Herb Kitchen died last week. He was the minister of finance in the early 1990s who brought down the difficult budgets, starting in 1991 that were part of a plan that turned the provincial government around. The deficit at the time was about $300 million and the total budget called
Continue readingTag: public spending
The Sir Robert Bond Papers: Facing the financial wall, again #nlpoli
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro makes money by making and selling electricity. In 2018, the last year for which we have statistics, Hydro made about 40 gigawatt hours of electricity and sold it for slightly less than a billion dollars. Most of the electricity went to Quebec and most of the
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: More cuts. Some questions. #nlpoli
Flatter, Leaner Management Structure. Put it all in caps like that and you have a handy acronym that bureaucrats can type over and over again without getting tired. It’s like the Government Renewal Initiative. Internal government documents quickly started referring to the GRI. And almost as quickly, the wags among
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: More cuts. Some questions. #nlpoli
Flatter, Leaner Management Structure. Put it all in caps like that and you have a handy acronym that bureaucrats can type over and over again without getting tired. It’s like the Government Renewal Initiative. Internal government documents quickly started referring to the GRI. And almost as quickly, the wags among
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Sovereignty #nlpoli
Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the very few countries on the planet that got itself into such a financial mess that it gave up self-government. The people gave up their right and power to govern themselves. That is, they gave up their sovereignty. They took it back in 1949,
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Debt servicing and revenue, 2013-2016 #nlpoli
There are lots of ways of looking the government’s budget. Here’s one that’s a bit unconventional. Rather than look at how much the government is spending on debt servicing as a share of all expenses, let’s take a look at what it means as a share of the government’s income
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Behaviour Patterns #nlpoli
January 2016. Dwight Ball tells reporters in year-end interviews that “everything is on the table” to deal with the government’s financial problem. Then, Ball took everything off the table. As SRBP put it last year: No cuts to spending as that would slow the economy. Ditto for tax increases. Even
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Putting the sunk in sunk cost #nlpoli #cdnpoli
Muskrat Falls is basically an $800 million tax on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. That’s roughly the amount you get using numbers Nalcor chief executive Stan Marshall made public last summer. Muskrat Falls is a tax on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. Always was that. Never was anything
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Taxing our understanding #nlpoli
Over the past week, there’s been a flurry of comment about gasoline prices and the fact that, as of New Year’s Day, a provincial sales tax now applies to books. It’s 10%, on top of the federal sales tax of five per cent. All sorts of people are talking about
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Tibb’s Eve Accord #nlpoli
Health minister John Haggie said that the health deal signed with Ottawa on Tibb’s Eve was the best deal that could be got. Haggie’s probably right. At least, the deal contains a clause that if another province gets a better deal, we can opt for that one instead. It’s been so
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: AIMS refutes austerity hysteria #nlpoli #AIMS
From the latest Atlantic Institute for Market Studies paper: “Measuring Austerity in Atlantic Canada investigates whether the use of the term austerity in the context of Atlantic Canada’s public finance is accurate. The author examines public accounts data from the four provinces, adjusting for inflation, to determine the annual amount of
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: How much do we owe? #nlpoli
CBC Radio Noon had board of trade president Des Whalen in the studio on Monday. Board of Trade thinks the debt is about $13 billion today. Don’t talk about Muskrat Falls. That’s in the past. Yeah, well, when your humble e-scribbler challenged Des on the numbers the best he
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Ball, Bennett, Williams, and Marshall #nlpoli
One of the things finance minister Cathy Bennett told NTV’s Issues and Answers this weekend was that the Premier Dwight Ball scrapped the fall mini-budget in September in favour of his own Grand Strategy for Moving Forward in a Generally Advancing Fashion with Vision. Ball scrapped the financial course laid out
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Sunshine, lollipops, and fluffy kittens #nlpoli
Finance minister Cathy Bennett read words that tried to make the provincial government’s financial situation sound better than it was forecast to be last spring. For all the wonderful words in Bennett’s scripted remarks, Bennett could not hide the truth. Her tone of voice was more sombre and depressed than
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Truth and Reconciliation #nlpoli
Long ago, so long ago no one remembers when, they did away with Virtue in Newfoundland politics. To be on the safe side, they slit the throats of her twins, Truth and Justice, and tossed the little corpses on top of their mother’s body before leaving the three in a shallow,
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Way Forward #nlpoli
Last December, Dwight Ball laid out his plan to deal with the provincial government’s financial problems. Ball made the comments to CBC’s David Cochrane a week or two after he’d been sworn in. This was after he’d been briefed on the provincial government’s financial situation, so he’d had a chance
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Prov gov finances headed south #nlpoli
The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is offering its bonds on the American market, according to Bloomberg News. VOCM reported it locally on Wednesday.The provincial government hopes that its high interest rates will attract investors. &nbs…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: Core Public Service Numbers #nlpoli
Somebody requested the number of public servants through Access to Information and the folks in the department answered only half the question.But that’s okay because the figures for the core public service are worth looking at anyway.Regular readers w…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Rasputisa and the 2016 Budget #nlpoli
The speech finance minister Cathy Bennett read in the House of Assembly on Thursday was as horrible as the reaction most of the province have been having to it.That’s not surprising given that the entire budget communications program was the product of…
Continue readingThe Sir Robert Bond Papers: The Incrementalists #nlpoli
Today is budget day.There’s been lots of speculation flying around, most of it a confirmation that people have little real information about anything. If you have been paying attention, though, you can probably make a fairly good guess at what Thursday…
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