Category: Uncategorized

A Test for the Tories.

by Peter Lowry

A by-election has been called for the Ontario federal electoral district of Mississauga-Lakeshore. What makes it of broader interest, is that it is a typical Ontario riding that would be a must have for the conservative’s new leader if he ever expects to get close to being prime minister. This will be the first by-election for Pierre Poilievre as conservative leader and is a fair test of his potential.

The riding, both provincial and federal has bounced back and forth between the conservatives and liberals since being created in 1979. It was conservative Don Blenkarn’s federal riding through the 1980s to the conservative debacle in 1993. I always enjoyed a chat with Don when I bumped into him in Ottawa. He was his own man and he had a winning personality.

Mind you, I also like the liberal who is contesting this by-election. Charles Sousa was the provincial MPP for Mississauga-South and served as finance minister in the Kathleen Wynne liberal government. He brought a lot of experience in banking and empathy for the voters to the position. He and his family live in the Clarkson area of the riding.

Sven Spengemann, the liberal MP for the riding, stepped down in May this year to accept an appointment with the United Nations. The conservative candidate is a former Peel County policeman, Ron Chhinzer. The NDP candidate is Julia Kole, who previously ran for the provincial seat.

Mississauga-Lakeshore takes in the older part of the City of Mississauga between the Queen Elizabeth Way and Lake Ontario. It is an area of well-established communities ranging from middle class to some more affluent.

The riding population is predominantly European in origin but with a steady growth in the number of thriving newcomers to Canada. It has many of the characteristics of the more affluent suburban ridings across Southern Ontario.

The most critical need in by-elections is communicating with the voters and impressing them with the importance of voting. It is also a time for testing new ideas in campaigning.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre’s Progress.

by Peter Lowry

Three months in office and little more has been revealed by the new leader of the conservative party. A career politician, he moved immediately to the pictures with his wife and children to soften his hard-ass image. Like something on his to-do list, that was done. Now move on.

I thought it would be fun to call him “Pee-Pee, but he is just not a fun kind of guy.

I also think of him as something of a nerd. He has never held a real job. His ambition is to be the next prime minister. He would do better as an undertaker.

But his ambition is not necessarily ours. We hardly want an acolyte of Stephen Harper, who likes Bitcoin, appointing the board at the Bank of Canada. And Canada would hardly build much of a future under a guy who thinks you can only have new government programs if you cancel old ones. He needs lessons in economics but that should not be at our expense.

I have fun imagining Poilievre appearing before the Rouleau Inquiry in Ottawa and explaining the difference between the trouble makers and the ‘peaceful’ truck drivers who brought their rigs to Ottawa last winter. After all, he welcomed them all to Ottawa. I think he figured that these were his kind of conservatives. Anyone with a flag saying “F**K Trudeau is his kind of conservative. It is both crude and rude.

The one thing I will say for Poilievre is that he is a true-blue conservative. You will never hear him express any concern for the poor and the needy. He would give tax credits to the rich and leave the poor to charity. Ask him again where he stands on safe injection sites to end needless deaths.

And if he thinks that Justin Trudeau is an elite—what the hell is he? Millions of Canadians would love to have his guaranteed parliamentary pension.

Politically, Poilievre belies his name. He is a western conservative, who believes in all things Albertan. I have never heard him speak of conservation, the environment or of climate change. I doubt if he even believes in reducing our carbon output.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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It’s Boring.

by Peter Lowry

The inquiry in Ottawa is stagnating. Justice Paul Rouleau of the Ontario Court of Appeal is getting testier. He has little time to hear the questions and less time to write the answers. Our federal government stands accused. The accusers are people who came to Ottawa with their convoys of trucks. They came and they stayed. They were the mean and angry, the politicized, the lost and the confused. They were the Canadian equivalent to the Trump-led hoodlums who set to sack the American Capitol the year before—but without even the limited leadership of a Trump.

Justice Rouleau’s inquiry is now into the stage of boring. The lawyers for all and sundry plod on. Viewers are challenged to stay awake. The challenge explained by the justice in the beginning of his inquiry is that it is a legally required investigation into the use of the 1988 Emergencies Act. Was it necessary? His report to parliament will contain his finding.

But we are the jury. And what we know now is that leadership of the events in Ottawa that winter was as confused as the participants and the police. What was the cost of living in downtown Ottawa at that time? Was it frightening? Or was it just a confusion of noisy tourists with no idea of where to park?

And who says that there is no political interference with the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Who was leading Ottawa police chief, Peter Sloly astray?  He needed help, not critiques. The answer to his calls should have been “What do you need?” and “When do you need it?” It was his turf, his city.

The most important witness has left the country. He probably expects to be back in time. That is the prime minister. It is his cabinet that settled on bringing in the emergencies act, instead of the army. He is the defendant. And do those lawyers for the government of Canada represent him?

Listening to the endless repetition of these lawyers and their obscure questions reminds me of a time years ago when as foreman of a jury, I had to explain patiently to my fellow jurors that not liking a defendant’s choice of lawyer should not be held against the defendant.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Ford Flinches.

by Peter Lowry

For a guy who thinks bombast beats brains, Ontario premier Doug Ford flinched recently. He was facing the prospect of a general strike of both public and private sector unions in Ontario. He had done the unforgiveable. He had denied a union the right to strike.

Mr. Ford did not seem to understand what he had done that was different. You would have thought someone on his staff would have advised him. When people, who are not allowed to strike, reach an impasse in bargaining, they are typically allowed impartial mediation to resolve the wage or benefits matter under discussion.

I’m beginning to wonder about the entire crew at Queen’s Park being in the dark.

You would think that at least the attorney general would know something about customary practices. I guess he doesn’t remember that one. Regretfully, my member of the legislature happens to be the attorney general. That guy doesn’t even seem to know enough to throw a bone to his riding occasionally. I have no idea what he might have done for Barrie over the past four years.

But to be fair, I was pleased to see Doug Ford keep one of his promises the other day. He was announcing more work beginning on the Bradford Bypass. This connection between highways 400 and 404 might be looked down on by the environmentalists south of Bradford but it can save those of us north of Bradford a lot of time. We used to have to drive through the Town of Newmarket to get to highway 404 from the 400 and visa-versa.

Of course, when electrified, the GO Trains in Ontario will also save time. I would be delighted if the electric trains would get me to Toronto faster. Toronto has an excellent transit service, so I hardly need a car in Toronto.

But, in balance, Doug Ford is still the schmuck whose younger brother trained him in politics. It was in municipal politics. The four years that Doug Ford served as councillor on Toronto Council taught him that the developer is the politician’s best friend. If the developers want highways, give them highways. If the developers want our Greenbelt, give them Greenbelt. Doug was a good student.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Pee-Pee is Patient.

by Peter Lowry

That champion of Bitcoin, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre (Pee-Pee) tells us that he supports the peaceful elements in last winter’s “freedom convoy.” He seems to be waiting for Justice Paul Rouleau to complete his inquiry to help separate the good ones from the bad. Maybe he thinks those languishing in their portable hot tub were just idling as they waited to pay their fines for parking their truck illegally on Wellington Street, in front of the parliament buildings.

Or maybe Pee-Pee could have asked, when passing out donuts to these people, who came to see the progress in refurbishing our nation’s parliament. And then there were those testing their airhorns into the night to ward off peeping toms from disturbing the Ottawa residents.

But Pee-Pee and his fellow Tories are still determined to have Justin Trudeau and the liberals castigated for the use of the 1988 emergencies act. They thought it was a serious overreach and an abuse of power. I wonder if Justin’s father could have guessed that it would be his eldest son who would first use that act.

I think many Canadians would like to learn who told the Ottawa police that the convoy was just coming for a weekend? It would also have been helpful to know for sure just who at Queen’s Park told the Ontario Provincial Police that they could critique the Ottawa plan of action before they would participate in helping ‘clear the decks,’ so to speak.

Pee-Pee seems reluctant to give his opinion other than say he supports the right of protesters to protest for their “livelihoods and liberties.” What the occupation of Ottawa’s Wellington Street had to do with these concerns has never been mentioned.

And assuming that the liberty they wanted was to refuse vaccinations for a deadly disease, I think they should get stuffed. If someone is helping spread COVID-19 by going back and forth across the border without being vaccinated, they hardly deserve any sympathy. And if all these anti-vaxxers wanted to meet the prime minister, they were out of luck. He doesn’t just pop out of his office to do selfies with tourists.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Does Democracy Die?

by Peter Lowry

We have more to think about this Remembrance Day than the dead of two world wars. We need to think about what they died for. From North America, our soldiers crossed oceans to die. Our sailors took them on these journeys and many died in cold waters. Our airplanes went to war and airmen died in coffins with wings. It was unlikely that they died to preserve the peace, order and good governance of democracy?

It is unlikely they thought that much about it. There was not much thought for democracy in those years. Many went for the adventure in foreign lands. They left behind dull, boring jobs, living in the family home and the depression and the dullness of life in the early twentieth century. War was promoted by the propaganda of the movies. War was an adventure.

Canadians went to war against the Kaiser and against a Nazi despot and Japan’s emperor. And yet, we were credited with the saving of mum’s apple pie and democracy. Did we ever think of democracy in those days? We went to vote in large numbers then. We saw voting as a responsibility. It was part of our way of life. And the servicemen and women who did return from foreign wars slotted themselves back into the regimes of domesticity, employment and child rearing. Those we left behind in foreign soil earned this day—the eleventh day of the eleventh month and on the eleventh hour—for remembrance.

But the monuments we have built do not tell the story. To the monuments of War One, we chiselled the words for War Two. And for too long, we feared the need for a War Three.

Maybe War Three was a world-wide pandemic. Do we need remembrance for those who succumbed in that struggle? Or those, in a position of authority who failed us? And, why did this battle leave behind such anger? Why, instead of strength, are we showing darkening divisions in our democracy, hate instead of respect and political divisions that need to be breached.

Is it democracy itself that is failing? Does the anger replace voting? Does democracy fade as we challenge authority? We need to look with optimism where we are going.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Justin’s Fear of Change.

by Peter Lowry

If you Google it, you will find ‘Fear of Change’ is called metathesiophobia. So, let’s just call it fear of change. The prime minister made it very clear, in his battle of wits with Ontario premier Doug Ford the other day, that he was not about to start trying to change the constitution.

The prime minister was criticizing the Ontario premier’s use of the constitution’s ‘Not Withstanding’ clause to temporarily deny Ontario’s CUPE education employees their right to strike. The premier doubted that the prime minister would want to sit down with the premiers to change that clause.

And he was right. Justin Trudeau agreed that he was not about to try to change Canada’s constitution. I believe that. He told me 12 years ago that he had no interest in changing the constitution. He seems consistent.

I think that kid got his mother’s brains and his father’s nose.

Premier Ford was quoted as saying that the ‘Not Withstanding’ clause was just a “constitutional tool” available to provincial governments. What he does not seem to know is that there is another clause in the constitution that talks about ‘disallowance and reservation.’ It is the clause in our constitution that allows the lieutenant governors or the federal government to delay or disallow a provincial law.

Some scholars think that the clause for disallowance and reservation has fallen into disuse because it has not been used since 1943. Since the clause was still there after the changes of 1982, I would suggest it is just as valid today as the name ‘Canada’ that was used in the 1867 constitution.

And it is only the fear our federal government—and the need for votes in Quebec—that keeps our federal government from using the disallowance and reservation clause to forestall the Quebec legislature’s bigotry and attempted suppression of the English language in that province.

And when the amusing new premier of Alberta tries to pass a sovereignty act in that province, that says it can cherry pick the federal laws it will obey, they will want to have disallowance and reservation ready.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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‘We the Jury.’

by Peter Lowry

The trial is going on now in Ottawa. The judge is Justice Paul Rouleau of the Ontario Court of Appeal. Our federal government is the accused. The accusers are people who came to Ottawa with their convoys of trucks. They came to visit and they stayed. They caught the fancy of the mean and angry in Canada and beyond. They fund-raised $24 million to over-stay their welcome in the nation’s capitol.

Justice Rouleau explained in the beginning of his inquiry that it was a legally required investigation into the use of the 1988 Emergencies Act. Was it necessary? His report to parliament will contain his finding.

But we are the jury. What was the cost in pain and suffering of living in downtown Ottawa? Was it frightening? Or was it just fun and games? Maybe that depends on your perspective.

The opinions of the police were varied. Were the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police looking down on the plaints of the Ottawa police? Were they helping or hindering? Then Ottawa police chief, Peter Sloly, might have been better off conferring with his old friends on the Toronto police. They had let anarchists run wild in Toronto in the summer of 2010 and then kettled citizens out for a Sunday night stroll in retaliation. There was no inquiry for that fiasco.

But just listen to the perpetrators of the convoys to Ottawa. Like the storied pied piper of Hamelin, they gathered the innocents and the evil, the rowdies and the mischief makers, the has-beens and the wannabes. They came, they partied, they annoyed, they blew their horns, they acted stupid. They were not good guests.

Yet, they were welcomed by politicians such as Pee-Pee Poilievre. He went to the bridges of highway 417 to welcome them. He brought them hot coffee from the parliament building. He knew they were disruptors and he welcomed them.

They were not welcomed by the prime minister. He has yet to testify. After three weeks of chaos on Wellington Street, the prime minister and his cabinet acted. This inquiry is charged with seeing if invoking the emergencies act was justified.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A Liberal Leader’s Lost Legacy.

by Peter Lowry

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is being destroyed. It is under attack by the mean and bigoted. It is under attack by the ignorant. It will fail completely if not supported by Pierre Trudeau’s son Justin. He has the tools to save it.

Yet, Justin Trudeau seems reluctant. Is he vacillating on saving what makes Canada the truly safest country in the world? His government has the power of disallowance of provincial laws. And that includes these attacks on our charter, his charter and his father’s charter.

Justin Trudeau’s father was a leader who believed in a truly bilingual country from coast to coast. It benefits us in so many ways. It is evidence of our tolerance. It brings an elegance to our education systems. It makes us an artistic country. It brings strength to our economy. It was never designed to allow dominance of one language over another. It was to bring us together, not to divide.

Canada’s unity has to be protected from myopic little men in the Quebec legislature who want total power over a Quebec that speaks only French. Quebec needs rescuing from bigots who see skin color and religious symbols as an attack on their power. They want no immigration that does not share their language and their skin colour.

But this attack on our charter is not just from one province. There are those who attack the charter out of ignorance. The Ontario legislature has just passed a law saying people cannot go on strike for a living wage. The conservative government passed a law posing outrageous fines be levied if they did not return to their ill-paying jobs.

The conservatives did not declare these people to be essential workers—in which event, the workers would have the right to fair arbitration, and a living wage. They were treated as slaves to be whipped by their overseers.

Ontario refused fair negotiations with these workers.  It wasn’t that the government was just abusing them. If the government gave in to these 50,000 education workers, there were another 150,000 education workers waiting to negotiate.

And then there is another ignorant new premier who intends to pass something called the Alberta Act that says her province does not have to obey any federal laws it does not like. That law has to be disallowed or else we can just join the Americans and help them in destroying both countries.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Who’s the Boss?

by Peter Lowry

The question is: who makes the rules for business in our society? It is a question that our governments never fully address. Our political parties range from the partnership with industry proposition of the liberals, to the laissez-faire attitudes of the conservatives, and the works-committee involvement of the new democrats. Whatever our political persuasion, we have to admit that promoting an orderly and productive business sector in an orderly society, benefits our society. Our population is the driving force, the workforce, the consumer and the arbitrator.

I bring this up because the talking heads of the news media seemed surprised the other day when finance minister Chrystia Freeland, in her economic statement, took several pages from president Joe Biden’s inflation reduction efforts. The American effort used both the carrot and stick approaches. Interestingly, Biden’s stick to prevent companies from bypassing profit dispersal through stock buy-backs was set at a two per cent tax. Cautious Freeland set the Canadian tax at one per cent, if and when it comes.

Spending the time to listen to her give her economic report, this commentator felt she had definitely toned down her previously more conservative stance. Parts of the address were trite and nothing more than small bribes to specific audiences. Freeing young people from the interest payments on their student loans might not be huge but it is, at least, a friendly gesture. Doubling the GST rebate to lower income seniors might also be welcome but why is it only being done for five months? Does she seriously think the current inflation will reverse itself in that time?

If anything worries me on the economic horizon, it is the heavy hand of the Bank of Canada that can drag inflation into a depression. It is not likely that ‘Pee-Pee’ Poilievre has frightened the bank’s governor but I would hate to see the two get into a pissing match.

Whatever happens in the American election on Tuesday is guaranteed to have an impact on Canada. Never say, it can’t happen here.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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