Category: Federal Politics

Jousting with Johnston.

by Peter Lowry

Our Ottawa castle keep turned out in all its pomp, glory and pageantry this past week to see former governor general David Johnston in the lists to joust with Poilievre’s partisans. It was not too sad to see the partisans of the right fall to the well tuned lances of the wily octogenarian.

It was particularly amusing when the politicians complained that he was taking advice from firms, in the business of giving political advice. It was like saying: “Shame on you for taking political advice from where the politicians go for political advice.”

Would you believe that David Johnston, as special rapporteur on Chinese interference in Canadian politics, had to hire a crisis management firm such as Navigator—which I think of as basically conservative—to advise him on dealing with the pack of wolves who happen to be conservatives on the parliamentary committee that he was ordered to address. Mind you, the wolves dined more on the liberal and NDP advisors that David Johnston had also hired. Don Guy and Brian Topp are well known names to politicos across Canada. Guy is the former brain trust in Ontario liberal premier Dalton McGinty’s office. And Brian Topp is a top NDP funcionado.

The most amusing situation though was the presence of Johnston’s lawyer for his rapporteur job, Sheila Block. We were told that she has been seen donating money to the liberals. This is despite the obvious conclusion that other partners in her firm donate to other political parties. This is common practice among Canadian law firms who want to be noticed and hired by the government and people working for the government. The only questionable part of this is that the donations were made two years ago and were well below the limitations on political donations.

But while the news media took delight in the forays of the combatants, not much was resolved in the three hours of political sport. They never did get away from the concern that the prime minister had appointed a friend of the family with whom he had skied as a youngster. Considering how much the prime minister likes skiing, there are probably many others to choose from. I doubt that there are many with the legal qualifications and who have Mr. Johnston’s concern for his country.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre’s Plan.

by Peter Lowry

When Adolph Hitler sent his Brown Shirts to the Bundestag in the Weimar Republic elections in the 1920s and 30s, their purpose was not to govern but to obstruct. It is with some concern that we hear that conservative leader Pierre Poilievre thinks he can threaten the Canadian parliament with the same tactics.

What the conservative leader really wants is a ‘do or die’ election. His constant barbs at the new democrat leader Jagmeet Singh, are part of forcing that election sooner than 2026. Poilievre’s outrageous attacks on former governor general David Johnston are also part of that strategy. His primary purpose is to defame the prime minister and his government and take his lies and vitriol into a general election—that he thinks he can win.

Whether he can win is another matter. The Canadian public might not be pleased with him deliberately obstructing parliament with hundreds of specious queries and late-night filibusters. He promises what he calls ‘Freedom’ to Canadians but what this freedom holds seems questionable. It appears to enable blockading borders, allowing malcontents to occupy our cities, denying vaccinations, firing the governor of the Bank of Canada, promoting cryptocurrencies and constraining any and all government spending on our country’s future. 

What is even more concerning about this mean little man is not that he denies climate change but he gives it so little importance. He promises to put an end to carbon taxes. He will build more oil pipelines. And he will have to build more prisons if his plan for ‘Jail, Not Bail’ ever saw the light of day. It would be a serious breach of Canadians’ rights and freedoms.

If there was anything amusing in this terrible farce, it is Pierre Poilievre continuing to saw the branches of his strategy off beneath his feet. Every day, his desperation grows as he loses more and more support for his libertarian promises. He has turned off voters in Quebec and he is losing ground there to the Bloc. If he is forced to wait much longer for a federal election, he will never make it to being prime minister.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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My Country is Burning.

by Peter Lowry

Many Canadians seem to have little understanding of wildfires that are happening thousands of kilometres away. Millions of city dwellers in Ontario and Quebec probably have little comprehension of the danger and demolition that accompanies these often thoughtlessly lit fires caused by foolish smokers and careless campers.

Having an early introduction to the danger, I have a deep appreciation for the men and women who are fighting those fires today. I was 17 and a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) when I found I had been volunteered to help fight forest fires in the Temagami Region of Ontario. It was an introduction to the hardest physical work of my lifetime.

I spent over a month in that beautiful, rugged forest. We were roasting in the day and shivering under thin blankets at night. We learned to pay attention to the winds and when the fire tried to crown over us, we ran like hell. I always kept in sight of one of our Ojibwe firefighters, these guys seemed to know the paths of the forest. And the Temagami is a very serious place to get lost

One of our fellow firefighters was a métis and nobody wanted to help carry his pack. He was our dynamite expert. Too often, our only source of water was shallow creeks and we had to blast deep enough basins for our pumps. When he found out I had just come off a six-month course in munitions, he figured I had learned when to duck.

It can take many, many years for the scars of fire to be overpowered by new growth in our forests. We cannot do much about the fires caused by lightning but get the firefighters to them as fast as possible. It makes rain both an ally and an enemy.

I was one of the last of the RCAF ‘volunteers’ to be flown out and sent back to North Bay that summer. I arrived at the air base only to be met at the gate by a Group Captain who looked at me with his mouth wide in surprise. Considering I had lost my cap somewhere near Temagami Lake, my jacket was torn, dirty and covered with black soot, my pants, mainly rags, strung for modesty and my boots held on one foot by a dirty rag. All he said was, “Son I can guess where you are coming from, so you deserve better, but get the hell out of sight.” I said nothing but snapped him a pretty good salute.

Luckily a Security Police Sergeant told me to get in his van and he drove me to my quarters. He was laughing most of the way. He told me I came back on the day the base was undergoing an inspection.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Moon, June and By-elections.

by Peter Lowry

It might not rhyme but there is nothing more exciting than a bunch of by-elections. And June is my favourite month for them. Warm, sunny weather gets the political canvassers moving. It’s a super month for getting out the vote. And we’ve got a great mix: four federal by-elections and a big city mayoralty.

And nobody is sneering at the Toronto mayoralty. Where else would you get over 100 candidates. (I think it is just a rumour that one of the candidates is a dog.) When you figure that the Toronto mayor gets paid close to $200,000 per year, you would think there would be more citizens who would want the job.

But we have four federal by-elections a week before the Toronto event. And you don’t often have a pissed-off conservative retiree out stumping for a liberal successor. That is in Oxford riding in Ontario. It is just another misstep by leader Poilievre putting his candidate into the once considered safe conservative seat.

That would be the same as the liberals feeling insecure in the absolutely safe liberal NDG-Westmount riding in Montreal that has been occupied by MP Marc Garneau for the past 15 years. It is an honourable retirement for Marc. Another liberal is expected to replace him.

And that little worm Poilievre has more to worry about than just Oxford in Ontario. The late Jim Carr’s riding of Winnipeg-South-Centre, despite some high jinks to do with an enlarged number of names on the ballot, is expected to stay liberal.

It is former conservative MP Candice Bergen’s Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar that might bite Pierre on the bum. Peoples’ Party leader Maxime Bernier is working his little heart out to win that riding. A really down and dirty fight between Bernier’s extreme right-wing peoples’ party and the conservatives could split the right and elect a NDP or even a liberal.

The only race where the NDP are even at play is in the Toronto mayoralty. And it has little to do with party politics. There is this six or seven-person clump of candidates that has only one NDP facing off with a bunch of conservatives and a liberal. The problem is that more prospective voters know the NDP candidate’s name. It is this name recognition that is confusing the pollsters. They think that if they report that a has-been like Chow is in the lead frequently enough, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Personally, I always like to surprise the pollsters.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Dumbing Down with Ranked Ballots.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to believe people who fail to understand the mathematics of voting with ranked ballots. No matter how many times we see the proof of the problem, some numbskull is going to pick up the cudgel to hit themselves over the head with that ill-considered way of voting.

It was probably more by accident than design that the conservative party in Canada solved the problem in the last leadership by ejecting one of the candidates before the vote. By throwing Brampton mayor Patrick Brown out of the race, they guaranteed that the winner would be Pierre Poilievre. The problem in that race never was the liberal leanings of John Charest. If Poilievre had less than 45 per cent of the votes on the first count, Patrick Brown might have won on the second or third count of the ballots. I really think it was because of that concern that Brown was convicted of unspecified charges and his votes were discarded.

And with Brown out of the race, Poilievre went on to an easy first ballot win. His win was the same as though it was a first-past-the-post win because of the missing votes for Patrick Brown. The missing Brown votes obviously put Poilievre over 50 per cent.

You wonder why so many people think that ranked ballots are democratic when with each count, you are throwing out votes from the initial count. Many people do not bother to rank their choices. You can hardly force them to. Their ballot does not count if their original vote is dropped out. And how much thought would voters put into their third or fourth choice?

There were 14 candidates in the 2017 conservative leadership. That was the one that proved conclusively that the system the conservatives used was guaranteed to provide an unsatisfactory conclusion. When it came down to Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, it was obvious that there would be a lot of unhappy conservatives. And don’t forget, there was the further obstacle in the count of applying the votes to ridings as though they are equal—which anyone with political experience knows is not true.

In the next leadership in 2020 there were only four candidates in the race, it took three ballot counts to declare Erin O’Toole the winner. It should be noted that he only had 31 per cent of the vote on the first ballot. He was second choice to Peter MacKay and needed the votes from both losers on the second and third ballots.  

And that is why I always say that in ranked balloting, the losers are the choosers.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Attacking the Wrong One.

by Peter Lowry

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has tackled the wrong opponent. He is trying to besmirch the bona fides of David Johnston. He has picked the wrong target. He is attacking the epitome of Canadian conservatism. How does he explain that to his older conservative base?

David Johnson was born in Copper Cliff, Ontario before the INCO superstack was built. His family later moved to Sault Ste Marie, where he played high school hockey with the Esposito brothers. He went on to Harvard University in the United States to play hockey and earn a BA. He has law degrees from Cambridge and Ontario’s Queens University. He has taught law at Queens and the University of Toronto. He was dean of law at Ontario’s Western University. He also taught at Montreal’s McGill University after serving as principal and vice-chancellor. And along life’s road he fathered five daughters and wrote or co-wrote 25 books. He was appointed Governor General of Canada in 2010 on the recommendation of conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. He was asked to stay in office an additional two years by liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau.

And, to be honest, I don’t give a hoot for his being made a Commander of the Order of Canada. David Johnston would be recognized as a great Canadian anywhere other than in Pierre Poilievre’s mirror.

Mr. Poilievre demeans himself in trying to defame Mr. Johnston. He can hardly sneer at Mr. Johnston’s academic career. I have never heard of the conservative leader playing hockey. I have never heard of him doing anything worthwhile. He has never held a job that was not political.

It is hard to believe that Poilievre would be so foolish as to sneer at a man such as David Johnston for being friendly with Justin Trudeau. It strikes me that Mr. Poilievre is a man who desperately needs friends.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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There is No Middle Path.

by Peter Lowry

We should all be sick and tired of the so-called liberals who claim they are financially conservative.  That is not liberal. With liberals like that, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre might as well say he is liberal.

The conservative ideology is built on a “screw the lower classes” framework. It came from the aristocracies of Europe. We heard how “Unionism must be stamped on!” Or, “We need the poor for the menial, ill-paid work.” Or “They belong below the stairs.” Or “If we cannot have slavery, we can make the underclass beholden to us for our benevolence and charity. Or the resolution of “We can never pay them much but a mean existence is better than wandering the streets of our towns and cities stealing or begging for the occasional gratuitous coin.”

It was the skilled workman who created the middle class. It was the added cache of sending their progeny to university that extended the process. How many times have we heard the proud statement in middle class homes about my son the lawyer, my daughter the doctor.

Our society extends itself in greed. Yet it puts no markers on the lower or upper limits of this middle class. We make little accommodation for the homeless. We waste little thought or concern for them. In a country of raw winters, we leave them to sleep on grates with escaping steam that heat the offices of the rich. We leave the mentally challenged to wander hopelessly and alone. Our hospitals treat the obvious concerns and dismiss. Our food banks close for the holidays. Our hypocrisy knows few bounds.

Sometimes you wonder if liberals are just dishonest conservatives.

But there are also the new democrats in this political mix. It is amusing to note that the died-in-the-wool conservative will go to the NDP before voting liberal. And it is the vice-versa for the NDPer. These are people who see the liberal as the enemy. And besides, unions can often be described as greedy. The needy need not apply.

When one of my brothers made his first few million dollars, he confessed to me that he was embarrassed by how little the government required from him by way of taxes. He might have been embarrassed, but he still voted conservative.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

The Ignorance of Mr. Poilievre.

by Peter Lowry

Is it better to malign others than to stand on how we might do things? Is it better to use silly slogans of derision than to delve into the mysteries of leadership? Is it better to see the mote in another’s eye? Canadians have a problem with conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. It is not just that he is so phony. It is just what would we ever do with a prime minister that only saw the problems of others?

Pierre Poilievre is an ignorant, small-minded person. What point does he make by insulting a man such as former governor general, David Johnston? Johnston hardly chatted with his ‘neighbour’ Justin Trudeau over the back fence when he lived in Rideau Hall as governor general and Justin Trudeau’s family where later installed at Rideau Cottage on the Rideau Hall grounds. Johnston was appointed on the recommendation of Poilievre’s friend Stephen Harper, when Harper and Poilievre sat in the same federal cabinet.

Thankfully, not all Canadians are as ignorant as Pierre Poilievre. Mr. Johnston is a noted Canadian. We also know that Justin Trudeau is an elitist. It was logical that Mr. Trudeau would choose an elite such as David Johnston as rapporteur on this question of Chinese interference in Canadian elections.

I, for one, think Mr. Johnston did the best job possible, under the circumstances. It would hardly benefit Canada if he had torn a strip off the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and exposed it as a bunch of useless paper pushers. Nor are the foolish shenanigans of the past-the-due-date mounted police force appropriate in a modern Canada.

I am not sure what Johnston hopes to achieve with his proposed hearings. It is obvious that there is a breakdown of communications between the political arm of the government and the civil service. And Mr. Justice Paul Rouleau in his Freedom Convoy hearings has already showed us the shallowness of CSIS and the highly politicized nature of the RCMP and Ontario provincial police.

There will always be some outside interference in Canada’s electoral process. It would be a shame though to have someone as ignorant as Pierre Poilievre dealing with it.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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P. Poilievre is No Lawyer.

by Peter Lowry

We should not be overly impressed with federal conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s ability to come up with poisonous slurs against political opponents. They are coming to the point where he should be challenged for his lack of concern for the truth. The prime minister of Canada can hardly be accused of causing world-wide inflation. It is just political hyperbole to suggest otherwise?

But saying that Justin Trudeau is the architect of some “Catch and Release” scheme for criminals is both stupid and a deliberate lie.

The conservative leader has convinced us that he is no economist when he promotes cryptocurrencies to help Canadians fight inflation. He has been around parliament long enough now to know that the Bank of Canada is independent of parliament. That means it is unlikely that he can simply fire the governor of the bank, even if he could somehow become prime minister. Now he is showing that he is no lawyer with this catch and release nonsense.

The Canadian system of justice is based on the assumption of innocence. In this country, you have to be proved guilty. If he is going to run for election on a guarantee of “jail, not bail,’ he is going to have to eliminate Canadians’ charter of rights and freedoms first. He might have difficulty getting criminal lawyers to vote for him.

A recent bill presented to parliament by the government attempts to tighten some of the rules in regard to granting bail but, of course, this does not meet Mr. Poilievre’s demands. He seems to want to stick with his ignorance.

It is like his claim that the government is killing people by allowing provinces to arrange for safe consumption sites. You have to wonder sometimes that maybe not all of his staff people are as ignorant. Are they afraid to correct him or do they just share his position like dumb followers.

What worries us though is that there are young people across the country who might welcome some of these cliches as simplistic ways to deal with issues.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Polarizing Personality of Poilievre.

by Peter Lowry

Why would Justin Trudeau look forward to besting conservative leader Pierre Poilievre? What does he have to prove? The prime minister has had his ups and downs over the past eight years. His legacy as prime minister is secure in that he led us through the pandemic and introduced $10 a day daycare. Maybe the question is can he make a come-back after two minority governments?

I think he is counting on the polarizing personality of Pierre Poilievre to give him a going-out majority. If that election is still two years away, nobody knows what the key issues will be. Surely inflation will have eased and maybe the anger as well.

But there are always issues to be resolved, hopes to be considered and real or imagined slights to be aggrieved. Mr. Poilievre has never been one to wait for real crises. He can create them. A good example was when he demeaned the trip the prime minister had to make to the coronation of Charles III in London. To Mr. Poilievre this was just another expensive trip for pleasure as opposed to part of the responsibility of the prime minister. It would be sad if this was the real attitude of a man who thinks he could do the job.

I believe the prime minister’s father said it best when he did a brief pirouette behind the Queen one time when visiting London. He said it for many Canadians who consider the royals as out of date and demeaning. It was the obligation to the United Kingdom that he and his son recognized as the country that gave us Canada. If being polite was the only requirement, we could certainly oblige.

And I think that is where Mr. Poilievre and Justin Trudeau part. Mr. Poilievre is targeted on just one objective. As a very young man, he set his sights on becoming prime minister of Canada. He has devoted himself to politics and nothing else from leaving the University of Calgary. He knew he had to come east to find the right electoral district. He is a right-wing conservative ideologue. He knows of no other form of government. Canadians would not be pleased by a Poilievre government.

In Justin Trudeau’s case, he had his young years in Ottawa in the prime minister’s residence to help him understand what he was getting into.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]