Premier Andrew Furey acknowledged last week that his BFF Brendan Paddick is in a conflict of interest as one of the people behind a major energy project in the province while at the same time advising Furey on energy policy.
The project is as big as the 600 foot tall wind turbines on the Port au Port peninsula that will produce hydrogen, ammonia, and electricity. So is the conflict of interest.
That bit about electricity stands out. Any electricity not needed to run the hydrogen or ammonia plants - as much as half the installed capacity of the proposed wind farm - will go to the market, according to the environmental assessment filing the company made with the provincial government. An appendix notes the “[p]otential opportunity to back-stop NL Hydro commitment to EMERA for export sales.”
These days even folks inside NALCOR-Hydro openly wonder if the Labrador-Island Link of the Muskrat Falls project will ever work. Take that tidbit. Put it with the fact that two of the proponents behind this project know more about the LIL *from inside NALCOR-Hydro* than anyone outside government. Now you have some sense of the conflict of interest.
Maybe Paddick’s company will sell electricity to NALCOR-Hydro, which Hydro then passes on free to Emera to meet the terms of the Muskrat Falls deal.
Maybe it will sell electricity directly to Emera Nova Scotia in place of the second block Emera is supposed to get at a huge discount.
Maybe Paddick’s crowd will sell electricity directly to Emera in place of Hydro for use in Nova Scotia or for export.
Any of those are possible ways this project could turn out. Any any of that would put Paddick in a deeper conflict of interest than the one Furey acknowledged.
The news isn’t the conflict of interest, though.
The news is that Premier Andrew Furey thinks being in that conflict of interest is fine with him. In his only direct comment about the controversy so far, Furey used the excuse that the conflict was okay given the shallow talent pool the government faces.
Not so.
The government doesn’t have a shallow pool of people capable of advising the government on how to best develop the energy potential of the Churchill River in the future. We know there are plenty of people with that expertise. They sit on another committee Furey appointed to do exactly the same thing he’s got his BFF doing alongside a bunch of NALCOR-Hydro and government bureaucrats. Why their are two committees is anyone’s guess. But the fact they exist makes Furey’s reason for approving the conflict of interest as false as it is insulting to the people on both committees.
In a Freudian way, Furey probably meant that he’s got no problem with Paddick’s imitation of A.B. Morine given the shallow ethical standards of Furey’s administration.
For those who were not up on their Newfoundland history, Morine was Minister of Justice 120-odd years ago. At exactly the same time, he was also the lawyer representing the Reid family in negotiations to take over and build the Newfoundland Railway. He negotiated with himself in other words. He doubled-ended the deal. It’s arguably the most naked conflict of interest in Newfoundland political history.
Paddick’s situation isn’t quite that bad. Paddick isn’t *in* cabinet. But he is the next best thing. He’s the premier’s buddy. He has the Premier’s ear at a time when the Furey doesn’t listen to too many people other than his Dad. Paddick has contacts at NALCOR-Hydro and within the provincial government other businesses don’t have. Paddick also has the insider knowledge of being intimately involved in electricity policy and negotiations with the federal government over the past six years. All of that gives him a perspective no one outside government has.
Paddick is clearly so well connected to Furey that he could get Furey to drop what the official government statements called a ban on wind turbine development. Immediately after that announcement, Paddick and his long-time business partner John Risley announced a plan to build 164 wind turbines at Stephenville, ostensibly to produce hydrogen energy, something Furey crowed about as the next brilliant energy frontier for the province. The timing of the two announcements is too close together to be coincidental.
No one raised the conflict of interest issue about Paddick in May because at the time only Furey and Paddick and a handful of people in government knew about Paddick’s secret advising gig. The rest of us found out about it when allNewfoundlandLabrador.com reported that for some reason - neither Furey nor anyone else has explained why - the cabinet secretariat stopped publishing all sorts of cabinet orders to its website that should have been public.
Don’t forget that when opposition leader Dave Brazil complained about the conflict, Furey’s office Furey’s office claimed we knew about the secret appointment because government officials had told us all. That’s a gaslighting kind of lie. The truth was they hadn’t told us, except when compelled to do so. Otherwise, we still would not know.
What’s worse, Furey also passed responsibility for managing Paddick’s conflict to Paddick himself. But the thing is the conflict of interest is not Paddick’s to manage.
It’s Furey’s.
Furey’s the one in charge. It is his responsibility to set the ethical standard for his administration. Once he learned of the conflict, Furey had a responsibility to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador to protect the public interest. His duty was to end the conflict and protect the public interest. There’s no sign he has done that.
For example, Furey could have asked Paddick to resign from the advisory committee. That would be the simplest thing.
He didn’t.
There’s nothing good about the whole Paddick mess from the conflict itself, to the secrecy, to the way Furey brushed everything aside while ignoring all the serious questions about what he and his friend are up to.
Furey had a duty to protect the public interest, put an end to Paddick’s conflict, and disclose to the public fully what he has been up to.
He did none of that.
So, yeah.
No creditable behaviour out of the Premier’s Office on this one.
Just more of what passes for normal these days in the top political office in the province.
By contrast, give credit where credit is earned on another scandal that embroils the 8th Floor.
Ed Joyce and Paul Lane complained to the Citizen’s Representative that Speaker of the House of Assembly Derek Bennett was acting improperly in withholding from them the report on allegations against chief electoral officer Bruce Chaulk. Bennett had the report for up to 11 weeks before he shuffled it to the Premier’s Office, according to some versions of the story. That’s the least of the problems with Bennett’s handling of the Chaulk mess.
Joyce and Lane sent online forms to the Cit Rep a week to the day before Bennett suddenly dropped the report on the Premier’s desk late one Monday afternoon. Apparently the spectre of testifying under oath about why he had dilly-dallied was too much for Bennett to bear.
Bennett passed the hot potato to Andrew Furey who - having sat on his hands for weeks despite knowing a report existed - promptly passed it back to the Speaker and the House management commission. Despite knowing about the report and its contents from well-informed scuttlebutt, it took the politicians on the committee two meetings a week apart to figure out what to do.
We know it took the House committee two meetings a week apart because of a poorly written news release Bennett issued not as Speaker but as chair of the Housed of Assembly management commission. Bennett flopped the release out three full hours *after* justice minister John Hogan told everyone that the government had accepted the commission’s recommendations and suspended Bruce Chaulk.
Everyone must now wait for the report of an independent review of the report of an independent investigation into allegations of bullying and nepotism against Chaulk. There is no sensible reason for a second review. No one explained why it is necessary. Yet everyone must wait.
Don’t surprised if this latest report doesn’t emerge until well into the fall. Bruce Chaulk is up for re-appointment this December. Odds are high that the government will let Chaulk announce he does not want a second appointment and will leave government quietly, with his full pension, to spend more time with his family.
The rest of us will be left to wonder what happened and why it is that someone so obviously inept and incompetent could have gotten the job in the first place. There’ll be no explanation of how Chaulk was able to carry despite bungling at least three reports about members of the House or ran a mess of an election last year and yet no one hesitated to support Chaulk. The whole mess will simply fade away.
Last week’s news on the Chaulk business had the same gaslighty feel to it as Furey’s statement about the secret cabinet orders.
“Today’s decision reflects the importance of following proper processes when we are dealing with allegations of misconduct,” some bureaucrat wrote and attributed to justice minister John Hogan. “As with any human resources matter of this nature, the individual involved will be on leave while further reviews are completed.”
Frankly, that does not sound like Hogan, frankly. He is too sensible, intelligent, and compassionate a person to write such drivel or to advise that this is right way to handle things. The bit about sending it back to the House sounds like Hogan because it is where the mess belonged in the first place. But the rest of it is too far from true to be from Hogan. The pained look Hogan has had through the past few media scrums on this Chaulk business suggests he is carrying the can for someone else’s blunders. he is taking one for the team. Hopefully he will not suffer for it.
You see, the words in the news release don’t sound like Hogan to anyone who knows him. They read like something from higher up the East Block tower than where Hogan’s office is. This is the stuff from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The Premier’s Office, Cabinet Secretariat, and the communications head shed. The folks in the fog even when the winds are not blowing the real thing in from the east end. The folks who apparently only want good news, only listen to advice that supports what they want to do anyway.
More and more, people inside the Confederation Building and outside it as well have learned that the Furey crowd only ask for your input as a way of managing you. Making you feel important. The robo-text messages - supposedly personal but usually mass spam - maybe even a phone call or meeting make it seem like you have a meaningful say. Like you are important.
They do not imagine people can see through the artifice, the contrivance, the conceit of it. Sometimes it takes people a while to catch on. But eventually they do. That’s when the real advice stops coming, the suggestions from the people who are outside the circle but who the political geniuses want to con. Of course, the geniuses do not know if what they got at anytime was good advice or bad advice, so lost are they in their own fog.
Only people like that could write or speak of proper processes when there has been nothing proper about the way the politicians and bureaucrats in the House of Assembly have dealt with the workers at the elections office since last year. Nothing proper at all. Then to add insult to the injury already done the workers, the statement speaks only of the alleged abuser.
Nowhere has anyone in any position of authority and responsibility shown the slightest care for the victims of abuse.
Not Bennett, who took no action beyond the bare minimum when the allegations first appeared and who bungled and fumbled and dodged his way all through the mess ever since.
Not the Premier who blew off questions about the report as mere “chirping” and apparently did nothing else until the turd of a report flopped on his desk.
Not either of the opposition party leaders leader who even knowing the substance of what the report contained could only say to reporters that “bullying not acceptable” - that was Pea Sea leader Dave Brazil’s choice quote to NTV - while Dipper John Dinn hoped that now there was a chance of “something being done.”
Of course, everything that Furey, Dinn, Brazil, and Bennett have done shows only that bullying *is* acceptable. They are at the top. They set the tone. Their actions make a lie of their words. Abuse is so acceptable to them that even if someone makes an accusation, it will take months before anything happens. Even then action of some kind will only come if the victims or their friends embarrass the powerful out of their torpor.
In the meantime, both accuser and accused carried on for well over a year in the same work place. Full of whatever tension and turmoil that created the situation in the first place, the office conditions were only made infinitely worse by the agonisingly incompetent response of those with both the legal power and the moral duty to do something about it in the meantime.
One thing about process that the official news release got right last week is that this whole business belongs to the House not government. Well, it should except for the corruption of the House that is now baked into the way both politicians and bureaucrats alike think of the House of Assembly.
Not corrupt as in criminal or illegal but corrupt as in unhealthy. Infected. Diseased.
Rot. Like the foundations of a building.
Coding errors. Mistakes in programming.
Ethically wrong.
They think the House is a lark at best or a nuisance at worst. They let things slide by, whether it is bad behaviour or important legislation. They cut secret deals to pass legislation quickly, without any serious debate or discussion. They change laws to shift things that belong to the House to the government and then wonder why people - including politicians and bureaucrats - confuse the two
They act that way but they talk as if the House was sacred and they were the most right and pious people around. Andrew Furey, like every Premier since 2003 has talked about accountability and transparency. But like every one of his predecessors since then, Furey fails. Not once. Not twice. But again, and again, and again.
At some point Furey or some other politician will look at this and say well-intentioned people were just trying to do the best they could. Someone will promise to make sure it never happens again. They will mention the need to update laws. That is always a good one, like the endless promises since 2004 - including one repeated by Furey this past week - to update laws about campaign finance. They talk but do not act. Apology is policy.
The ethical standard in government that everyone outside government expects is doing what is morally and ethically right, not just taking the bureaucratic route of saying one thing and doing another. If anyone doubts what the standards are, they can look at the countless examples of bad behaviour from this province or the guidance on what is right from places like the federal ethics commissioner.
As these latest failings unfold, it’s worth remembering the words of the Supreme Court of Canada in an appeal of a criminal conviction from Newfoundland and Labrador of a provincial government engineer. (R v. Hinchey) The Court made clear the reasons why public officials are held to a higher standard than the rest not only for criminal offences – as in that case – but implicitly in *all* their dealings on behalf of the public.
Given the heavy trust and responsibility taken on by the holding of a public office or employ, it is appropriate that government officials are correspondingly held to codes of conduct which, for an ordinary person, would be quite severe.
Hinchey was a relatively minor government official. Hinchey got his wife on the payroll at a local company doing business with the government. She never showed up for work but got the pay. The court did them both for fraud and corruption.
That department and that sort of thing is apparently no stranger to corruption of the criminal kind. Look at what the Court of Appeal in St. John’s noted as matters of fact *before* this case got to Ottawa.
It was a custom with Beothuck to provide Government officials with whom it worked with gifts of liquor, meals, and gasoline for the purpose of maintaining a good working relationship. Apparently, there was also an informal bartering system in existence whereby Government employees might be given after-hours surveying or inventory control work and be reimbursed with liquor, gasoline, or other items. It was established that Morgan Hinchey received liquor, gasoline and possibly tires from Beothuck.
Hinchey’s failing is easy to see, not only because some Crown prosecutor tucked the pair in for criminal offences but because what they were doing should be obviously wrong to any right-thinking person.
What’s also easy to see and what we should notice these days is the tone at the top. The Hinchey conviction came at a time when the Premier set the ethical bar very high for everyone and enforced it. A high standard doesn’t mean there will be no bad behaviour. But it does show people the standard they are expected to meet.
A high ethical standard lessens the chances of major failures. When standards are low, we get the endless parade of scandals we have seen over the past 20 years. As the Supreme Court of Canada noted in the Hinchey appeal, these scandals or investigations into bad behaviour are expensive in lots of ways. They rob the government of integrity in the public mind. Not just the politicians directly involved in one way or another, but the government generally. They take up time and resources with investigations. They mean people in government are not doing the work they should be or are doing. Rather than handling police and courts or public finance, they are talking to reporters about this, that, or another needless scandal.
One of the saddest things about either Chaulk or Paddick is that either of these problems were easy to address at any point long before now. Acting quickly on them would have been simple compared to the cost of not doing the right thing. Not acting has brought a much higher price in all those ways not just to the people directly involved but to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador as well. *They* pay the price for this in all the ways noted by the Supreme Court of Canada 25 years ago.
Yet all it took to avoid the damage done from any of them would have been for a single politician – take your pick of any scandal from the Bull Arm Pea Sea ex-candidate giving contracts to her campaign manager to Paddick or the multiple problems with Chaulk - to put the public interest ahead of their own personal interest.
Just once.
Surely, that shouldn’t be too much to ask.
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