Category: Uncategorized

A False-Flag Favourite?

by Peter Lowry

Beware the politician trying to fly two flags. Torontonians have put up with the lies about what political party mayoralty candidates belong to, for too long. I can assure you, there is no such thing as an independent who can win the mayoralty. In a city of now 2.7 million, you need the support of a well-organized party-based campaign.

What gets my goat though are the foolish politicians who try to ride on the backs of two political parties. Brad Bradford with his alliterative name had a puff-piece in the Toronto Star the other day promoting his candidacy for mayor. He would definitely lose my vote because he is an avid cyclist. I figure anyone who promotes cycling in Toronto’s winter weather and, with all the hills up from the lake, has a screw loose.

But anyone who John Tory backed, and with campaign workers such as conservatives Kory Teneycke, and Jame Watt, can be labelled conservative. He was also supported by John Tory. Of course, many liberals knew John Tory was a conservative, and didn’t care. He was a good mayor and he made that rabble at city hall pay attention.

Before Tory, it was conservative Rob Ford. Before Ford, it was NDPer David Miller. Before Miller, it was conservative Mel Lastman and before Mel, it was liberal Art Eggleton. I go back as far as liberal mayor, my friend Phil Givens, CCF/NDP Bill Denison and conservative Nathan Phillips. And since he was opposed to the Family Compact, Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie was probably a liberal.

The last time I was even peripherally involved in a Toronto mayoralty race, was in the kick-off for my friend David Smith’s bad campaign for the Toronto mayoralty in 1978. The problem was there were three strong candidates, David and Tony O’Donahue, who were both liberals, and John Sewell, who had made a name for himself as a leader of the NDP’s left-wing of council. Smith and O’Donahue split the vote and Sewell squeaked in for a one-term mayoralty of a not-so-good politician.

The problem with David’s campaign was that I only went to one meeting of his campaign committee. It was in a Toronto law office with a very long boardroom table. I think I was the only non-lawyer there and I was less than thrilled with the lawyer chairing the campaign. It felt like a bar admission cramming course and I did not return.

I returned the favour to David though by helping to get him elected to parliament in my federal riding in 1980.

An added note: I hope any real Toronto liberal would keep his/her powder dry until we find out if Mitzie Hunter MPP is going to be in the race to replace John Tory.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Squandering Alberta’s Future.

by Peter Lowry

When are the voters in Alberta going to learn? Tar sands revenue is from a non-renewable resource. It is called non-renewable because it will eventually be all gone. All those big spenders at the petroleum clubs will also be gone. Albertans will have to get honest jobs. They will no longer be able to plunder their province’s resources.

But that libertarian premier is going to scatter this year’s un-earned bonanza from inflated oil prices to the winds—all in aid of bribing the voters to vote for her.

A long time ago, Albertans were advised by a sage politician that this ‘found’ money from the tar sands could build a strong future for the province. Peter Lougheed created the Alberta Heritage Fund to do just that.

In the 2022-23 fiscal year, Alberta saw a $27.5 billion windfall from its tar-sands related industries. The credit for this goes to the terrible war that is murdering civilians in the Ukraine. Combined with world-wide inflation and the ravages of the pandemic, the Alberta government has no choice but to spend more on its key responsibilities, education and healthcare.

But how protected is the heritage fund from political urges to spend lots when an election is in the offing? Don’t worry though, the government is guaranteed to skimp later on. Just elect libertarians to the legislature and you will soon learn how cheap they can be.

It is not that Danielle Smith does not have plans for the heritage money but she needs to get re-elected in May. Changing to a provincial police force from the current arrangement with the RCMP is going to cost mega bucks. Fighting with Ottawa at ever opportunity, will help keep her name in the news, but at what expense?

And don’t dare be poor in Alberta. Libertarians are not generous with welfare. They aren’t often interested in children’s welfare either.

In fact, I cannot fathom why Ms. Smith picked politics this time around. She made a mess of it when she led the Wildrose libertarians. And she is not getting any smarter.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Mitzie For Mayor!

by Peter Lowry

Not knowing liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter, she has already earned my support for mayor of Toronto. Mitzie is planning to be in Hamilton for the liberal party annual convention on the weekend, promoting the “one-member, one-vote” change in the party’s constitution. Having been one of the insiders who used to take part in running delegated conventions, I can certainly attest to the unfairness and undemocratic nature of those events.

I am not apologizing for my participation, because, at the time, we had no alternative method to select party leaders. To keep things lively for the news media, we did not consider mail-in ballots. Besides, we needed the publicity and the money those conventions raised for the party. It was the advent of the internet and its wide-spread availability in Ontario that provides a fast and effective way to let every member of the party have a vote.

And as Mitzie wrote for the news media “the one member, one-vote system is not only more democratic but ultimately leads to a stronger party organization.”

But the party delegates at this convention need to be wary of attempts to weight the vote or to rank their ballots. Both of these allow for easy manipulation of the vote. For true one-member, one-vote to work, stick to your guns.

You should remember that preferential ballots and riding weighting were the undoing of the federal conservatives when they chose Andrew Scheer and then Erin O’Toole as their party leaders.

First of all, preferential voting, with a strong field, tends to count down to the least aggressive candidates. Party leaders need to be aggressive.

And weighting ridings is about the dumbest idea in a democratic vote imaginable. Nobody in politics really believes that all electoral districts are equal. Weighting means that the choices of the stronger ridings are diluted with the opinions of weak ridings. In politics, always go with your strengths. Go Mitzie!

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Barrie Needs Bradford Bypass.

by Peter Lowry

It was disappointing the other day to read a letter to the editor of Barrie Today from the executive director of the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition. It is very hard to support efforts to preserve the Greenbelt when the rationale of a government project is misunderstood and unnecessarily maligned.

First of all, the Bradford Bypass was in the planning long before the Ford conservatives came on the scene. His people linked the unneeded and destructive Highway 413 to the Bradford Bypass in an attempt to legitimatize the 413. If Ontario drivers have not noticed, maybe they have not driven up and down Highway 400 in recent years. Those new bridges being built, and including those in Barrie itself, are a major aid in accommodating the burgeoning economy of Simcoe County.

For the last 20 years, Ontario has been bringing Highway 404 up east of Yonge Street. Instead of building the 404 east to Highway 12, which will eventually be Highway 412, to go east of Lake Simcoe, the 404 was planned to bypass the Holland Marsh and Bradford to link to the 400.

People do not appreciate the years of work that go into this planning. I can remember picking strawberries at the south end of what we knew would eventually be Highway 400 back when I was in grade school. When I came home from the air force, Highway 401 had only been built as far east as Bayview Avenue in Toronto.

I really doubt that the executive director of the Simcoe County greenbelt coalition is equipped to complain about the cost of the Bradford Bypass. That bypass will help get many more billions in vegetables from the Holland Marsh to market faster. It will speed the weekend traffic to weekends in Muskoka.

It is worth spending billions on highways when they contribute so much to the economy of Ontario.

The fact that Highway 413 and the Greenbelt land swaps would only benefit Mr. Ford’s developer friends has to be resolved when Ontario next goes to the polls.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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A Healthy Healthcare?

by Peter Lowry

The other day prime minister Trudeau said at a Toronto event that the federal government was not the boss of the provinces. This is despite the very healthy amounts that the federal government has promised to help Ontario to repair the damage done by the pandemic and by the Ontario government to healthcare in the province. Despite the increased help to the province, the prime minister said he only cared if 50 per cent of the funds were spent on healthcare, provided that health care records could be electronically and rapidly exchanged between provinces.

But the Ford government in Ontario was already starving our hospitals before we were hit with COVID-19. They were cutting back on the local hospital networks. They were reducing support staff. They passed a provincial law limiting nurses raises and drove thousands of nurses out of their profession.

A surgical nurse I met recently explained to me that she can fly down to a major hospital in the United States and in four days work be paid more than she would be paid in a month in Ontario.

My local hospital here in central Ontario has had its once excellent reputation shredded by the conservatives. The lack of staff in the hospital is alarming. The once healthy food for patients is long gone.

This was a hospital that once had a waiting list of people who wanted to volunteer as the errand runners, visitor helpers and wheelchair pushers. No more. Under the pandemic, volunteers were told not to come. A friend who had relished his role in helping, came home from his first shift, under the relaxed pandemic rules, the other day and called me. He had found that volunteers were no longer reliable. In a time of reduced professional staff, fewer volunteers showed up for their shifts.

In a task normally manned by two or three volunteers, he found he was working alone. The task of dealing with deliveries, visitors and queries seemed to be further confounded by the overflow of emergency department cases that were somehow being redirected to his desk.  An older gentleman, he found that the last hour of his shift was made even more difficult because a powerful need to urinate. He would not abandon his post.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Measuring Mediocrity.

by Peter Lowry

Have you noticed how, at every new opportunity for voting, there is a fresh flurry of letters-to-the-editor about different ways to elect. For the upcoming by-election of a new mayor in Toronto, the push seems to be for preferential voting. It is where the voter is encouraged to number (or rank) his or her preferences. I think, in this case, that would be the guaranteed method to elect a mediocre candidate for mayor.

What you would find is that the larger the number of candidates, the deeper the dive the vote count would take to find the candidate bland enough to be acceptable to a majority of voters. The previous two conservative party leadership races are an excellent example of the problem. Combining preferential voting and the silly idea that all ridings were equal gave the conservatives Andrew Scheer and then Erin O’Toole. The conservatives made the case even clearer when the party hierarchy dumped the obviously second place candidate before the voting in the last race, enabling a first-place win.

And a first-place win in preferential voting (50 per cent plus one) gives you the same result as in first-past-the-post voting. Fewer candidates and a strong front-runner are the only times that preferential voting really works. When you realize there can be 20 to 30 candidates in the by-election for mayor in Toronto, you can see the problem.

The conservatives in Toronto, who understand the problem, have their own solution. They are trying to bring their party behind a strong right-wing candidate. They might even have to hold a quasi-nominating meeting to make a selection.

But that is likely to be met by a similar possibility on the left. They might not be as open as the conservatives but I can already make a guess on the candidate preferred by the Toronto left wing (NDP) members of council.

Surprisingly, I have no idea of whom the liberals might choose. When I got my friend, fellow liberal, Keith Davey involved in Toronto politics in 1969, his reputation as ‘Rainmaker’ was muddied and the liberal party in Toronto swore off municipal politics. Yet, the party will rise again. We can only hope.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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And Another ISP Bites the Dust.

by Peter Lowry

Noting in the news that another internet service provider (ISP) has been purchased by one of the large telecom services was just another annoyance in life. There always seems to be a feeding frenzy among the big telecoms when any of these start-ups, using the large telecoms networks, make a success of it.  

Becoming less and less pleased with Bell Canada’s service, attitude and pricing the other day, I considered complaining once again to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). It seems hopeless though, as we watch those handmaidens of Bell, Rogers and Telus appear to scurry to do the telecom giants’ bidding.

As one of the liberals who had urged the creation of the CRTC back in 1968, I was pleased that my member of parliament was Pierre Trudeau’s choice as minister responsible for the new department (which included the CRTC).

It also got him away from a thankless job at a lower cabinet level. I had written a report (gratis) for him showing him how to get around his problems with the way his department was being run by the deputy minister. This was back when the deputy ministers where the College of Cardinals in Ottawa and the Clerk of the Privy Council was the Pope. (I never did pick my enemies carefully.)

Knowing how the CRTC functioned paid off at those times when I interceded at commission hearings. The first time was fun when I got into an argument with a chairman who seemed overly-impressed with his own importance. To the annoyance of the applicant companies though, the wording of the commission ruling was taken directly from my submission.

Knowing how the CRTC functions was ignored though when during the Chrétien government, my good friend Herb Grey suggested to John Manley, who was the fellow cabinet member responsible for Ontario appointments, that it would be a good idea to appoint me to the CRTC. I had no idea that my late friend was sending that to John Manley. If there is one serious division in the liberal party of Canada, it is between the right and left wings of the party. He was wasting his time. Herb and I were both known in the party for our left of centre views. Manley was a leader on the right wing. 

What I got from Manley was a snide letter telling me I did not have the experience necessary for the CRTC. It would have looked better if he had asked me.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Poilievre’s Path.

by Peter Lowry

Where are the Brown Shirts? Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is picking a path that has been trampled before. In the 1920s, in Bavaria, there was another weaselly little man with his sights set on overturning his country’s fledgling republic. He challenged the country’s democracy. He derided the openness of the news media.

Are his Brown Shirts the truckers with their false flags? Was it for them that Poilievre refused to answer questions from a CBC reporter the other day? Is he targeting Canada’s publicly-owned news gathering capability in favour of re-instituting Stephen Harper’s right-wing friendly Sun TV?

Poilievre was there, on the scene, when the Harper government made every attempt to bring the news media under their influence. He watched the Trump organization in the United States with its own drummers of American media such as Fox News.  And it might be that Poilievre is mining many nickels and dimes from the far-right through social media.  

But he lies, you know. Poilievre deliberately demonizes the legitimate Canadian leadership. He claims that the funds made available to Canadians through the worst of the pandemic were printed by the Bank of Canada at the request of the prime minister. You can be assured that this lie was deliberately used to defame, as the little sneak knows full well, that the funds distributed were borrowed at the low rates of interest available during the pandemic.

But this person, who has spent his entire adult life in politics, is seeking to convince working Canadians to support his foolish schemes. He wants to fire the governor of the Bank of Canada and turn Canada into a high-risk, uncontrolled Bitcoin economy.

He blames our prime minister for all the financial problems the world is facing, as the pandemic lingers. He complains about the expenditures Canada is making to support the Ukrainians in the face of Russian aggression. He says everything is the prime minister’s fault and yet has never really said how he could improve our situation.

I often expect him to blame the prime minister for global warming but Canadians might notice that he has absolutely no plan to effectively reduce Canada’s high emissions of greenhouse gases. Like most people hoping to become tyrants, he expects us to buy his lies. I do not think we will.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Local Lies.

by Peter Lowry

Writing about American right-wing crazies the other day was not to ignore such dumbasses on our own doorstep. And the people generating false news in Canada are just as guilty as the Trump troglodytes. Their favourite targets for spreading their evil evidence are people they consider of lesser intellectual capacity.

It took a lot of patience recently to hear out an older person with the mental age of a 14-year-old. He was telling me what he was hearing about politics in Canada. He was being told irresponsible garbage about the prime minister. He was convinced that Justin Trudeau was evil. Much of what he told me was scurrilous filth and does not bare repeating.

The point is though, that as much as I might disagree with the prime minister, I respect the position and, on some issues, I readily agree with him. I just find him elitist and I strongly object to what he has done to the liberal party. I think he is an actor who has ridden his political sham too far. I believe our country has real liberal leaders in the offing and Mr. Trudeau should step aside.

At the same time, I have little patience with the source of much of the Trudeau bashing. Watching Pierre Poilievre respond to questions about Justice Paul Rouleau’s report the other day I could only think that the worm was just digging himself further into the dirt. Mr. Poilievre is not part of the solution. He uses every sneering word he can think of in regards to our prime minister. He welcomed the ‘freedom convoy’ to Ottawa, fed them donuts and offered no help in law and order. Those trouble-makers, posing as truckers, are the people who made him leader of the opposition and his fellow conservatives will soon learn to regret their presence in their party.

What worries me is the abysmal ignorance of those people about how this country works, their lack of understanding of our constitution and their self-indulgent attitude. It is frightening. Mr. Poilievre is going to continue to play on their ignorance. Luckily it seems that many women can see through Poilievre’s shallow veneer, but I would still feel better if there was a real liberal leading the liberal party.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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The Science of Lies.

by Peter Lowry

Newton’s Third Law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It seems that the lunatic fringe of Donald Trump’s America denies that law. The extremists of the right, will let no incident slide by, that they do not blame on some imaginary left-wing cause, against which they must take up arms.

For quite some time, Babel-on-the-Bay has been receiving e-mail releases from pro-life and pro-republican organizations railing against the “out-of-control” extremists of the left. While I have been wondering when these supposedly ‘out-of-control’ democrats might respond, I have continued to make good use of the computer’s delete capability.

But I took the time to read one of these diatribes the other day and I was appalled that anyone could write such unmitigated crap. This missive, of some 900 words, was supposedly written by a Jerry McGlothlin and while he does not identify his organization, he tells me I am a special guest. Since I do not wish to communicate with this person and what might be a sick mind, he should be advised that a blog is not a logical recipient of news or even anti-news releases. Blogs deal in personal experience. They reflect the opinions of the writer. And, in my opinion, this gentleman might need mental health help.

I have never heard of a disease that uses the imaginary power of Antifa as the culprit for so many evils. Antifa is supposedly a communist-front organization that murders and fire-bombs the god-fearing folk who cheered at the ending of Roe versus Wade. According to Mr. McGlothlin, Antifa is just waiting for the FDA to end the availability of the abortion pill to start the revolution in earnest.

Obviously, Mr. McGlothlin is not aware that the few pathetic remnants of Antifa are hopelessly disorganized and unlikely to provoke a good fist fight.

And as to blaming Antifa for the murder of Catholic Bishop David O’Connell in Los Angeles, the more reliable Associated Press tells us that the husband of the bishop’s housekeeper has been arrested and charged with the murder. Please Mr. McGlothlin, I think you should seek help.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]