Things I've learned since I moved to Saskatchewan

1. There are people in Canada that actually follow the CFL

For most of my life I assumed that the CFL was mostly just a punchline or a trivia answer.  Turns out it is actually a going sports concern in parts of Canada.  Of course, at least as far as I can tell, those parts of the country that care about the CFL are likely found somewhere west of Winnipeg and east of Calgary (I'm pretty sure Vancouver is way too cool to be into anything in a big way).

2. Municipal snow plows are only for primary arteries

Yup, they basically don't plough residential streets in many communities in Saskatchewan.  Instead of ploughing residents just pack the snow into inches high sheets of ice that they are then expected to drive on.  Of course, over time deep ruts develop and those lower clearance vehicles may have a few problems - but that seems to be accepted as a consequence of owning anything less than a pick-up truck.

3. Saskatchewan is one of the world's primary sources for lentils

This cool fact seems to be under appreciated by most of the Saskatchewanians I've spoken to so far.  Of course, I'm still hopeful that eventually this informational nugget may form the basis of some kind of 'healthy protein' campaign, or at least as a protein heavy response to Alberta beef.

4. Saskatchewan mistakenly thinks that Shannon Tweed is a native daughter

Everybody knows that Shannon Tweed is really from Newfoundland.  Case closed.

5. 'Dry cold,' like 'dry heat,' makes all the difference

Though it's been at least -15 for the past few weeks it's not nearly as bad as -5 and the sideways-falling sleet-like precipitation that one often encounters in Newfoundland.  Of course, when you start getting really low temperatures your car may not start or you may get frostbite - but aren't these just small prices to pay for no slush?

Dead voters aren't the only thing Newfoundland doesn't have

According to a CBC story, for at least the last five years, Securities Commission of Newfoundland and Labrador has not had to fine anyone for securities law violations.  Despite the fact that this sounds great, I can't help but think it also sounds too good to be true.

Because the CBC piece doesn't really address the issues in Newfoundland (because they, like PEI, haven't fined anyone recently so there are no unpaid fines to collect) I decided that I should probably try to find the name of the entity responsible for enforcing securities regulations in Newfoundland.

A quick search lead me to a Newfoundland Government page that kind of suggested that the name of the relevant entity is the Securities Commission of Newfoundland and Labrador (and that this entity falls under the aegis of Service NL).

Of course, because this first website included very little of the information I was looking for (like the names of members of the Securities Commission) I decided a little more digging was needed.  It only took me a few more seconds to find the page of the Canadian Securities Administrators, which includes names and bios of provincial representatives.

The bio for the Newfoundland representative was quite a read.  Not only does the short write-up include a few biographical details about the representative, but it also mentions that this individual

is the Director of the Financial Services Regulation Division and was appointed Superintendent of Securities in December 2009. He is also the Superintendent of Insurance, Superintendent of Real Estate and Registrar of Mortgage Brokers and has responsibility for the regulation of Prepaid Funeral Contract Sellers.

But maybe more important than the fact that the Superintendent of Securities wears quite a number of hats simultaneously, is the fact that this bio also mentions that Securities Commission was eliminated in 2005.

Funny that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador's website doesn't mention this.  Actually, there are still quite a number of references to the old securities commission scattered throughout the areas of the site that deal with securities regulation.

And because I found all of this a little curious I decided to quickly skim through the old versions of the law to see how the Securities Commission was constituted.  Apparently it had at least one member, but additional commissioners could be appointed. The other aspect of the law that immediately jumped out to me is that related to the investigatory powers of the Securities Commission.  The old version of the Securities Act included the following section:

3.4  In carrying out its duties under this Act, the commission has all the powers that are or may be conferred on a commissioner under the Public Inquiries Act .

The current version of the act doesn't seem to  provide the Superintendent with quite the same range of investigatory powers and requires that investigators empowered through the act, at least in some cases, to go to judges to seek prior approval for searches (this might be something of an improvement, if it investigations are actually initiated).

I've been trying to find out a little bit more about the Superintendent's office, but as of yet I haven't found much.  This, of course, contrasts with the Nova Scotia Securities Commission, a organization that provides easy access to their organizational chart and overall goals (as far as I can tell the name of the position of Superintendent of Securities, and that they are the chief securities regulator isn't even listed in an obvious and clear way on the main portion of the Newfoundland website).

Oh, one last thing about the 'securities' section of the Service NL website.  If you follow the link titled Public Orders all you find is the following text:

Copies of orders, rulings and decisions relating to discretionary relief can be obtained by calling (709) 729-4189.

Am I the only one that finds some of this a little strange?

There are no dead voters in Newfoundland!

For the past few days I've been thinking quite a bit about the enforcement of electoral law at the federal level in Canada.  Consequently I've been reading about the offences that have been investigated/prosecuted over the past 20 years.

While after every election we tend to find that there are a handful of financing/advertising related cases, I was pretty shocked to see that duplicate voting seems to be one of the most common offences (and even as one of the most common offences there are only, at most, a handful of cases dealt with by Elections Canada after each general election).

Finally today, and I really don't know why it took me this long to make it here, I decided to see if provincial electoral laws had similar conviction/infraction patterns.  Not surprisingly, I decided to start my investigation in Newfoundland.

After quickly skimming Newfoundland's Elections Act and finding the relevant sections I made my way over to CanLII to see if any of the relevant sections have been cited in any cases in their database (I had to use this imperfect approach because unlike Elections Canada, Elections Newfoundland and Labrador does not have a section of its website that includes such information).

Anyway, the CanLII information was quite revealing.  Apparently there are no cases that cite the passage about duplicate voting (which I feel I must include here for its humour value)

193. (1) A person is guilty of an offence who, at an election,(a)  applies for a ballot in the name of some other person, whether that name is that of a person living or dead, or of a fictitious person;(b)  having voted once at that election, applies at the same election, for another ballot; (c)  votes in more than 1 electoral district; or(d)  aids, abets, counsels, procures or endeavours to procure the commission by a person of an act described in paragraph (a), (b) or (c). 

As it turns out, there weren’t even any cases citing s. 194:

194. A person is guilty of an offence who, at an election, votes or attempts to vote knowing he or she is disqualified from voting or not qualified to vote at that election.

I thought it was also noteworthy that while one of the offences common at the federal level (the failure include a statement from the official agent authorizing the publication of election material) is also against the law in Newfoundland (s. 198) it seems that that section has not been cited in any cases included in the CanLII database.  Overspending expense limits is another potential violation that has come up from time to time federally but not once provincially.

I can’t help but wonder if it is really the case that those involved in the electoral process in Newfoundland are really more law-abiding than those involved in the analogous processes federally?

Or, maybe, it’s not that the case that these infractions aren’t taking place, but that they aren’t necessarily being investigated to the same extent.  If one takes a look at the organizational chart for Elections Newfoundland and Labrador there it isn’t obvious that any of the positions mentioned would conduct investigations into such matters after an election’s results had been made official (though the Elections Act does confer such an investigatory power upon the Chief Electoral Officer, at least in relation to the examination of records relating to party or candidate finances).  And I hope I’m mistaken, but I did not see anything in the act that would conclusively give the Chief Electoral Officer the authority to investigate potential infractions committed by individuals or entities other than parties or candidates (ex. voting for a dead person).

And in case you’re curious, if you ever are found guilty of voting for a dead or fictious person the punishment can be severe. 

208. A person who is guilty of an offence under section 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198 or 199 is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $5,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or to both a fine and imprisonment. 209. A person who is guilty of an offence under this Part that is not an offence referred to in section 208 and for which no other penalty is specifically provided, is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $1,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months, or to both a fine and imprisonment.

So I’m not really sure where all of this gets us, but I do feel it’s at least something to know that there isn’t much evidence of Elections Newfoundland and Labrador going after people in the courts for election finance violations, advertising violations, or voting violations.

Predictable response?

The introduction of amendments to the accesss to information law in Newfoundland earlier this week caused quite a furor. Not surprisingly, the media and the opposition parties were less than keen to see changes that will make it easier for the government to deny access to information. 

Aside from the fact that these amendments seemed tailor-made to cause the uproar that they caused, I find the timing quite strange.  If you wanted these amendments to seem like normal housekeeping amendments, which seems to be what the government wants, why would they more or less hide the details of the changes until the end of the legislative session and then try to ram the bill through on the same week it was introduced?  Could they have come up with an approach that would be more likely to raise suspicion among the critics whose ire they were hoping to avoid? If so, I'd be curious to see such an approach implemented at some point in time.

Because of cabinet exemptions to the law we will likely never know, but I would really love to know how long these changes have been in the works and how long the text of the current bill has been ready. In other words, how long were they sitting on the bill in its final form before they introduced it? (And as far as I know there hadn't been much discussion of such a bill/changes in the run-up to its introduction - a fact that likely intensified the feeling of shock among opponents).

While here are other aspects of this bill that merit consideration, the issue of it's timing seems particularly peculiar to me.

Are the feds really bigger than the provinces?

Despite provincial control of much of the social welfare structure and onshore natural resource development many people in Canada, including many political scientists, tend to think of provinces as relatively insignificant. Last night I was trying to come up with a way of demonstrating the importance of provincial politics in Canada.   Eventually I settled on conducting a quick comparison of the total spending as outlined in the 2012-2013 Newfoundland and Labrador and federal government estimates.  I was surprised that the comparison shows that while the per capita expenditure in the federal budget is approximately $7 242 the per capita expenditure in the Newfoundland and Labrador budget is almost twice as much at $12 684.


I realize this isn't a particularly rigorous comparison (in that I've only looked at one year and one province), but caveats aside, the size of the difference really amazed me.  Who would have guessed that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador spends almost twice as much as the Government of Canada on each resident.  Crazy.


If I get a bit more work done I may try to expand the comparison both in terms of the number of provinces examined and the number of years.

Information they don't post in Newfoundland

A few days ago I noticed a CBC story about Newfoundland and Labrador not posting restaurant inspection results for the public to see, and not having any plans to do so in the near future.

At the time my thought was that the implementation of such a scheme would likely be relatively straightforward, particularly because the data already exists (and probably in a relatively accessible way).  Basically all the province would need to do is release it to the public.

Moments ago I happened to be browsing through New Brunswick related web-content and found their restaurant inspection depository.  From what I can tell from this site, it looks as though this process is just about as easy as thought it would be.  I imagine that they have a database that then feeds the site so that the most current reports are displayed and restaurant profiles automatically updated.  Presumably they would have such a database even if they weren't actively providing the information to the public, the internal management of the data would require such a structure.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the location being inspected seem to pass quite easily.  Though I was surprised to see some of the infractions.  In particular I was surprised to see infractions that I just wouldn't have really thought likely.

For instance, in at least one case a location was cited or not having refrigerators with thermometers.  Such an infraction immediately raises at least two questions.  Firstly, if fridge thermometers are required wouldn't you expect them to come with fridges?  Secondly, given that these inspections seem to be somewhat regular, how could such an infraction arise in a place that is not new to the food service industry?  Shouldn't such an infraction have been caught almost immediately?

If you examine the inspection report I just linked to you might also see that there seems to sometimes be inconsistency between the broad information provided about the report and the details contained within.  Notably, the report itself suggests that the last inspection was on November 22, 2011 and that the follow-up should be on December 6, 2011.  The higher level information suggests that the last inspection was on November 22, 2011 but that the follow-up inspection should be on January 16, 2012.

One final thing that I found interesting about these New Brunswick restaurant inspection reports is that they seem to either be done in English or French, not in both languages.  Furthermore, one has to open the report to see in which language the report was prepared.

Is it just me or are do these bare more than just a passing resemblance to one another?

I have recently come across a few passage that deal with the election of speakers in Canadian legislatures. As I was reading these I occasionally had a strange sense that I had read some of the passages before.

From Monpetit and Marleau's House of Commons Procedure and Practice (2nd edition):

The election of a Speaker has precedence over all other matters. No motion for adjournment is accepted until a Speaker is declared elected and installed in the Chair. Once he or she has been elected, after the customary thanks and congratulations have been expressed and after announcing the time and the date for the Speech from the Throne, the Speaker adjourns the House until the next sitting.

From British Columbia legislature's Standing Orders:

11 (a) (4) The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and no Motion of any kind shall be accepted, and the House shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the Chair and if the House has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the House until the next sitting, unless otherwise ordered.

From the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly's Standing Orders:

2 (7) The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and the House shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the chair and if the House has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the new Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the House until the next sitting day.

From the Rules and Procedures of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan:

40(4) The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and no motion of any kind shall be accepted, and the Assembly shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the chair. If the Assembly has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the Assembly until the next sitting.

From the New Brunswick legislature's Standing Rules:

The election of a Speaker shall take precedence over all other business and no motion of any kind shall be accepted, and the House shall continue to sit, if necessary, beyond its ordinary time of daily adjournment, until a Speaker is elected and is installed in the Chair and if the House has continued to sit beyond its ordinary hour of daily adjournment, the Speaker shall thereupon adjourn the House until the next sitting, unless otherwise ordered.

More poking about on the internet

Not surprisingly, my poking about on the internet didn't end with my examination of The Council on Governmental Ethics Laws's membership list.

I soon found myself looking at Standing Orders/House rules for various legislatures in Canada. While looking at the standing orders for Newfoundland and Labrador and the House Rules for Nova Scotia I was surprised by the fact that neither had been amended in the past few years. The last time the Newfoundland Standing Orders were amended was 2005. The last time that Nova Scotia's House Rules were amended was 1998. Between these two amendment dates and now both of these legislatures have had significant spending scandals that seem to have had no impact on procedure.

This means that in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia the newly constituted Management Commissions that came about because of these scandals are not mentioned. Though these Management Commissions aren't technically matters of procedure, that they aren't mentioned at all seems a little strange to me.

It should also be noted that neither of these two sets of rules seem to deal with matters relating to matters of ethics or conflict of interest.

I think these last two points become a little more significant when these provincial rules are contrasted with the House of Commons' Standing Orders. Both the Board of Internal Economy (the federal analog to provincial Management Commissions) and the Conflict of Interest Code are included in the Standing Orders. Though I guess I will leave it to you to make of this what you will.

This is even more shocking

A few days ago I posted justifications Kathy Dunderdale gave for not opening the House of Assembly until the spring.

It seems that since that post she has given even more ridiculous statements about nature of the House that really indicate that she doesn't understand the role of the legislature.

CBC is reporting that Dunderdale suggested that:

If the house of assembly was just about question period, where most of the accountability takes place, then we could go and do that in a month's time

First of all, though it is probably already obvious, most of the 'accountability' does not take in question period. It's my opinion that question period could be completely eliminated with out having a significant impact on the ability of the members of the legislature to hold the government to account.

The members of the House have a much greater ability to hold the government to account through things like the Public Accounts Committee and the estimates committee. Of course, whether or not these mechanisms are used effectively or not is another matter altogether.

And maybe most importantly the legislature is the place where the government of the day has to introduce, defend, and justify its legislative and budgetary proposals. The members of the House, whether they are government or opposition, have the responsibility to examine these proposals and engage in a public discussion of their merits.

If anything, the existence of Question Period allows all parties to act as though it is the important function of the House, that it is where accountability takes place. And they can do this because the quotes and fast-paced exchanges that take place in Question Period are what make the news. Sadly, Question Period is nothing more than a facade of accountability that distracts from what most members, opposition and government, aren't doing, which is effectively holding the government of the day to account through the various means available to them.

The worst part of this is that most people probably don't know how unimportant question period is in the scheme of things. They also probably don't know that Ms. Dunderdale's comments betray a shocking lack of knowledge regarding the proper functioning of a parliamentary government. And comments like this won't help them have a better sense of how a legislature can best hold the government of the day to account.

Let's hope she's alone on this one

As some of you may know, on Tuesday elections for the House of Assembly were held in Newfoundland. As you may also know, the House of Assembly is Newfoundland's provincial legislature. Another way of getting at the issue is that Tuesday's election dealt with selecting legislators, or people to sit in the House of Assembly and conduct the work of the legislature.

So, given this back story, I thought it was a little funny to see that newly re-elected MHA Kathy Dunderdale has been quoted by CBC when talking about the re-opening of the legislature as saying "I don't find it a place for a very healthy, open, constructive debate to start with." All of this was to justify her decision not to open the House again until the spring.

If she isn't interested in doing this part of her job can we expect her to be declining the approximately $100 000 pay cheque that accompanies the post?

This is unacceptable

A few minutes ago I was reminded of a situation that has been allowed to continue on the Government of Newfoundland website that is completely unacceptable.

While the Department of Government Services provides online access to its Registry of Companies, one can only access the database if they are using Internet Explorer 6.

In case you aren't up on these things, Internet Explorer 6 was first released in 2001. According to the Wiki article about Internet Explorer 6 suggests that "Microsoft now considers IE6 to be an obsolete product and recommends that users upgrade to Internet Explorer 8." A Microsoft website dedicated to eradicating Internet Explorer 6 goes are far as to say "Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye." This same site also suggests that only 2% of Canadians use this browser.

So to get back to my original point, by allowing access to the database exclusively through an outdated browser the Department of Government services is effectively failing to provide access to this data about Newfoundland companies to the vast majority of the Canadian population. That this situation has been allowed to persist is completely unacceptable.

A Few Quick Notes 549

-While it is currently quite beautiful in Wolfville there is some chance that things will take a turn for the worse in the not too distant future.

Amazingly, even though there is a pretty big weather system just off the coast of Nova Scotia Environment Canada is only going so far as to say that there is a "30 percent chance of showers late this afternoon with risk of thundershowers." I guess I will have to wait and see if there really was only a 30% chance of showers. [It turns out we managed to avoid showers and just get a pretty beautiful day.]

-I took advantage of a local butter sale today and purchased five pounds of butter. Hopefully this will do me for a few months.

-A tee-shirt clad Danny Williams seems to have caused something of a stink in Newfoundland by suggesting that his former director of communications was the most competent women he'd ever met in politics. The pretty obvious implication is that the current premier is less competent than his former director of communications.

It's nice to see that they're keeping everything classy in Newfoundland politics for once.

-I made a quick loaf of bread today.

Port aux Basques to Wolfville - 2

We are now safely on the Blue Puttees and awaiting our departure. Though we are to leave two hours early it seems that we may only arrive a little early. Anyway, I guess that the arrival and departure times will both be highly dependant on the upcoming weather/hurricane situation.

We have all popped our Gravol and are now getting ready for bed. Hopefully we will get some sleep before we arrive.

Port aux Basques to Wolfville - 1

Maybe an hour or two ago we arrived in sunny Port aux Basques (though since then it has become gray and foggy). We made sure to arrive early to make sure that we would catch our ferry which has now been scheduled to depart an hour and a half early. The down side of our early arrival is that we now have a few hours to go before we head out.

Anyway, I guess we have internet and cards to help us pass the time, though time also means more time to think about taking a ferry in a hurricane.

St. John's to Ramea - 5

In Gander for dolly drinks.

St. John's to Ramea - 4

In Clarenville.

St. John's to Ramea - 1

Early tomorrow morning Neil, Rebecca, Jeannette, our friend Steven, and I will be making our way across the island of Newfoundland to Ramea for a friend's wedding. As some of you may know, Ramea is a remote island off the south coast of the island. We will be getting there by ferry from Burgeo, a community is also relatively remote.

At the moment the plan is for the five of us to pile into the car and start the journey early tomorrow morning. As we expect the trip to take close to 12 hours we won't be able to see much along the way. That being said, I don't expect we will be so rushed that we won't be able to stop a few times for refreshment, bathroom, and gas breaks.

Assuming all goes well we will then try to catch the 8:00 PM ferry. I am hoping that the timing of the ferry will mean that we will get to see the sun set over Burgeo and the island in the distance. The other consequence of the timing of the ferry is that our first real view of the island will be the next day when we make our way out of our respective accommodations.

Sadly, we will only have a few hours to explore Ramea (though I am not sure if one really needs more than a few hours given the relatively limited size of the island). Anyway, I hope to get up early enough in the day to see a reasonable portion of the island before we need to return to prepare for the wedding.

The wedding itself should be rather interesting as most of the guests will be in Ramea for the sole purpose of attending the wedding (making it a destination wedding of sorts). I am assuming that this will mean a more robust celebration than if we were all just attending a wedding in our normal places of residence.

Then early on Sunday we will be taking the ferry back to Burgeo and heading up to Port aux Basques to catch the overnight ferry to North Sydney.

Given the number of hours we are to spend travelling, the next three days are likely to be something of a blur. I just hope that we have enough energy to take in a least a few of the sights and enjoy our few hours of down time.

If possible I will try to post while we are in transit, though given our rather full schedule I am not sure if this will be possible. At least after the fact I should have a few photos or comments about what is sure to be an experience heavy trip.

Back to Newfoundland - 4

About two hours ago we answered the breakfast buffet question with a resounding 'yes.' All three of us then made our way to the restaurant where we did our best to get $16.95 worth of breakfast. Of course, as none of us are complete pigs I don't think that we really succeeded in getting our money's worth, but that being said I think it was probably the right call given the circumstances.

The most interesting thing about the breakfast buffet was perhaps the menu. In addition to standard issue breakfast items like hash browns, sausages, eggs, and bacon, this buffet also had steamed vegetables, roast beef, fish and brewis, mashed potatoes, and a number of dishes that weren't the least bit breakfasty.

In other news, Rebecca just alerted me to the fact that we can now see land from the ferry. I guess this means that we are getting closer. The other nice development is that the fog doesn't seem to be as dense as it was just a few minutes ago. And even nice is that there seems to be blue sky above the land that we can see.

A few minutes ago Kirsten and I made a trip outside. As expected, it was pretty windy.



[Embedded video]

Oh, and as far as I can tell these clips are representative (with the notable exception of the level of light) of the whole crossing).

Back to Newfoundland - 3

We have now been on the ferry for close to 10 hours and only just been able to obtain an internet connection. Hopefully none of you waited up for my update.

Though the captain warned us of rough seas and we were about 45 minutes late leaving North Sydney, the trip has not been unpleasantly rough.

Right now the big question of the morning is whether or not we will go to the $16.95 per person breakfast buffet. My thought is that if we do decide to make the purchase that we should try to drag the experience out so that we can get a few hours of time out of the experience.

Whatever we decide to do I am sure food will be in all of our futures.

Back to Newfoundland - 1

Neil, Kirsten, Rebecca, and I are currently in Halifax, though in just a few minutes we will be on our way to to North Sydney, Cape Breton and then the ferry to Argentia.

While the skies aren't particularly bright today, the weather doesn't look so bad that driving will be treacherous or unpleasant. Though, as always, we won't really know about these things until we hit the road. And it is also possible that conditions will change as we cross the province.

For a number of reasons I am looking forward to this trip. One of the first reasons is that I haven't been on the Halifax to Cape Breton route since about 1995 and I think it will be nice to see this part of the province. Another reason that I am looking forward to this trip is that I am looking forward to seeing the new ferry (and I haven't been on this crossing since about 1995). Thirdly, I am looking forward to seeing Newfoundland in the summer, something I haven't seen since 2008.

Anyway, I should probably pack up my computer so that we can start loading up the car.

My hope is that the ferry has WiFi/internet access and that I will be able to provide updates while we are in transit (because I know that you all love my live coverage of relatively mundane events).