Tony's Hundred Days

SPADs and a low-hanging fruit

Walter Stanley Monroe, Prime Minister of Newfoundland in 1926

If an election is a sprint, then governing is a marathon… crossed with a decathlon and gladiatorial combat and the Hunger Games all happening at the same time.

Yes, Maximus.

They are trying to kill you.

Tony Wakeham held a newser on Thursday to mark his government’s first hundred days in office. Promised tax cuts in the spring budget and other insights into how the Pea Seas plan on delivering their election promises in light of what they have learned of the real depth of the mess left behind by John Hogan and the surviving cast of the Andrew Furey Experience. An absolutely sensible newser given how short a while ago the election was, just before Christmas.

NTV reported the news fairly, which was to tell us simply what a Premier so new to the office he still cannot quite get over the shock himself plans to do and what he and his crew have done so far. They covered the Liberals’ response despite them having literally nothing sensible to say.

VOCM’s story gave a decent account of Wakeham’s comments before also reciting the Liberal one, which is still, in short, namely shitting on Wakeham for winning. Melissa may have stopped bawling her eyes out from the shock by now but the rest of them are clearly struggling for something intelligent to say.

CBC wrote a stupid story, an imbecilic string of turds that played up what the opposition said and gave Wakeham’s comments as if they were rebutting Joh Hogan’s claims. It is a bizarre piece. Idiotic giving voice to the gormless loafers who complained that in the first hundred days since voters banished the Liberals to the political crap seats, Tony Wakeham had not raised the dead, made the lame to walk, and himself skipped on water to I’se da b’y. It is not more sensible a line now than it was 99 days ago when Hogan first started whining yet there CBC was reminding us how out of touch or biased they and the Furey-ites are.

Screwged!

We were well inside Tony Wakeham’s hundred days (45 days precisely), when last December’s comments here on transitions in local politics noted that not even half-way through his first hundred days, Tony Wakeham was not looking good.

And he wasn’t.

Very slow to staff up, not just in his own office but across the whole administration. His comms director position, for example, went to someone without any significant recent comms experience who, according to the local version in some circles, was the third choice after one local and one Mainlander turned the gig down. Started work in mid-January.

The latest hire - just this week - was the Constab’s cop-speak comms dude brought on to fill in for a long-term political staffer off on mat leave from her policy job. There have been other hires, now all called SPADs - special advisors - which gives no clue to what they actually do. That’s a carry-over name from the last crowd on the 8th about whom people still wonder what their SPADs like Fred Hutton ever did.

The connection here in the Premier’s office on the comms seems to be that the comms director and the ex-cop knew each other from municipal politics. Meanwhile, the Pea Seas have apparently hired in the justice department a new comms director with solid policy experience - not in policing and public safety - both inside and outside government but very little comms experience. I’ll leave it at that except to note that these sorts of weird or quirky staffing decisions are like those in previous administrations. The result of a lot of micro decisions instead of one large idea about finding the right skill set to fit the right job in the right place. It’s possible to move people around later on, but these sorts of seemingly small oddities at the beginning tend to get baked in after a while and so the course you’re on at the start can wind up putting you miles and miles off where you need to be even a very short time in the future.

Before Christmas, all the Wakeham team managed to do besides unfold their tents was get the MOU review out the door. The really significant stuff in that announcement - shutting down the negotiations and firing Dennis Browne’s fraud of an oversight team - went reported but unnoticed for their importance by everyone. That’s why the Liberals can still get away with pretending that the deal is still alive. Just one reporter needs to report actual news for a change or pose one serious question and maybe the crap flow will stop.

Other than that, the Pea Seas got off a financial update that no one remembers. That has led to the usual “consultation” farce as well as a pointless round of public comments on the MOU. We don’t know who else the review team is talking to so that will have to wait. As for the dog and pony show about the budget, those things have never been anything other than a complete con job and there’s no reason to believe that it will be any different now than when the Liberals started them in the late 1990s when Brian Tobin was Premier.

In the last month, by contrast, there’s been lots of news, especially the last few weeks, as we head into CRA/Narrative’s February omnibus period. Could be a coincidence. Could be what political biologists call a vestigial feature of an earlier time. Something that was useful once, like say when CRA released the poll results publicly and then those drove news coverage reinforced by Happy News announcements through the month while the polling firm was collecting data. Made the party in power look more popular than they were.

But that was as long ago as when the South Shoal of the Banks was above water and so the capelin rolled there to lay eggs every spring. They still spawn on the same rocks even now though the old beaches drowned centuries of centuries ago. The difference is that spawning is useful but poll goosing when no one pays attention means nothing.

The Liberal lines blame the Pea Seas for not being Liberals who were just the old Pea Seas from before. It’s obvious nonsense given that different people can and should make many different decisions. People wanted change. Criticising the Wakeham Pea Seas for not being more of the same shows that Hogan and the rest of them still don’t get that simple truth.

Still, even though all the things that made poll goosing matter politically have disappeared, the government’s uncommunications army still does what the rest of the bureaucracy does, which is to carry on repeating the same patterns as if nothing ever changes or needs to change. Danny Williams set the pattern. Dwight Ball’s crowd thought social media was all the rage, instead of open line, but it never was. The Andrew Furey Experience was all about Andrew and so none of what they did made any sense except to showcase Andrew Furey and now we are here.

So far, Tony Wakeham’s crowd have been running more of a marathon than a sprint. Slowly working up to a sustainable pace. At least, that’s what it looks like. Saying nothing rather than saying something just for the sake of saying it. They are different from the Andrew Furey Experience, which may be why the AFE leftovers are so frustrated.

That’s such a wild departure for any government here since 2003, it’s huge. What we have to wait for is what comes next. To judge the Wakeham Pea Seas for their own record not just for being as lazy as Hogan, Fred Hutton and the rest before them were. That’s how we will know whether Tony Wakeham’s Pea Seas are a break from the pattern of the past 23 years or just a variation on an all-too-familiar theme. That’s how voters know if they got the change they wanted or if this is just Dwight Ball all over again: voted in to change things and instead just wanted to be like the people he thought were the cool kids. So no change.

The announcements so far make sense, as we’ve already noted. Easy things to kill off with no effect on people’s everyday lives. The only one that stands out is the end of the marine protected area project. For now, that one will join the pile of drafts here, but it is worth considering on its own because of the connections to other issues. The commitment to improve the scores on the CFIB’s annual index is deceptive. Looks like nothing but if the government carries through on getting rid of obstacles and needless burdens on business, that would be literally the first major policy announcement in 23 years for all those parts of the economy that aren’t oil or electricity.

Off to a weak start but doing better lately would be the best description for Tony Wakeham’s crew. If we just judge things in this century, that isn’t a bad thing. Danny Williams started off weakly but got better at some things. Kathy Dunderdale was weak and never got stronger. Tom Marshall was a solid caretaker. Paul Davis was weak from the outset and stayed weak. Dwight Ball blew himself and his team up within days of taking office, then set fire to his own arse, and staggered through five years, the seat of his pants a constant smouldering reminder, before almost going down to defeat against a dead alternative in 2019. A Cabinet coup delivered Andrew Furey who staggered and stumbled through another fiveish years until the Liberal defeat after a record-short time in office for any party since Confederation. Promised transformative change and delivered Danny Williams’ dream, as originally intended, despite the fact none of it ever made sense: Muskrat Falls paid for solely by local taxpayers. That’s not a political record to brag about.

There were some noticeable issues that went undiscussed by the Pea Seas and Liberals. There are huge problems in the courts. That flared up again last fall but a weak government response - we’ll figure it out by the spring - stood up only because the Liberals were and obsessed with Francois Legault and themselves. That just works for the Pea Seas not only but letting them grow in strength but also by reminding people of why they voted against the Liberals in the first place.

There’s a natural rhythm to political life in Newfoundland and Labrador. Politics overlays governing, starting in the spring with at the beginning of the fiscal year with a throne speech and budget. That tells us what government will do for the next year. The budget should line up with the throne speech’s intentions. That’s the course we are on so far.

There wasn’t always a fall sitting. Before 1934, the House of Assembly and Legislative Council sat from February straight through until June or July. There was no fall sitting, typically, although in 1914, the two Houses sat in September to pass war-time laws. Since Confederation, there’s usually been a spring and a fall sitting. The spring is the big show of throne speech and budget. The fall is a lesser sitting but no less important.

Between 1832 and 1932, there were 28 general elections. Most, by far, fell in that fall space, with most of those happening in early November. After Confederation, the 21 elections have happened almost evenly divided between spring and fall. You can see patterns. Brian Peckford and Clyde Wells tended to go to the polls in April and May. The time after 2003 has been set by Roger Grimes, who went to the polls in late 2003. The Danny Williams imaginary fixed election date law wound up setting a time tied to that election win and for no other obvious reason.

That also killed off the fall sitting during election years, with the government taking the time between election and the spring sitting to do something but mostly to make up for the lack of transition. That’s where we are with Tony and da b’ys. That said, in 1989, the first Clyde Wells administration delivered a throne speech, budget, and first sitting of the legislature within 100 days of taking office. The new government met the House within 30 days of the election. The transition was no better or worse managed than any other so it shows what can happen.

Since 2003 governments have been less accountable than their predecessors. The Williams crew spent less time in the House than their post-Confederation ancestors, disclosed less of government intentions about legislation especially noticeable in energy bills, and spent more time manipulating public opinion than encouraging informed debate anywhere. That set the tone for every administration afterwards. The House sat progressively less over time, dealt with less legislation and spent less time considering legislation to the point where the Andrew Furey Experience was even less accountable than Williams. The House was never so nakedly rigged as when Furey was Premier, although he alone did not decide to make the government so unaccountable to the public as it was.

We are left at the end of the Wakeham Pea Seas’ first hundred days with less than we might have seen so far in this century from new administrations. That is actually good. We need to see more to judge what is happening but speaking only when they have something to say is a major change of political direction and accountability. The test will be the spring budget and the throne speech, due in just a month from now or so.

But remember that if the Pea Seas deliver their election promises and give us a credible plan for the next four years and then deliver on it, they will be remarkable for any government this century. Even if they ditch the first one as unrealistic and only do the second and third thing, we would be living in a whole new and very much better world for the first time in almost 30 years.

The financial challenge this crowd faces is the most daunting to ever face a Newfoundland and Labrador government in the past half century. Made obviously and undeniably worse over the past 15 years by successive governments from two parties who did nothing but copy the bad example set by Danny Williams’ crowd. The last five years were the worst of a very bad lot for financial mismanagement.

Hang on. Let’s make that clearer. Horrid at management. Superlative at mismanagement.

On top of the local challenges are national ones and international ones. That’s the Hunger Games decathlon marathon thing, so situation normal.

Twenty-five days from today we find out what Tony Wakeham’s crowd will do about the situation we are all in.

That’s not a lot of time.

If you consider Tony Wakeham’s office only finished staffing up this past week, and all those people are brand new to the job and anything even vaguely like it, that’s even less time than it looks.

The question over their collective heads as they work to that first week of March deadline is not even about just the days in front of them or what they will do about the deficit, the debt, Churchill Falls, health care, schools and all the rest. It’s about whether they mark a break with the recent past - the third of three political periods since Confederation - and head us in a better direction or whether we are looking ahead to 2033 as our grandparents or great-grandparents looked from 1926 to a future that was as unknown to them as tomorrow is to us, not knowing the disaster to come.

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