Using schools for polling stations is a double standard, NL Alliance leader says

NL Alliance Leader Graydon Pelley says the public haven't been allowed into schools for months, so people shouldn't be heading there to vote.

Public health restrictions have kept the buildings closed to the public to keep students and staff separated from outside visitors and safe from the potential spread of COVID-19. 

"It concerns me now that all of a sudden, when we're still not allowing the public into the schools, that Elections NL now is looking like they're wanting to use some of our buildings for public space for anyone who wants to come into them," Pelley said on Sunday.

"Whether the numbers are low or not, and I appreciate where we are as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians with the pandemic, but it's the principle of the thing."

Pelley calls the idea "double standards."

But the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District says there's a plan in place to keep things in line with public health measures. 

In an emailed statement to CBC News, the NLESD said Elections NL contacted the school district indicating it required additional space for polling stations this year, given COVID-19 considerations.

• Complete coverage: Read all of Newfoundland and Labrador Votes stories

Welcome to the weekend Election Notebook, your source of the latest news from the campaign trail.

A COVID plan

The NLESD and Elections NL plan involves the use of just over 50 schools throughout the province for polling day on Feb. 13 — most of which are in communities where no other suitable locations are available, the NLESD statement reads.

With the election coming on a Saturday this time around — a first for the province — the NLESD said there will be no staff or students in the buildings.

"Some locations (fewer than 10) will also be available for advance polling on Saturday, Feb. 6. Access to schools will be limited to the polling areas (e.g., gymnasiums) only," reads the statement. 

"One-way entrances and exits will be established in the polling areas, and district custodians will be on hand all day Saturday (and on Sunday, if deemed necessary) to facilitate cleaning as per established health and safety protocols approved by public health." 

Students will be back in class on Monday, the NLESD said.

Pelley recently pulled out of the race after health issues had him sidelined from campaigning almost from the beginning.

On Sunday, the NL Alliance released a statement on Twitter saying Pelley had been discharged from hospital after two weeks, and is now home in Deer Lake recovering.

PCs preach federal help for financial woes — again 

PC Leader Ches Crosbie was beating the drum for federal help again on Saturday, just a few days after suggesting the province should use the possibility of bankruptcy as a bargaining chip.

Crosbie said support from Ottawa could help to solve the province's financial problems. 

"We need to work with them on a joint plan to do this. We're not going to do this by ourselves, we need a hand up from the federal government given the crisis situation we find ourselves in," he said.

Newfoundland and Labrador has been "ripped off" under Confederation, Crosbie said, and he wants to renegotiate terms of federal equalization to get a "fair deal" for the province.

But there are things we can do to help ourselves in the meantime.

"There are efficiencies we can find in government spending [by] sitting down with labour unions, with front line workers, we will work on that," he said.

One idea Crosbie suggested was to put out the for sale sign.

He said the province could sell off buildings and vehicles it isn't using to make some extra cash.

"We need to take an inventory of government assets, and the ones that aren't in use, we need to put them on the market," he said.

"We can't afford to have vehicles sitting in snow drifts and their tires sinking into the ice because they haven't been driven for the last month, so those are the kinds of efficiencies we need to look for."

Savings to be found, NDP says

Meanwhile, NDP Leader Alison Coffin said it's time to make different decisions on allocating money, adding she thinks the province needs to invest in the public service and a "more rigorous tax regime."

But, she said there are plenty of places to save money as well.

"The oil and gas corporation has got a $25 million a year allocation," she said. 

Coffin said other savings can be found in government programs that are being underutilized, but wasn't specific in what those programs are.

"I really need to get in and pull some of these books apart," she said. 

Liberals plan to incubate community groups

While campaigning in the Conception Bay area Saturday, Liberal Leader Andrew Furey announced his party's plans to put out a request for proposals (RFP) for a group to launch an incubator to help non-profit and community organizations succeed.

(Incubators are often used in the tech sector to help grow small startup companies quickly.)

"We've seen how accelerators and incubators work in business and we want to do something similar for the community sector so that they're able to come together and share ideas and grow those ideas," Furey told CBC News Saturday.

A news release on the plan Saturday morning was vague on details — like cost or timeline — but said a Liberal government would "develop the social infrastructure that will allow our community organizations to grow."

With the announcement of the RFP on Saturday and plans to set up an arts advisory council on Friday, along with the looming economic recovery report from Moya Greene and her team, Furey said he's not trying to have other people make the decisions.

"I refuse to see how gathering smart, educated people with ideas that want to support the future of Newfoundland and Labrador is a bad one," he said.

"That's the paradigm shift that I want to bring to governing, you seek the evidence first, you seek the good ideas first, then you consult and then you act. I mean, that's solid decision making and that's something that's sometimes has been missing in the past and that's led to some of the fiscal issues that we're facing currently."

Furey said Muskrat Falls is chief among those issues the province is facing, and like Crosbie, he said help from Ottawa could solve those issues.

"We need to sit down with the federal government and renegotiate the fiscal framework for Muskrat Falls," he said.

"Once we get over that hurdle, that's going to allow us some flexibility within our own fiscal framework in order to deal with the structural issues that face the province."

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The Notebook time machine

A puzzling inconsistency caught our eye at the Election Notebook: How could this be the 51st election in Newfoundland and Labrador's history, but the resulting House of Assembly be the 50th general assembly?

Surely each election has to produce a result... right?

To answer that question, we have to take a trip in the Election Notebook time machine, and head all the way back to 1836.

An election was scheduled for the November of that year. It was just the second general election in the colony's history. The road to democracy had been rocky, and nowhere near done: Women could not yet vote, nor could Indigenous people or non-British subjects, and Catholics had just been given political rights. People living in Labrador had no political representation at all.

• Read more about the reform era in colonial Newfoundland at Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador

Two main groups contested the 1836 election: The Liberals, sometimes called reformers, were mostly a Catholic and worker political vehicle. The Conservatives tended to represent Anglicans and wealthier merchant interests.

Those names are familiar to us, but the process by which elections took place certainly was not. The secret ballot had yet to arrive to the colony, so those who were eligible to vote had to declare their preference publicly. The vote also took place over the course of several days.

This process lended itself to violence and intimidation, and historian Gertrude E. Gunn wrote in her Political History of Newfoundland 1832-1864 that an organized effort to intimidate voters was launched in St. John's and in Conception Bay.

"Despite the presence of the garrison at the courthouse, many householders dared not vote in defiance of the mob, and in the interest of peace, the field was soon left to those favoured by the [Catholic] priests," she wrote of the vote in St. John's.

"In Conception Bay...the first tally of five voters to come forward for a Protestant merchant was severely beaten and the rest of the voters were too cowed to appear. After several days of street brawling, assault and intimidation, the election closed with the withdrawal of this candidate and his colleague."

On Nov. 9, Gunn writes, then-Governor Henry Prescott ordered a meeting of colonial officials to discuss the political violence. During that meeting, the Chief Justice at the time, Henry Boulton, pointed out that the writs of election did not "bear the Great Seal" of Newfoundland.

Far from being treated as mere administrative trivia, this led colonial officials to search to Britain for answers on what to do. Some argued the entire election must be invalidated, and on Jan 16, 1837  James Crowdy, the colonial secretary, signed a proclamation disavowing the writs he issued and ordering a brand new election.

The Liberals, who had just won big, were furious. While a mix up over a glorified stamp was the official reason, Liberals and their supporters believed colonial officials were simply looking for an excuse to interfere in their reform movement. Some historians agree: In 1959, Leslie Harris (who the Harris Centre at Memorial University was eventually named after) wrote in a thesis that Chief Justice Boulton was a "high Tory," who was "not inclined to accept defeat without a last ditch stand."

Harris wrote that officials in Britain felt this whole fuss could have really been ignored, but since Boulton was technically correct, and since he brought it up, the problem had to be fixed. The British legislature was unable to retroactively fix the writs at the time, as it wasn't sitting, and a new election was ordered.

But that interference, real or perceived, did not last long. The Liberals won again in 1837, and Gunn writes they immediately started efforts to expand the powers of the new assembly, and investigate "the discovery of the unsealed writs."

So that's why we've had 50 elections, but only 49 assemblies. According to the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, only one district changed party hands in the 1837 election from who would have been seated after 1836, so we can guess the real 2nd General Assembly would have felt a lot like the lost second assembly.

More than 180 years later, our democracy has evolved considerably, and seals aren't that big of a deal anymore. The Elections Act of 1991 contains no reference to seals, and a spokesperson for Elections NL told CBC News that they hadn't even heard of it.

The Election Notebook extends a hearty thanks to Andrea Hyde at the Legislative Library at the House of Assembly for her help with researching this question.

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