Uncategorized – Page 2 – Babel-on-the-Bay

You can’t cancel Canada Day.

June 27, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Trading barbs and cheap shots, Canada’s 43^rd parliament rose for the summer recess this past week and will likely not return in the fall. The mood of the house and its far-flung, pandemic-separated membership was that this last sitting was the precursor to a general election.

The silliest part of all the partisan exchanges was conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s claim that he was up against a left-wing coalition that wants to cancel Canada Day. Maybe he thought this claim would endear him to Canadians who honour our country. It is more likely, it made him look silly. The only Canada Day that has been cancelled is the one normally scheduled for the front lawn of the parliament buildings in Ottawa. Nobody wants to celebrate in a huge hole in the grounds during the major rebuilding of parliament.

Some cities have also cancelled Canada Day celebrations due to the remaining danger of large crowds spreading new variants of covid-19. That is also regrettable but the fact remains that nobody has cancelled Canada Day. It happens on July one every year.

Probably the funniest partisan claim was from new democrat leader Jagmeet Singh. Singh is convinced that anything the liberals did that is helping Canadians through the coronavirus scourge was inspired by the new democrats. He complained that the liberals did not do enough.

All these complaints did not leave much for the Bloc Québécois to complain about, so they retrieved an oldy and goldy. They complained bitterly that the liberals are not doing enough to support the provinces on health care.

In answer to all of this criticism, prime minister Trudeau bitched about the toxic atmosphere of the current parliament. He thought the other party leaders were just crabbing about him because they had no contribution to add to helping Canadians.

I don’t know about you but I intend to celebrate Canada Day this year. Our country is still a work in process and I think it has great potential. I just wish that we did not have such crappy leadership for our political parties.

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Sajjan Is Not the Sex Police.

June 19, 2021June 18, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The opposition parties in Ottawa have voted for a politically motivated censure and are demanding the resignation of Canada’s defence minister Harjit Sajjan. The opposition parties are complaining that he has not done enough about the senior staff of the military having or wanting to have sex. To his credit, it would seem that Mr. Sajjan is not interested nor involved in the sex lives of Canada’s generals and admirals.

And, frankly, everyone in parliament should follow Mr. Sajjan’s example. They should realize that that celibacy is not required in our armed forces. We have a military that is made up of Canadians looking for travel, organization in their lives and a reliable paycheque. The military houses them, feeds them, clothes them and looks after their health. They lead a nice life and rarely go in harms way. And if you get some sex occasionally, life can be even better.

But, as in any organization, there are restrictions on the sex. The boys have to stay out of the girls’ barracks and the girls have to stay out of the boys’ barracks. And, like in many organizations, men and women with authority over another person cannot demand sexual favours from the people who report to them. In the military, this is considered an offence under the Queen’s Regulations for the particular military service. And, as each military service has its own quasi police force, offenses that become known are handled, so to speak, and disciplined within the service.

There is more of a problem when you hear of complaints within the ranks of generals and admirals. These are the people who make the rules and it is very awkward when they break them. The problem is that people of this rank are expected to know when to defend themselves and when to capitulate.

People who rise to this level in the services are expected to know when a person of sexual interest to them has said yes, no or maybe. They are also required to know when the relationship could be considered improper.

The only body that can deal effectively with indiscretions at this level is the general staff of the military. The defence minister has to accept the decision of the general staff or appoint a new general staff.

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Ottawa: The Greens have a Problem.

June 18, 2021June 17, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Sorry Justin, your liberals will have to delay your election plans. The Green’s have problems with their leadership, membership and people jumping ship. And it is partly your party’s fault. You really did not need to have that Green party member from Fredericton jump to the liberal party so soon.

Admittedly, the greens are never very good at elections but you might need two or three more greens to jump ship after the election to keep you and your family in Rideau Cottage. You never know when some green might be useful.

And just think, with the current green leader, you could get a Jewish woman and a black environmentalist. That is sure covering a lot of bases with just one MP. Besides, you could arrange for her to run in a winnable electoral district.

I think it is likely that former green leader Elizabeth May would do a better job of running the liberal party. Between your dress-up family holidays, rich friends, ‘We’ friends, pipeline envy and mistreatment of female MPs, it would be good if the liberals had a ready replacement standing by.

And there is no good reason to call the election in August anyway. Everyone will just blame you for spoiling their summer. And political canvassing is tough enough in cooler weather. In a hot August, all you get is sunstroke.

By October, we can probably have the pandemic behind us and be ready to get serious about an election. Nothing is guaranteed but no other party has done as much for Canadians lately as your liberals. We even have a few articulate liberal MPs from Quebec who understand our constitution and are willing to speak out about it.

We have noticed that you have been unwilling to address constitutional issues and your opponents in parliament, Messrs. O’Toole and Singh, are equally ill-equipped to address them. After the election, you might want to step down and let the liberal party choose a more competent leader.

You showed a lot of promise in the spring of 2015. It was just too bad you had no follow-through.

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Bell Canada Tolls for Thee!

June 17, 2021June 16, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Looking at a two-page, aren’t-we-nice advertisement for Bell Canada in the Toronto Star yesterday, it brought memories of a friend who passed away some dozen years ago. When I first met Max, he was a reporter covering the National Assembly in Quebec City for the now defunct Montreal Star. He had great stories to tell and many insights into Quebec politics. We renewed our acquaintance after the Montreal Star folded in 1979 and Max moved his family to Toronto where he had been hired as an editorial writer by the Toronto Star.

It came as a surprise, after a year or so, when he said he was moving to Ottawa to work on public relations for Bell Canada. It did not strike me as a great career move.

After Max and his family were settled in Ottawa and I was there on business with the government, Max invited me to tour his workplace at Bell. What I saw was a public relations operation that was larger than most public relations firms in Canada. And this was just the part dealing with the federal government. I would swear the staff promoting Bell Canada outnumbered Canada’s members of parliament.

It could hardly be said but it was obvious to me that Max did not see the operation as a collegial newsroom-type environment. This was a factory.

For a company that had always been respected as a stock for widows and orphans, Bell Canada has fallen into disrepute with Canadians. They see the company as immodest, greedy and uncaring. More people seem to hate the company than respect it. Maybe that is the reason it has so many people working at trying to win friends for it.

But putting all those people to work on its image does not seem to solve Bell’s problems. Maybe if it learned to treat its customers with more respect, the company bosses would learn something about customer relations. It does little good to have all those people telling members of parliament how important the company might be when the MPs go home to their ridings and hear what Canadian telecoms are now doing to reap more money from their voters.

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Teaching Tolerance

June 16, 2021June 15, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Running home in heavy rain as a youngster, I noted, while passing a small black lady on our street, that she was wearing a raincoat just like mine. When I got home, soaking wet, I found my mother had given my raincoat to that lady who had been visiting her at our home. Mother made the point that she had told me it was going to rain and I should take my raincoat. Since I did not think I needed it, she had given it to someone in need.

That was mother’s approach to charity. With six kids to raise by herself in downtown Toronto, it was a while before I got a new raincoat.

I remember my siblings and I making jokes about mother over the years because of her childhood in Chicago. The least of the jokes was that if a black family moved in next door, mother would start packing. It could not have been further from the truth. She would have been the first at their door with a casserole. We children said that was cruel—mother was not a good cook.

My kid brother and I were the youngest and we got the brunt of her training in tolerance. She was rising quickly with her growing company and would occasionally accept dinner invitations from co-workers who wanted to show off their ethnic cooking.

I remember the first time she took two of us with her to dinner with a Hindu family of the mother and two children. Her kids looked on wide-eyed as my brother and I enjoyed what they considered as routine. In our honor, the lady served apple pie for dessert. After we left, we told mother it was two thumbs down on the Indian apple pie.

But, living in Toronto in those days, as it transitioned to becoming a truly metropolitan city, we learned tolerance, acceptance and good food. How can you hate someone after a decent dinner together? The experiences also taught us that there was more to life than mother’s overcooked roast beef, boiled potatoes and canned vegetables.

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Crocodile tears from Bell Canada.

June 15, 2021June 14, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The new owners of the Toronto Star should be ashamed. When reading an article on a business opinion page on the weekend, it became apparent that I was reading an advertisement. This was not balanced reporting. It might be something that the company sends out in a news release but was not a report by an impartial and knowledgeable reporter. The source was obviously some public relations person writing on behalf of the president of Bell Canada’s residential and small business services!

This was purported to be an article about the recent reversal of a 2019 plan by the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to make deep cuts in Bell Canada’s wholesale rates for use by resellers of Bell’s Internet infrastructure.

Bell Canada’s near-monopoly position because of its copper wire and fiber optic networks allows the company to charge what the market will bear for its Internet services. And those rates are substantially higher than those charged in other developed nations for similar broadband services.

The Toronto Star article was written to make it appear that the CRTC decision in 2019 was some flight of whimsy. The reason the 2019 rates were never implemented was that Bell Canada and other networking telecoms had the rates challenged in court, denounced to politicians and anyone else willing to listen. Heaven forbid the Canadians ever get a fair shake in Internet pricing.

The facts are that the CRTC had set the previous 2016 wholesale rates so high that savvy customers saw that the resellers rates were no lower than Bell’s or other telecoms. There was no wiggle room for a better price.

A great deal of study and evaluation went into the 2019 figures. What the telecoms claimed as serious cuts were in fact the cuts that were needed to give the resellers an opportunity to carve out a piece of the Internet market. Internet customers are not about to organize a tag day for Canadian telecoms.

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Time to retire Mr. Olive.

June 14, 2021June 13, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Some of the basic skills you look for in reporters is their ability to research, to learn and to explain for readers. It is therefore with regret that we report that David Olive of the Toronto Star is overdue for retirement. If he must insist on writing the same errors in his opinion pieces about Canada’s fossil fuel industry, he is not keeping pace with the needs of his readers.

One of his most egregious errors is to refer to Alberta’s tar sands product as ‘heavy oil.’ If he just once referenced the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) information on that subject, he might learn something. USGS defines oil by its viscosity—how easily it flows. Bitumen from the Athabasca and Cold Lake tar sands does not flow well enough to be called heavy oil. That bitumen has to be mixed with a diluent to send it through pipelines.

And that is why the Gulf Coast refineries in Texas are not interested in Alberta’s bitumen. The Texas refineries can get Venezuelan bitumen—that has a much better viscosity rating than the Canadian product.

The reason to send the Canadian gunk to the Texas ports was to fill the holds of ships that were heading back across the Atlantic empty. There are many other refineries in this world interested in cheap—though highly polluting—sources of oil.

What is really annoying about Mr. Olive’s lack of research is his claim that Canada has never had a national energy strategy. Maybe he was too young in 1980 to remember the National Energy Program introduced by Pierre Trudeau’s liberals. If he had ever been to Alberta, he might have been given an earful on the local reaction to that strategy. It was not well received there.

It does much to explain the reason that Pierre Trudeau’s son bought the TransMountain pipeline and is wasting billions on twinning the pipeline to carry diluted bitumen to an environmentally sensitive shipping point in the Burrard Inlet. It might not impress many Albertans. It certainly does not impress Canadians who care about our environment.

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Doug Dares Deny Us.

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The Ontario legislature is in session this beautiful weekend. Doug Ford and his conservative henchmen are attacking our right to free speech. They want to use the ‘Notwithstanding Clause’ of our constitutional rights and freedoms to silence third-party advertising close to elections. They do not like to be made to look foolish.

But they look even more foolish today. The man who likes to think of himself as a populist premier does not like the truth flung at him through the media. It matters little to him that he can spend other people’s money to tell his version of the truth, he wants to deny others the right to respond—at least during the election campaign or too close to it.

The Tories can hardly attack the right of their opponent parties to argue with them during an election campaign. That right is protected in a democracy.

But not always. When teachers’ unions band together to make their case, they should not be allowed to say they are an anonymous gathering of ‘Working Families.’ If you have something to say to me buster, use your own name!

When a rich conservative defends the injustices of Doug Ford, he or she should sign his or her name to it. Let us know who you are and let us judge.

Elections are a time for truths. They are a time to review and grade the actions and aspirations of our politicians. They are a time for the voters to be honest with themselves. It is not a time to be selfish. It is a time to look ahead. We give politicians an enormous amount of power over us. We expect them to serve our common interests. The inconvenience of democracy is that it is not just your path that needs to be followed. It is the needs of all.

What is being debated this weekend at Queen’s Park is not the needs or wants of Ontario citizens. It is the needs and wants of the conservative party and its undemocratic leader. He and his party should be ashamed.

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“The Road Not Taken.”

June 11, 2021June 10, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Ontario’s new democrats see victory only in their dreams. They are at the fork in the road of Robert Frost’s poem: The Road Not Taken. It is not a question of which path offers the accident of Bob Rae’s NDP government of the 1990s. It is the reality of the question of whether Ontario voters will want to reward the NDP for services rendered during the four years of Ford government?

And that might not be much. It is the Ford government itself that will help choose its successor. Ford has to choose who he will fight. Fighting both liberal and NDP opponents only leads to confusion. It could be as late as April next year that the voter mindset starts to choose the ultimate winner. Hopefully, covid-19 will be laid to rest. People will be more concerned about the options of the future. They will congregate at the crossroads, ready to place their bets.

And that future will hardly be a reward for the past. That is not how it works. It will be a tortoise and hare race to topple the conservative braggarts. The NDP might hold the poll position but that is a position at the beginning of the race, if it even exists.

It is leadership that matters most. It is a pattern of Upper Canada and Ontario elections since before confederation. Ford and Horwath are known and both wanting. The liberal turtle has yet to cast aside his shell.

The voters know Ford for his bluster, his broken promises, his confusion, his lack of democracy, his denial of our rights and his cronyism.

Horwath has her own problems. Her lacklustre leadership has led the NDP nowhere during their years of opportunity. She might have more money and more credible candidates but she still leads a party of losers.

The substantive challenge is for the liberals. With a rump in Queen’s Park, they have done better than expected. There is a collective wisdom in the liberal caucus that goes far beyond the numbers. The leader, the turtle has to shatter that shell and show the public direction and leadership.

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Don’t Dare be Different.

June 10, 2021June 9, 2021 by Peter Lowry

You ask where bigotry and intolerance come from. It comes from being different. Does what you are wearing define you? Does your language speak for you? Does your religion demand of you? The simple fact is being different can make you a target for intolerance and acting out.

I was very annoyed with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh the other day when he ranted against the racism he perceives in Canada. Rant against racism sir but do not rant against Canada.

Racism exists. It breeds in ignorance—even in a well-educated society. It is here but it is hardly systemic. It is like a weed on our well-cared for lawn. You dig it out when you find it and another grows in its place. You always have to keep weeding.

It is why we worry about those pitifully small-minded politicians in Quebec who feed off the tribalism of language with such impunity. They think they can deny people their religious symbolism. They are wrong. That is bigotry. Call it what it is.

And do not divide children in religious schools. Children need to feel accepted. They want to play, not hate.

I remember people being called ‘DPs’ after the Second World War. I was a child wondering what was wrong with being a ‘displaced person’? What was wrong with the Italian immigrants whose children had to translate for parents?

One meets racism in many ways, in many forms. It is in bad jokes that people send you. It is in careless terminology. It is in an unfriendly manner. It is the childish and ugly use of spray paint on the local synagogue or on the plinth of a statue. It is also in the type casting of races in movies and television programs. It surrounds us and it holds us back.

All we can do is keep on weeding.

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