Tagged: New Brunswick
Parks Canada: a finger on the tendering scale – updated
Parks Canada is looking for a contractor to develop a çoastal beaches stewardship manual for New Brunswick. A posting on the MERX tendering website lists the following mandatory qualifications for the less-than-$25,000 contract:
Recent experience (within the last 3 years) conducting research and monitoring activities and writing professional communications documents related to species at risk and ecological issues in New Brunswick. The contractor must demonstrate his/her knowledge of local community issues, as well as his/her knowledge of piping plover ecology and have experience in communicating piping plover and coastal messages in New Brunswick.
Gee, do you suppose Parks Canada might have a certain someone in mind for this contract?
[UPDATE] Cynical Contrarian reader JM comments:
And it’s probably someone who got a golden handshake in the last few years and is getting a good pension. Why give work to someone who needs it when you can give it to someone who doesn’t?
Hydro Quebecwick unveiled
Inter-provincial power grid diagram shows the startling degree to which Nova Scotia is an energy island. This is a big obstacle to the development of local renewable energy supplies like wind and tidal, which are intermittent and therefore require robust interconnection with nearby power porducers and users. The Hydro Quebecwick deal means that any increase in our connectivity with the rest of the world will be at the mercy of the new monopoly owner of the grid, the Government of Quebec.
Premiers Shawn Graham (NB) and Jean Charest (QC) have unveiled the details of the Hydro Quebecwick deal. Quebec gets a monopoly on eastern Canadian access to US power customers; New Brunswick gets a mess of short term pottage and some debt relief, but gets to keep two white elephant dirty coal power plants. This may one day turn out to be as big a fleecing as the one Quebec gave Joey Smallwood 40 years ago.
It’s hard not to see this as a dark day for the rest of Atlantic Canada. Bye bye, Green Grid, a critical element in developing promising renewable but intermittent local Maritime energy sources like wind and tidal. Bye bye, fair access to US electricity markets, an equally critical element in developing those resources.
David Wheeler take note: This is very bad news for anyone anxious for action on climate change in Atlantic Canada. Considering he was blindsided, Premier Darrell Dexter’s response has been appropriately dignified, but make no mistake: this presents his administration with a huge challenge. Like Newfoundland, Nova Scotia’s influence on the national stage has reached such a low ebb that hardly anyone there will give it a thought.
See also: News release. MOU. MOU summary. (All are PDFs.)
