Uncategorized – Page 34 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Rob Nicholson: Conservative curmudgeon.

July 16, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Would the Harper Conservatives prefer a nuclear war? It really makes you wonder when you hear the undiplomatic comments of Canada’s foreign minister. Canadians had reason to be embarrassed on Monday when the success of the Iran nuclear talks was announced. While most of the world was rejoicing, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson was ‘staying the course’ as directed by Prime Minister Harper. He was also insulting Canada’s most important allies, the Americans, the British, the French and the rest of the European Union.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu practically foaming at the mouth at turning the Iranians loose from severe trade restrictions, Mr. Harper must have been regretting his pandering for the Jewish vote in Canada. There was no place for the Conservatives to hide their faux pas. It would have required real diplomacy and that is something Canada’s Conservatives have never practiced.

The Obama administration in the United States deserved a great deal of credit for their perseverance. In combination with their European allies, the Americans stuck to diplomacy to try to resolve the nuclear danger. That seems to be an untried concept to Harper and friends. They closed the embassy in Tehran in 2012 as part of their skimming of the foreign affairs budget and rejected any further dealings with the Iran government.

And if Canada refuses to lift sanctions against Iran in concert with the Americans and the European Union, it will harm Canada more than Iran. The Conservatives can hardly dig a hole and hide from the need to do business with the entire world. You would think that they had done enough harm in putting all Canada’s eggs in the fossil fuel market. This country is still a major supplier of financial and engineering services to the world and a freer access to Tehran opens up a major market for us. Though there might be some problems with not having an embassy in the country.

And Prime Minister Harper needs to pay attention to the statement made Monday by President Obama of the United States of America. That man stood proud. He had something to crow about. And he did not take any guff from anyone. He drew an immediate line for his political enemies—and he certainly has those. He told them that if they tried to screw around with lifting sanctions according to the agreement, he would veto them. The American people will see that intransigence is a fool’s game. That is the one that Mr. Harper is playing.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Have you seen two sides of the story?

July 10, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Watching Global television news from Toronto the other day brought on a profound dismay with what many people consider as news. There are people who never read a newspaper or news magazine. They have never learned to discern opinion from news. And it appears that neither has Global Television.

In years gone by we expected our news sources to ensure balance to their stories but that costs time and money. Even the vaunted CBC news has succumbed but at least they now fill their news time slots with opinion by people with strong and studied opinions to share. And the CBC also labels it as opinion. The other television networks do not seem to know the difference.

We are hardly letting CTV off the hook here. We were fugitives from Channel 9 News in Toronto. What finally tore us away from the station was not the inside jokes among the on-air staff or the repetition of news stories and shallow coverage, it was the insufferable promotion of other CTV programs. Hollywood blather is not news. Sports news does not have to be covered by people who pretend they never completed grade school.

And as a writer of political commentaries, we care very much that people should get unbiased news coverage. We all recognize that it is very difficult to hide your bias on a news story but there you have to be seen as being fair. The best we have ever worked with is national affairs reporter Tom Clark of Global. We cannot point to a single incidence of biased reporting from him. It is obvious that the Prime Minister’s Office does not trust him but that is probably the best measure of his fairness. The PMO only likes reporters who do what they are told.

One of the worst examples we have seen of biased reporting on Global was a clip the other day by reporter Mark McAllister about the planned expansion at Woodbine Entertainment in Toronto. The reporter started out telling us that Global had studied the situation and found that there was a tendency for people with a gambling problem to live near a place where you can gamble. (That is about as profound as they get!) McAllister tells us that the Ontario government is addicted to gambling and is creating problem gambling. McAllister even had a spokesperson from Addiction and Mental Health to warn us of the dangers. There must have been a point to this but it seemed to have been ‘left on the cutting room floor.’

It would have been no surprise that when James Robert Shaw started his local cable business in Calgary back in the 1960s people would have thought he was crazy to take such a gamble. Luckily there was no intervention and JR Shaw’s little cable company (which now owns Global Television) is doing just fine today, thank you. It is just too bad it does not have higher standards.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

A potpourri for Sunday.

May 3, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay has resisted the urge to do an occasional potpourri of comments. We usually try to stick to one (related at least) topic at a time. If we did a potpourri, it would probably look like this:

Ignorance is bliss: In a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star this week, a reader says he has solved the problems of Toronto municipal elections. He appears to think that the city should have proportional representation without political parties. Since proportional representation is based on voting for a party instead of a candidate, he has certainly solved the election problems.

More bliss: That letter writer has some support among the Governing Party of Ontario (GPO). The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing wants to ignore history. He wants to have a preferential ballot for municipal elections so that the losers can pick the winners in Ontario municipal votes. How soon the GPO forgets that fiasco in 2007 when the province tried to get a referendum passed for yet another ill-considered voting system.

More ignorance: Ontario is a week away from the wake for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. In the final leadership debate between federal MP Patrick Brown and the MPP for Oshawa Christine Elliott, Brown accuses Elliott of being more of the same as former leader Timmy Hudak. He accuses her of supporting Hudak’s promise to fire 100,000 civil servants. Elliott does not seem to be aware that Brown knew about that policy before she heard it on the news. Brown was one of the first to jump up after Hudak’s Barrie Country Club speech to congratulate Timmy on his brilliant new strategy. And does anyone have a clue where Brown would take the party?

Other commentators: Few Canadian pundits and commentators can hold a candle to Chantal Hèbert of the Toronto Star and CBC. It will be very interesting though to compare her readings of the tea leaves in Alberta with ours. She is forecasting that a good showing for the provincial NDP in Alberta is good news for federal NDP Leader Tom Mulcair. That good showing will only be good news for Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley and the people of Alberta. Tom Mulcair has his own problems.

And municipal affairs in Barrie: Babel-on-the-Bay’s lack of comments on this subject is because Barrie’s municipal politics are conservative and boring. Yet we are glad to see that council has finally decided to pay its putative liberal mayor a proper stipend. He was blocked from receiving money from PowerStream (Barrie’s hydro supplier) while being on the board for the past four years. It was a matter of an additional $30,000 a year that he had to forgo.

But expect you will hear even more of Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman in about three years when he is expected to quit Barrie council for one of Barrie’s seats in the provincial legislature. There will probably be a cabinet seat for him if Wynne’s GPO stays in power.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Goodbye Bill Blair: You failed us.

April 21, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Toronto has not lost a police chief. It has gained freedom. It has left an era of bad policing behind. It has new opportunities for better policing. It has new opportunities for discouraging crime, fewer gangs, fewer guns, easing of trouble spots and better relations between the police and the people they serve and protect.

Bill Blair has left police headquarters. He no longer held sway with the police services board. His services were no longer needed. He remained unindicted for the fiasco of the G-8. He remained intransigent on carding. That fancy uniform is committed to the closet of yesterday’s failures.

There is no basking in the glories and hopes of early years. His day is done. He can hardly follow in the path of his predecessor Julian Fantino. No more bombast and posturing is needed thank you. Fantino is no politician and Blair is less.

There was some talk of an electoral district in Toronto being held for the civilian Mr. Blair. It is hard to imagine why. There is not a seat in the city that would be likely to elect him for any party. The New Democrats would laugh at the idea of him running for that party. He lacks any connection with the workers of our society. The Conservatives are of course shy in this case after that party’s experience with Julian Fantino. What party would want to make that mistake twice?

And that just leaves the Liberals. It is not that Leader Justin Trudeau has not made some bad decisions in the past but he keeps telling us that the riding associations are free to decide. That is why many Liberals expect to defeat Eve Adams with a better candidate in Elinton-Lawrence. There are easy guesses on where Justin Trudeau’s organizational geniuses might want to stick Blair but why cause unnecessary upset.

Trudeau would create a serious revolt among the party if he insisted on having Blair. It would hardly be worth the trouble. Real Liberals pride themselves on their support for individual rights and Blair is no poster boy for any kind of human rights. It would be a serious rift in the party in an area that Trudeau has to count on for solid support.

As for Mr. Blair: if he is not going to be charged for his abuse of human rights during the G-8 summit, then he would be smart to fade away. Maybe there is a need for a night-watchman somewhere. Night work would keep him out of the public eye.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

If you cannot change FPTP, annoy!

March 29, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Nobody has ever accused the Internet Intifada of being smart. Nor are all bloggers brilliant. The twits on Twitter can be quite antisocial and FaceBook denizens are like Adonis searching the vastness of the digital pool for their reflected self. And in all of these public venues uninformed opinions rage. Nobody seems to gain knowledge from experience. This comes to mind today in considering the arguments of people who want to change how Canadians vote. There is so much mealy-mouthed agreement among them that you would think that change is inevitable.

But it is not. Canadians like the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system we have and see no need to change it. We say this based on three province wide votes, two in British Columbia (2005 and 2009) and one in Ontario (2007). Those voters actually cast ballots to tell the powers to be to stuff it. A single-transferable vote system in B.C. failed to pass in 2005 and then was rejected by a full 60 per cent of voters in 2009. Ontario took one look at a simpler mixed-member proportional voting in 2007 and rejected the idea.

The only problem is that the losers promoting a ‘yes’ vote seem inclined to be insidious. We are being constantly bombarded by the Internet Intifada that continues to preach against our first-past-the-post voting. Organizations such as Fair Vote (originating in the U.S.) are relentless in seeking converts.

What is annoying is that these gremlins are so negative that you cannot get any dialogue going. Nobody is trying to tell them that FPTP is the perfect answer to all voting needs. There are times when that voting system can let us down. What we need to do is analyze those problem areas and address them in a spirit of cooperation.

At one time, we were leaning towards preferential voting in situations were there were large numbers of candidates. This turns out not to work in practice because it proves to be easy to manipulate. It is much fairer to have a run-off vote that allows all voters to reconsider their vote once the candidates with the least votes are eliminated. And with the growing acceptance of Internet voting, it has become an inexpensive answer to giving us winners that are the majority choice.

What people such as Fair Vote do is make flat statements that FPTP is unfair, or claim that proportional voting will elect more women and minorities. Their problem is that these claims are false. They have to realize that Canadians are well educated by world standards and do not accept claims without proof. They should get better arguments or get lost.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Lessons for Canada in Israel’s elector impotence.

March 20, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It looks like Benjamin Netanyahu has once again used the Israeli form of proportional representation to cling to power in the Israeli Knesset. Israel uses proportional representation that only allows the voter to select a political party. The representatives are then appointed according to each party’s closed lists. What it means is that ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, with only 25 per cent of the popular vote, can now put together the coalition he wants to control the Israeli government.

The difference in Canada is that our major parties have to reach for a plurality of the votes. That forces them to put their coalitions together before the election, not afterward. Canadians can see what they are getting.

When Netanyahu took a hard swing to the political right during the election campaign, it was mainly posturing to get as many right wing votes as possible. Those he could not win over were the parties that he is now negotiating with to form a coalition. He has to get the support of the extreme right wing as well as adding the ultra orthodox religious parties to his coalition.

If Canada used proportional representation, we would also have more than a dozen parties. Whichever party won the most seats would then be given an opportunity to form a government that could win support in parliament.

It is because of our first-past-the-post system of voting that our fewer parties are broader in their coverage of voters. The Conservative Party of Canada, for example, was created by Stephen Harper from the Canadian Alliance which had replaced the Reform Party of Canada and the older Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

The new Conservative Party was made up of the right wing of Canadian politics that included the religious right’s anti-abortionists, the social conservatives such as the pro-death penalty supporters and the business supporters.

The Liberal Party of Canada also covers a broad spectrum of both left and right wing as its philosophy is based more on individual rights. It attracts intellectuals as well as some of the more progressive unions and has dominated much of the last 100 years of Canada as a country.

The third party, the New Democrats, are still mired in the unionism of the early 20^th Century and have been trying hard to move toward the middle of the political spectrum.

This is why Canadian parties spend so much effort in campaigning in defining where they might like to go if elected. Voters always need to know: What is the emphasis this time?

-30-

(And that is about as much as you can simplify Canadian politics in less than 500 words!)

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Isn’t ‘journalistic integrity’ an oxymoron?

January 12, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Did you know that Shaw Media has a book of standards for its journalists? It makes you wonder why. Did you know that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation used to have a guy whose job it was to maintain the corporation’s high standards(?). In a world of smoke and mirrors, the media seem to want the best integrity that money can buy.

It was when Shaw’s Global Television sidelined anchor Leslie Roberts last week that the words ‘journalistic integrity’ came into play. And this was all because of a somewhat hypocritical exposé by the Toronto Star. Of course, Torontonians all know that the Toronto Star is so pure!

But what really begs the question is how people such as Roberts are supposed to have standards in an environment that does not exercise them? The Global six pm newscast from Toronto is an hour and a half long and usually contains 30 to 40 minutes of repetitious news. On a good weather day, it uses a cute dog and stretches the weather into five or six segments. The Shaw channel routinely promotes other Global programs as though they were news items and blatantly runs segments of its next program Entertainment Tonight as news. And it must be Friday when the national news segment runs a clip from Tom Clark’s weekend West Block program.

And if you say “So what?” you are right. Self promotion on CTV News is worse. The CBC tries to do the same but is barely on life-support these days. Thank God nobody watches Sun TV. Does it even have real news?

This tempest was fomented by the Toronto Star. The Toronto Star believes it knows a lot about journalistic integrity. Have you ever wondered how all those glowing reports in the travel section on wonderful vacation locations get written? And at whose expense? You should ask the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail.

There is no question that Leslie Roberts should have advised Global Television of his public relations firm connection. He is neither the first nor the last television personality to face that conflict. His major problems are the foolish clients who think his position is an advantage for them.

But, he does a good job as anchor. Global should give him a slap on the wrist and put him back to work.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

The mediocre measures of M. Mulcair.

January 2, 2015 by Peter Lowry

If there was one sure sign of the desperation of Thomas Mulcair and his federal New Democrats, it is the promise to institute proportional voting in Canada’s elections. What we know for sure at this time is that if there were proportional voting for the 2015 election, we would end up next year with a minority government and few solutions to Canada’s problems. That is the mediocrity that would prevail under proportional representation.

And what is particularly offensive about the New Democrats promoting proportional representation is that the NDP is the political party that tries to tell us how democratic it is. All that proportional representation can promise is constant back-room deal making to prop up unpopular governments.

Proportional representation takes the power from the people and delivers it to the political parties—particularly the minority parties. It takes the power from the voters to choose their Member of Parliament and lets the parties appoint their representatives. It is bad enough today with the insidious top-down management of the parties. Why encourage it?

The New Democratic Party resolution on proportional representation favours what is known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). This allows voters to choose a candidate in greatly enlarged electoral districts while the political parties appoint additional members to reflect their popular vote. It is supposed to be a compromise. Instead it gives the voters the worst of both situations—poor representation from a greatly overworked local member and party hacks—that you never voted for—running the government.

One of the amusing results of discussing the various voting ideas with people is their resiliency when it comes to ideas they have not worked through. If you explain your arguments against MMP lucidly, they will nod sagely and blithely ask, “Well, what about a preferential ballot?”

This is supposed to stop you cold. They tend to look a bit puzzled when you explain that all preferential balloting does is allow the people who made the worst choice to begin with to choose the winner. Why should we allow losers to choose the winning candidate? The facts are that run-off elections are the only way to ensure everyone chooses.

What all parties are missing in this argument is the ability we have to use the Internet to choose our politicians. We need to bring this entire discussion into the 21^st Century.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

The rich are different, Mr. Clark.

November 21, 2014 by Peter Lowry

There is something irrepressible about TD Bank’s Ed Clark. He wants to give advice in areas beyond a banker’s experience. The other day, he handed in another seriously flawed report to the Ontario government and now he is giving advice to the rich. Being one of the rich himself, he is advising them to be more charitable. While nobody will disagree, the rich are not always the best people to decide where this largess should go.

One of the first things you learn in charitable fund-raising is how there is a broad range of potential donors with just as broad a range of ways to motivate them. While the one per cent can provide some very large gifts and the top ten per cent of earners can give your cause a lift, it is the average wage earners who stay committed to your cause who make the year-after-year difference. And while fads such as a bucket of cold water and ice can produce interesting peaks in fund-raising, the annual signature campaigns (the ones identified with your cause) are what you count on.

But like a garden, these signature campaigns need constant tending, nurturing, pruning and new ideas to keep your cause current and in the public mind.

Some fund-raising experts concentrate their efforts on those one-time generous gifts of the one per cent. It helps if you have a building to name or an important prize to identify. There are egos to be stroked and descendants to be flattered. Despite the urge to just rent out this naming, you really have to wait for a generation to die off before you can tack new names on well known edifices such as Toronto’s SkyDome or O’Keefe Centre.

And thank goodness the one per cent are no longer wasting their money on ostentatious mausoleums. University buildings and named wings on hospitals are really much more practical and appreciated. The largest ever of one of these gifts in Canada to health sciences was announced the other day by the family of the late Ted Rogers. A total gift of $130 million will not do much to burnish the image of the company that bears his name but will go a long way to furthering heart research.

But the big problem is that we do not always make the best choices on what to do with our money. It is ours and we get to do as we wish. For example, Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world and the foundation he and his wife run concentrates on problems in Africa. What Gates forgets is that a large percentage of that money was made in North America. There is also poverty, hunger, ignorance and needs in North America. While the needs in Africa are dire and have to be addressed, there is still validity to the old adage that charity begins at home.

And while Ed Clark’s advice to his fellow top earners is appreciated and obviously warm hearted, we each need to contribute in those areas where we are comfortable that the money is used properly. Being sceptical and checking carefully always makes sense.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Imploding media, a failure to communicate.

October 10, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It takes a while to digest the sale the other day of Canada’s English-language Sun newspapers to Postmedia. All you can say for sure is that the newspaper market in Canada continues to implode. Postmedia President and CEO Paul Godfrey provided the answer at the announcement of the $316 million purchase of 175 English-language newspapers and Sun’s major printing plant in Toronto. He said it all when saying the best part of the deal was the acquisition of Canoe.ca and related websites.

Sun newspapers are no stranger to Paul Godfrey. He used to be publisher of that newspaper chain. The only difference is that Postmedia papers such as the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen are more literate than the Sun products. We always assumed that the Toronto Sun and Sun newspapers were written for people who moved their lips as they read. They hardly faired better after Quebecor took them over. With Pierre-Karl Péladeau at the helm, they lacked the ethical, spelling, grammar and general quality standards that Canadians have a right to expect.

The best example of the problem was a few years back when a senior reporter for the local Sun-owned daily wrote something about a snow ‘plough.’ He was questioned as to why he would use a spelling that was changed 25 years before by Canadian Press to ‘plow’? He explained that nobody at his newspaper cared. And he also proudly explained that nobody ever bothered to edit his stories.

And that is also why nobody in this city really cares about our local daily. Sun Media has destroyed what little quality standards that local paper ever had. The only reason that it is still produced is because of the synergies of scale that allowed the papers to be printed so cheaply in Toronto. (It is also why the smaller Sun newspapers are predominantly located in Ontario.)

But things will change. Once the toothless federal competition bureau has had its say in a few months, change will happen. It will not be for the betterment of readers. All Paul Godfrey’s promises will be re-opened. Cost savings will be the first consideration; regaining quality and circulation will be the last.

And Canadians’ knowledge and understanding of their communities, their provinces, their country and the world will continue to suffer. Broadcast news can never replace the ability to self-edit masses of well-written and reasonably accurate information that newspapers have tried to provide for hundreds of years.

After all, the Internet may be interesting but a blog is just some chucklehead’s opinion.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]