundland, would be "too close to call" — defined here as having contradictory outcomes in the two different models which this corner uses to turn popular vote into projected seats.