Danny Williams made the news last week. Williams was locked in a battle with St. John’s city hall over whether or not Williams could put a big Christmas tree in a round-about in his development at Galway. No one in the local news media noticed, though, that Thursday was the
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The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Mitigating Muskrat Falls: Ron, Harry, and Hermione are still baffled #nlpoli
Mitigating the impacts Muskrat Falls will have on taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador remains the single biggest unanswered question in the province nine years after the project started and the politicians first started talking about how they might do it. To mark the 14th anniversary of The Sir Robert Bond Papers,
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Ratings trump truth #nlpoli
Sometimes the universe delivers you the magical set of circumstances you just can’t ignore. Danny Williams turned up at the St. John’s Board of Trade luncheon on Thursday to deliver a speech the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president. As much as people might like to forget, this was
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Spending the future (2005) #nlpoli
” [The change in the province’s financial outlook] That’s very dramatic…Some people are going to stand back and say ‘Oh yeah, that’s just because your very lucky. That’s because the oil prices have gone up.’ Well, no. That’s part of it. But we had a tough budget, a prudent budget. We’ve
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Reverse Midas Touch Rides Again #nlpoli
The crowd running this place these days has an unrivalled ability to look at a problem and find the worst possible response imaginable. On Wednesday, natural resource minister Siobhan Coady and environment minister Perry Trimper announced that the government would tell Nalcor to keep flooding the Muskrat Falls reservoir but
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Through others’ eyes #nlpoli
For Newfoundland’s pseudo-intellectuals, the Toronto Globe and Mail is a kind of one-handed reading material. They use one hand to scroll down the Internet site looking at stuff. They use the other to stroke the keys of their computer until it spurts indignation all over the screen about over something
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Policy Stagnation #nlpoli
The provincial government has been on its current course since about 2007. There were three elements to the Conservatives agenda under Danny Williams. They changed somewhat over time but these are the elements that dominated from 2003 to 20…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Policy Stagnation #nlpoli
The Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Price of Revanchism #nlpoli
Churchill Falls occupies a unique place in Newfoundland and Labrador’s political culture.Most of what people believe about Churchill Falls is just sheer nonsense. Made up. Never true. Completely ludicrous. But accepted as fact and uns…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Price of Revanchism #nlpoli
Churchill Falls occupies a unique place in Newfoundland and Labrador’s political culture.Most of what people believe about Churchill Falls is just sheer nonsense. Made up. Never true. Completely ludicrous. But accepted as fact and uns…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Water Rights, Muskrat Falls, and the Muskrat Falls Disaster #nlpoli
Forget everything else that you know about Muskrat Falls.The entire project hinged on Nalcor’s ability to control water flows on the Churchill River. Nalcor’s internal assessments showed that without the ability to control water flows, Nalcor’s L…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Trump and Proto-Trump and babies #nlpoli
Speaking about his popularity and the loyalty of his supporters: “They say that I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Donald Trump. Sioux Center, Iowa, January 2016 And on babies…S…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The little savory details #nlpoli
Nalcor chief executive Stan Marshall said so much last Friday about Muskrat Falls, it’s probably true that most people couldn’t possibly take it all in.One of the folks having a hard time understanding all this is Tom Johnson. He’s the guy the Co…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Friends and enemies #nlpoli
Craig Westcott tells a story from his short stint as communications director for the Liberals in opposition in the last days of Danny Williams and the early days of his handpicked successor, Kathy Dunderdale.”I kept after the very small caucus we had t…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Fan Klub, Churchill, and taxes – update
As the provincial Conservatives and New Democrats filibuster the levy bill in the House of Assembly that Winston Churchill quote about taxes popped up again.The ones pushing the quote hard on Twitter seem to be mostly charter members of the Danny Willi…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The New Approach #nlpoli
In 2003, Paul Davis’ predecessor as leader of the provincial Conservative party went to Ottawa to beg for a hand-out.Called it The New Approach He got one.Then he begged for more through Equalization.Got what he asked for.Pretended he didn’t, bac…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Thank you, Danny Williams #nlpoli
Rob Strong has been a key player in the local oil and gas industry pretty much since the earliest days. He knows what he is talking about.Strong pointed out to VOCM on Wednesday that the Hebron field won’t be the cash cow for the provincial gov…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Selling energy assets a good thing: Danny Williams #nlpoli
“It was a previous Liberal government that wanted to actually privatize Hydro. This particular government wants to strengthen Hydro, wants to make it a very valuable corporation: a corporation that will ultimately pay significant dividends ba…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Admission of failure: Conservative offshore negotiations #nlpoli
The news release on the government’s generic offshore royalty wasn’t exactly a model of clarity and accuracy. The headline and first sentence referred to the announcement of a “framework.” The first quote claimed that “establishing the enhanced generic offshore oil royalty regime” was an achievement for the current administration. The
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Real change #nlpoli
“A positive, optimistic, hopeful vision of public life isn’t a naive dream,” Justin Trudeau told Canadians after he won a truly historic victory in the October 19th federal general election. That victory, said Trudeau, “is what positive politic can do.” “We beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard
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