Category: Federal Politics

Where Agents Get Their Info.

by Peter Lowry

It was about 35 years ago and I was introduced to an agent of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Quebec. It was during a break in a business conference in Quebec City and I trusted the person who introduced us. We had a fascinating conversation. My experience in such subjects had only been with the Toronto Police and the RCMP. This guy was low-key and modest, despite his American accent.

The most challenging question I asked him was where he got most of the information that he reported to his Langley, Virginia headquarters. His easy answer was that he got it from our newspapers, and I believed him. He didn’t need to add that conferences such as the one we were at would also supply information.

What author Ian Fleming tended to forget in his 007 thrillers is that in times of peace the most important information of interest to foreign agents is about trade and technology. No doubt any indications of political change need to also be analyzed in terms of what it might mean to the agent’s country.

At the time, I was working for the Canadian subsidiary of an American company that manufactured and sold high level computers for such tasks as seismic analysis of reserves in oil fields. Part of my work was the greeting, escorting and management of the presentations for visiting customers who wanted to see our Canadian plant and learn more about the products we were making here. There were frequent groups coming from the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese reciprocated for my company’s courtesy by inviting me or one of my staff to consular and embassy functions for their other trade groups. They also bought some of our computers.

It is hardly a surprise today to hear of the increased size of the Chinese consulate in Toronto or the embassy in Ottawa. Nor does it surprise me that this blog has a large number of regular readers in China according to Google Analytics. None of it is a surprise when you consider Canada is an important trading partner and is a favoured country for people from China seeking new opportunities and a new home. This is furthered by the fact that there are large communities of ethnic Chinese here to welcome them.

While carefully reading the recent complaints about possible Chinese government interference in Canadian elections, I would sincerely doubt that there is very much to it. You can be sure that Althia Raj writes more information of interest to the Chinese government for the Toronto Star than any backbencher in our parliament can supply. Frankly, I don’t think the People’s Republic of China would waste money on Canada’s democratic elections—a process in which they are not overly familiar.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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A Shout-Out for Poilievre.

by Peter Lowry

The former Manning Conference had a special guest this year, former prime minister Stephen Harper. Much of Harper’s effort at the conference was to try to knit together old and new conservative supporters. He even told the audience of conservatives of some of the mistakes that Pierre Poilievre has been making.

He pointed out that the current requirement for the opposition leader is to hold the government to account, not to tell them what he would do as prime minister.  It was also amusing when the former prime minister referred to the NDP as a branch plant of the liberal government.

This was a new Stephen Harper. He set aside his old vendetta with Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party. The two had argued years ago over the direction of the reform movement. He had also resisted Manning’s control over the back bench but used the same techniques when he was leader of the Conservative Party of Canada which included the former Reform. The two were almost chummy when they did a combined fireside chat shtick at the conference.

The new name of the annual event is the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference. It seems most older conservatives prefer to refer to it by its earlier and simpler name as the Manning Networking Conference.

It seems that Mr. Harper thinks that Pierre Poilievre is scorned in the same way as anti-establishment conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were scorned in their day. Neither of them had any credentials in economics either.

Mind you, if that is the case, there is no earthly reason for Poilievre to be elected anywhere. Just because he is as confused as those two, is absolutely no reason for him to be elected.

And it should be further noted that Mr. Harper is not as universally loved and respected as he would like to be either.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre Panders to Péquistes.

by Peter Lowry

Not much is heard from the federal conservative leader these days. He is letting some of his conservative MPs take the heat. He can let his Quebec lieutenant, Pierre Paul-Hus MP, tell the House of Commons that his conservatives support the bigotry of the Quebec government. This is not what Poilievre has been saying but he obviously wants to have it both ways. He wants English Canada to think he wants fair treatment for Anglophones in Quebec, while Quebec voters think he backs their National Assembly’s bigotry.

It reminds you of Prime Minister Mackenzie-King’s stance on conscription in the Second World War. It was something like ‘conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.’ It did not work for the war-time prime minister and it would hardly work today.

The problem in Quebec today is that the CAQ government of François Legault has gone overboard in restricting English language use, to match its religious bigotry. This is just getting even as far as many seniors and farmers feel but the world has passed them by. It is the young people who think it is silly. The Legault government has annoyed them by restricting their access to, and use of English. They consider it to be sophisticated to speak both English and French. They want to travel the world and experience what it has to offer. They are not impressed with just the Francophonie with its world population smaller than that of the United States of America.

What the Legault government does not realize is that they are hurting the long term economic prospects of their own province. They have already hurt the prospects of Montreal as being a world city. As a bilingual city, Montreal had many opportunities to become the dominant Canadian city in world shipping and banking. Losing that position to Toronto and Vancouver was a process heightened by the Quebec péquistes. The Legault government is just accelerating building a wall around Quebec.

It seems to me that if I was a prominent member of the Trudeau cabinet and an MP from Quebec, I would look for speaking opportunities at Quebec universities and lay it on the line to the students. The Legault government is trying to deny them full access to the world. And that quisling Poilievre would aid Legault.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre’s Poison.

by Peter Lowry

It’s pocketbook economics. Poilievre has found that if you distort the scenario just enough, it serves various purposes. If you imply that the Bank of Canada is at the beck and call of the prime minister, you can make wild accusations against the bank, its management and the prime minister. It makes a neat package. He thinks that the money distributed to Canadians during the pandemic was wasted. He accuses the prime minister of the waste. After all, how many citizens across Canada have a degree in economics?

It is like the old question posed to many Canadians returning from a Las Vegas vacation. How many will admit they lost money. They lie you know. At least they don’t have to lie about their last trip to the Loblaws. Did you enjoy that last fill-up of your favourite flavour of gasoline? And the news from the brutal war for the Eurasian Steppe is no better than it was yesterday.

And leader of the conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, can sit back and congratulate himself on a successful trip. He went after the job and he tell himself it is now his, a job, well done. Sewing seeds of discontent isn’t exactly the Road to Avonlea. It is just Poilievre’s route to chaos and discontent and the prime minister’s office.

Poilievre is a planner, a schemer, a snake, hiding in the garb of an accountant. He promoted Bitcoin until it lost so much it could embarrass him. He promises his followers no more than hard times. He brings no solace to the destitute. He will screw the environment. “Who cares,” he asks.

Canada’s Medicare is on the ropes and Poilievre could care less. Ask him the answer to the question many of our younger people are asking about how they can afford a single family dwelling in Toronto or Vancouver?

If Poilievre ever got into the prime minister’s office, he could show you just how far to the right he really is. He is a libertarian, without a conscience.  He is a user.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre’s Plan.

by Peter Lowry

The secret is out. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has been telling his fellow conservatives his secret strategy to win the country. The fact that it is the same strategy as promoted, by then federal conservative, Jason Kenney, a dozen years ago, is beside the point. It involves, first of all, getting out the naturally conservative voters. The next part is convincing new Canadian voters that their future is assured by voting for the conservative party. It is the same strategy that won Stephen Harper a majority in 2011.

One thing I will admit is that the conservatives are much better at getting out their naturally self-centred vote today than they were back in the 1960s. That was when liberal communications specialists such as myself were making sure that we had good connections in the immigrant communities and we understood their concerns. I figure the liberals were running about 50 years ahead of the conservatives back then.

The problem that was building for the liberals, at the time, was that the CCF/NDP had been eroding the progressive vote, The conservatives were coming out in control of the rural vote but losing in the cities which were absorbing the high volumes of new immigrants.

What was wrong with the liberal strategy in the back half of the 20th Century was that right-wing liberals such as John Turner and Paul Martin Junior damaged the liberal’s progressive image and voters saw little difference between the conservative and liberal parties.

What is really wrong with the Poilievre strategy is that he is still locked in his Albertan image. Despite running in an Ottawa area constituency, Pierre Poilievre is an Albertan at heart. He has absolutely no concern for the environment that he cares to discuss and he sees prime minister Justin Trudeau as the evil enemy.

Poilievre sees the liberal handouts throughout the pandemic as a deliberate plot to bankrupt the country rather than an honest effort to soften the blows of COVID-19.

And how he will overcome his open support of the ‘Freedom Convoy’ to Ottawa in the winter of 2022 has yet to be discussed with Canadian voters? And he is going to be continued to be mocked for his support of cryptocurrencies.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Food Fight.

by Peter Lowry

Going into a grocery store today is not the pleasure I used to feel when going into a well-run store. Each visit becomes a brutal series of price shocks. It is the few cents on a smaller can of peas. It is the three dollars more for a pound of butter. And nothing infuriates a senior more than the multiple deals where you get a few cents off if you buy two or three of something or the value-pack in the meat department that can fill your freezer for months. You are not saving it for your old age. How much more old age do you think we still have to endure?

What really annoys me though is the thoughtless promotion of Loblaws over their ‘No Name’ products that they have finally stopped raising the prices on products that they contracted for two years ago. All I know is that Loblaws’ various branded stores are making unconscionable profits to the reported tune of a million dollars a day. This is the conglomerate that was hauled into court in 2018 as part of the infamous bread price-fixing scandal. Remember the $25 gift card that all Canadian homes were supposed to get from the Weston empire. They owed Canadians a hell of a lot more.

If the triumvirate of grocery giants in Canada—Loblaws, Empire and Metro—is anything like the triumvirate of—Bell, Rogers and Telus—good luck to us. We already pay 20 per cent more for cell phone service in most of Canada. Are we about half-way there in heading for a 20 per cent rise in food costs?

I listened to finance minister Cynthia Freeland the other day. She stood there in the House of Commons and told us that we were getting a boost in the GST refund rate for the next five months.

At least she did not spout that garbage from Pee-Pee Poilievre that some other social benefit would have to be cancelled to pay for this federal largess. I am assuming that some of her cabinet colleagues had given her a heads up on spouting conservative dogma.

But I remain adamant that the communications companies, the gas companies and the bastards in the food chain who are making unconscionable profits off Canadians be taxed out of their profits on our suffering.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Pee-Pee, Where Are You?

by Peter Lowry

Our Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre (Pee-Pee) has vanished. Our new leader of Canada’s conservatives is among the missing. After all the hoopla around his winning the leadership, you would think Pee-Pee was in for the duration in opposition. Or is he just sitting at home, enthralled by watching the Rouleau Inquiry on CPAC?

You remember those halcyon days last winter in Ottawa don’t you Pee-Pee? You could go to your home, west on Hwy 417, away from that noisy downtown. Do you remember welcoming your trucker friends to Ottawa. You waved to them from the bridges, you brought them coffee from the parliament buildings. You introduced them to some of your conservative friends. You encouraged them to make downtown Ottawa a living hell for those who lived there. You encouraged them to break reasonable laws for peace and order.

But why aren’t you at the Rouleau Inquiry? Your friend Justin Trudeau is coming. We are not so sure if your buddy Doug Ford from Ontario is coming, maybe. After all, those fuckers, the truckers, are your kind of guys. They don’t like masks. They don’t like mandates for healthcare. They are somewhat ignorant as to how Canada is run but they want to fix it anyway. Just like you.

Pee-Pee, you are such a sleaze! You and your Bitcoin world need a dose of reality. You don’t even understand the role of the Bank of Canada but you think you can lay all the blame for world-wide inflation on Justin Trudeau. If you ever have to get a real job, you should definitely stay away from the world of finance.

And don’t you love the way the lawyers at the Rouleau Inquiry are trying to dump all the blame for use of the emergencies act on former Ottawa chief Peter Sloly. I wonder if former Toronto police chief Bill Blair (now an MP) has noticed that Pete Sloly doesn’t work for him anymore.

You have to admire how Sloly has handled himself during these hearings. He has been giving back as good as good as he has got. Maybe he should have been more attentive to what the Ontario provincial police and RCMP were really doing but considering what he was facing on the streets of Ottawa, I think he deserves a medal.

Unlike Bill Blair, Peter Sloly knew when he had been had and to resign.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A Peoples’ Parliament.

by Peter Lowry

A peoples’ parliament is an ideal for Canada but reality is that we have an elitist prime minister, a manipulative leader of the opposition and a few other struggling parties. At one time we had more of a peoples’ parliament. This current one is more of a peoples’ parties’ parliament. If we would stop voting for useless party drones instead of the best candidate for MP, we might once again have a peoples’ parliament.

It really was more of a peoples’ parliament back in the days of Justin Trudeau’s father. You could argue that it was not truly democratic but I felt that the openness of the government to input was a great start. One aspect in which I was directly involved was the creation of the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). I started with the group who fought at a liberal party session in Ottawa to let the Board of Broadcast Governors run the CBC but not make the rules for the private television stations and networks that were developing.

The CRTC was created by Pierre Trudeau’s government in 1968 and my MP, Bob Stanbury, was the communications minister at one time. The first time I appeared before the commission was on an application by a cable television company to cherry pick the apartment buildings across Toronto and let the other cable companies have the rest. I had fun with that one and the commission ruling was taken directly from my comments. It also led to a call asking me to produce shows for a young cable upstart called Ted Rogers.

I appeared many times on behalf of consumers before the CRTC and I never had as much fun as in those early days. I think the most successful appearance I made before our parliament was one before the parliamentary committee on finance. I was president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada at the time but appeared on behalf of Canadians for Health Research. It was in the Railway Committee Room in the parliament buildings. The Montreal based Health Research group were very concerned about some $60 million that had been cut in primary research funding across Canada. The gal running the health research group needed someone who wasn’t going to be too impressed to be speaking to members of parliament. My address was ‘read into’ Hansard that day and I got a call from the prime minister’s office that the finance minister had ‘found’ $60 million and there would be no cuts to health research that year.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A Shotgun Marriage?

by Peter Lowry

Do we realize that it is the Canadian consumer who is getting screwed in this Rogers takeover of Shaw Communications? It would leave Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus free to rape and pillage in the Canadian 5G world. You can feel the change in attitude already. It is a new arrogance.

I got my first dose of this new arrogance earlier this month. I tend to be a frequent flier on the Bell Canada help line. This month’s bill included notice of a coming rate hike but I was on a four-month quest to get an item taken off my bill. It was a $20 per month charge for a 4K PVR. Bell wants to charge me this $20 over 60 months This is the device that records television programs for you. Whether it is worth $1200, with or without interest, is not the argument. The problem is that I do not have one. I have a working 3K PVR that does the job just as well as the 4K model. I like it because I know it is paid for.

Why Bell sent me the 4K model has been a bit confusing. Plugging it into the maze of wires for remote television and Internet service was the challenge. I failed at plug-in 101. A service representative had to come and rescue my installation.

He was a very knowledgeable person and he quickly noted that the television signal was not plugged into the system hub. How it got unplugged I have absolutely no idea.

His second question was why, for two pre-historic television sets, I had a 4K PVR. He plugged in the old 3K that I was sending back to Bell (despite that I owned it after 60 months of payments). Since I now had a fully functional system, I accepted his suggestion that he take the 4K model back to Bell for me. This is why I have been trying to get it taken off my bill for the last four months.

And that is when I met the new model Ma Bell. She reminded me of my grade three school teacher who terrified us kids. If the principal had not come in and took me up to grade four, that teacher and I where in a fight to the finish.

This was not your usual mealy-mouthed, ‘we are here to help’ type of Bell employee. This was a new tough-minded, ‘Let’s duke it out,’ person. She said I got my 20 bucks back in the Internet credit of $25 per month. She acted as though I was cheating the widows and orphans who have Bell stock in their portfolio. And they were not about to move the credit to the television bill as opposed to the Internet bill.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Charlottetown Calamity.

by Peter Lowry

The Charlottetown Accord was rejected by Canadians 30 years ago. It was not one of our country’s finer moments. Historians might puzzle over its failure in years to come but to those of us who fought it, we knew we were fighting for our country. The accord was a top-down, inelegant document having its origin in the former Meech Lake Accord. Crafted by federal and provincial politicians, it was considered just an appeasement to Quebec—whose voters turned it down anyway.

The Charlottetown Accord passed by 50.1 per cent in favour in Ontario. It was the newer Canadian’s votes in Toronto that passed the accord. They were impressed that all three parties were supporting it.

That agreement between the parties caused me political problems. I could tell my local MP (a conservative) to get lost but liberal senators and MPs who contacted me were more of a problem. I particularly remember the lengthy conversation with Senator Richard Stanbury, a good friend for the past 30 years. It was especially hard for me to say ‘no’ to Dick when he asked me to support the accord. His concern was with Quebec voting for separation from Canada if we did not pass the accord.

I had a great sense of relief when former prime minister Pierre Trudeau came out of his retirement. His speech at La Maison Egg Roll in Verdun, Quebec was classic. He was still in great form. He held the accord up to ridicule. He saw it as a document that would further divide Canadians rather than bring them together. He was concerned by the attempts in the accord to make changes that would be irreversible without unanimous consent. He was particularly scathing in denouncing the transfer of many federal government responsibilities to the provinces.

Pierre Trudeau might have thought of himself as the little Dutch boy sticking his fingers into the dike. Yet, he turned the tide. And yes, the péquiste leaders in Quebec hated the accord because it was a few steps short of giving them the separation they wanted.

What we can all agree on is that never again will Canadians allow their politicians to control changes to their constitution. It must be done democratically. It involves all of us. We are already warming to the idea of telling Charles III to take a hike as Canada’s sovereign.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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