Category: Federal Politics

Maybe we are talking about different sciences here but you would think that politics and energy would have some similar characteristics. What we are thinking of here is the tendency of the politics of the left to react to the actions of the politics of the right. For example, if Canada’s right-wing parties split would there be a reaction in the left-wing parties?

And knock off the laughter. You do not have to be too old to remember the days of the Reform and Alliance parties fighting with the Old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Nobody ever said that the political manipulations of Stephen Harper were dumb.

And there is nothing left of centre in the party that Justin Trudeau is carving out of the old Liberal Party of Canada. He is creating a populist movement that is much further to the right than anyone anticipated. We are finally seeing a party that promises some pot for every chick.

But what happens to the left of centre liberals? And there will be lots of environmentalists who will be former Liberal Party members. Splitting all these people between the New Democrats and the Greens will not be a realistic solution.

Real Liberals hold to a basic tenet of the rights of the individual. That conflicts directly with the collectivism of the union-controlled NDP. Liberals will also find that the somewhat scattered policies of an immature Green Party are far behind the freedoms of modern liberalism.

Little is going to happen other than talk before the 2019 election but by that time, we should see some of the impact of recent changes. We expect Justin Trudeau to be in a strong position to run a more right-wing campaign in hopes of picking up a substantial share of the old Progressive Conservatives.

Left-wing liberals will waste their votes on the NDP and Greens and do nobody any good. Western Conservatives will split the country giving little support to the hated Liberals—even though the Trudeau government is supporting their exploitive energy extraction and pipelines economy.

After the election debacle in 2019, cooler heads to the left will start to see the potential for a more centrist social democratic political party in Canada. The creation of that party will take time but it can be done. It will be something in which Canadians can take pride.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

And you used to wonder why Prime Minister Stephen Harper was always flying off with his hairdresser to other parts of the world? It was obvious to many that he was under the constant pressure of keeping his disparate party under some semblance of control. It was during his third term–his first majority—that some of the controls were relaxed and Canadians saw the true Conservative Party of Stephen Harper.

They saw the denials of women’s rights from the social conservatives. They saw the attempts to exclude voters from the polls. They saw the tax benefits to being a Conservative supporter. They saw the Senate of Canada used as a sinecure for the Tory faithful. They saw the abuse in trying to mislead the House of Commons.

What Canadians saw was also the growing tensions in the marriage of the Reform/Alliance movement with the former Progressive Conservatives. The progressives were becoming less and less likely to support what they were seeing as extremism. They could not condone the cruelty of the religious right and the Libertarianism of the extremists demanding less taxes and smaller, less caring government.

And the current leadership contest in the party has served to demonstrate that rift. Libertarians such as Maxime Bernier had little trouble gathering up funds from gullible and unknowing Canadians. His only problem is that he cannot win in his own province.

Kellie Leitch and Kevin O’Leary ripped pages from the Trump handbook without looking at where the votes were to come from. Without the second, third or fourth vote preferences, they go nowhere.

Michael Chong from Ontario is recognized as the only possible choice for the former Progressive Conservatives. The wild card is Erin O’Toole—also from Ontario—who ingratiated himself in the Atlantic and got Peter MacKay on his side. Balancing O’Toole on the right though is Saskatchewan M.P. Andrew Scheer. The two of them hang on the extreme right of their party and have equally unproved leadership potential.

It looks like no matter who wins the conservative leadership, Canada could end up with two political parties on the right. The most right-wing party will probably be dominated by the western element. The more centre-right party will likely be on a Montreal-Toronto axis. And both parties will be more stable than the current Conservative Party of Canada.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

At most race tracks today, the race fans are offered television views of the back stretch. It helps them follow the race, recognizing that most of the positioning moves in the back stretch develop the story of the race. It is the same in a political race such as the current Conservative Party of Canada run for the Leadership Roses.

An obvious loss in the back-stretch positioning was TV star Kevin O’Leary. Wandering off to Florida shows the lack of commitment that O’Leary has to the race.

O’Leary left Leitch lost in the pack. She will not be with the leaders in the final turn.

But you have to remember that this is a race reserved for losers. And 13 of those losers will still be losers when it is over. The winner will be able to decide whether it was worth it at his/her leisure. There is no second prize.

What makes the race interesting is that no accurate polls can be taken. With the supposed highest polling score of 10 per cent of Conservative voters, there is really no front-runner. The leaders are too tightly bunched.

Even the new sign-up Conservatives are a wasted effort as you can hardly get them all to strategically indicate a second, third or fourth choice that can be of any help to their candidate.

We expect the sleeper in the race will be Erin O’Toole from Ontario. It is one of the interesting complications of the party rules. O’Toole concentrated on the Atlantic Provinces at first. Logically, an Atlantic Conservative voter would have up to five times the voting power of an Ontario Conservative voter. If the average Atlantic electoral district with 50 party members has the same number of points in voting as an Ontario electoral district with 300 members, it shows Mr. O’Toole knows his math.

But whether O’Toole can challenge either Michael Chong or Lisa Raitt (also from Ontario) is impossible to guess. Raitt has the women’s second vote and Michael Chong has the Liberals (that is not a typo).

Michael Chong is the thinking Conservative’s choice because he is the closest to a Liberal that the Conservatives have to offer. He is that old fashioned Progressive Conservative that brought the Conservatives to power federally or provincially over the years. It was the extremists of the Harper crew who finally brought down that government. Chong was a dissenter.

We will give you another snapshot when the horses make the final turn.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

You really have to laugh at Ed Broadbent’s attempts at resuscitating the moribund federal New Democratic Party. He seems to be the only person who believes you can do mouth-to-mouth life saving through a microphone.

Ed’s modestly named Broadbent Institute had a conference for Canada’s leftists last week in Ottawa. All we learned was that Ed did not like the recent Liberal government budget and he was pleased that Trudeau was not keeping his promises. He felt that was making room for a social democratic movement in Canada.

The Institute named its program ‘Change the Game.’ The problem was that it failed to name the game or to tell anyone the rules of the game.

Ed’s opening speech to the conference was a bit of a trip down memory lane. He is hardly old enough to remember Agnes Macphail, when she was the first woman elected to the House of Commons in 1921. He must have been about 19 when she died in 1954

But what he proves in events such as this and his usual remarks is that he and the New Democratic Party are out of date and out of touch with the long-term direction that Canada needs to take on the 21^st Century.

It is like Babel-on-the-Bay has been waiting for the current NDP leadership race to come to life. The debates so far have been eulogies rather than directions. How can these people talk about being a social democratic party when they cannot even define what a social democratic party should be?

When some Toronto New Democrats put together their LEAP Manifesto, there was a brief hope. It proved to be naïve and lacking balance.

What should be very clear to the federal NDP membership by now is that Thomas Mulcair did not let them down in the last election. How could anyone expect a former Liberal from Quebec to lead a party in a crucial election that cannot define its own directions. Mulcair presented what he saw. Whose fault was that?

He only had his hard work in the House of Commons as Leader of the Opposition going for him in the election. To expect the voters to respond to the performance in the House was foolish. The party allowed the myth of the Orange Wave of 2011 to hide the organizational failure in Quebec.

Canada’s New Democrats have people with knowledge and understanding of Canadian politics. They should listen to them, not Ed Broadbent.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Henceforth it is resolved that we will post our commentaries after our second cup of coffee. Despite how much we try to ignore the Conservative M.P. for our neighbouring electoral district of Simcoe-Grey, we really should spell her name right. And you would think one of our loyal readers would point out the gaff to us. Would you believe that the last five or six times we mentioned her over the past month, we have spelled her name three different ways—none correct.

It is not as though Kellie Leitch M.P. is ever going to be particularly important. There are not enough bigots in the Conservative Party of Canada to consider her as a possible leader for the party. It is just that you wonder how accurate could a morning line assessment be when you cannot spell the name of one of the 14 Conservative leadership contestants. And no, we have not checked the rest. We can only hope we are not that careless!

But the race is now in the back stretch and the Conservatives (if nobody else) are starting to get excited. It is hard to imagine how the track announcer would handle some of the goings-on in this horse race. Would a horse wander off to Florida at this time—when there was an invitation to press the flesh at a Toronto party session? This is hardly the proper behaviour for a horse, a leadership contestant or a television star such as Kevin O’Leary.

The major problem with assessing this race politically, when you are not a member of that party, is that you have to rely on second and third-hand information. You are dealing with it more in the form of snapshots than in the form of video clips.

The word from the back stretch in this race is that the track is muddy and the contestants (less O’Leary) seem bunched more for the shared warmth than any similarity in stride or positioning. Maybe we will be able to see the horses more clearly when they go into the final turn later this month.

What we are starting to see more clearly at this time is the growing dissatisfaction of the ‘progressives’ in the Conservative Party. There are many Conservatives who are fiscal conservatives but progressive socially. They are increasingly concerned about the dominance of the party by the old Reform/Alliance movement. There is a growing feeling among them that a new Progressive Party might be needed. There will be more coming on this.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

You just love it when the government has to call some by-elections for seats in parliament that have become vacant and people want to analyze the results. Why? We knew the likely results when the by-elections were called. If you want to see hotly contested by-elections, come back when there is something to contest.

The biggest battles in a situation such as this are the nominations for the party that held the seat last. When you are having by-elections in electoral districts that were won by majorities in the last general election, it gives you a clue as to the eventual winner.

If we mentioned that the previous seat-holders for the two Calgary seats were Conservatives, the Right Hon. Stephen Harper and the Hon. Jason Kenney, which party do you think won those seats? You are right! It is the status quo all over again.

It was a similar story in the three eastern seats in Montreal, Ottawa and the Toronto area. The turn-out to vote was a disgrace but no party was working very hard—or very smart. Reading into the voting totals is a waste of time.

We are not suggesting by any means that a change is not possible. Turn-overs happen. It is just when they do, you hear it first at the doors. Your canvassers are your campaign’s listening posts. They are not there to talk but to listen. Given a possible turn-over in a by-election, the parties can draw on people resources from surrounding ridings. More of the party stars show up in the area. It all depends on the stakes at risk.

Back when we had responsibilities across multiple electoral districts in general elections, we used to swear you could smell defeat or victory when dropping in on a campaign office. You can see it in the activity and the smiles. You can hear it in the ringing telephones.

Today, by-elections are just an excuse for the parties to raise money. They provide an opportunity to get new talent into government. They are opportunities for the chosen of the leader—sometimes.

That was the only good news in these by-elections. The nomination meeting in Montreal’s Saint-Laurent electoral district did not pick Justin Trudeau’s choice. The local Liberals liked the hard-working local gal with the long Greek name. As did the voters in the electoral district. We wish her well.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Elizabeth May M.P. is the leader of a party that never was. She is the only Green Party member in parliament and therefore is deprived of real recognition of that leadership status. She also appears to be the only real liberal in the House of Commons.

That must be the secret of Elizabeth May’s success. We know for sure that she would toe the line on environmental promises and would never compromise her standards. She would never have approved the doubling of the Kinder Morgan pipeline over the Rockies. She would never have agreed to President Trump’s go-ahead for the Keystone XL pipeline. She is certainly not cheering on the cross-Canada Energy East pipeline to Saint John.

But the noose around Ms. May’s neck is the Green Party of Canada. It is a party with nowhere to grow. It is why the Green leader gave up her summer in 2016 to be part of the special commons committee on electoral reform. It was the Green Party’s one chance to grow by pushing hard for proportional representation. It was the only hope for a party that had never received much more than five per cent of the total vote.

Proportional representation has been the bonanza for green parties in Europe where a small party can often get into a coalition amenable to their green conditions. They are wedge parties, not governmental parties.

And Elizabeth May seems constantly uncomfortable with her wedge role. She has far more to offer than saving the occasional waterway. Sure, it is important that we save waterways but it should be part of a balanced governance for a country.

To make matters worse, Ms. May has been dumped on by her own party taking positions that conflict with her values. Listening to her over the years and particularly during the special committee hearings last summer and fall, it becomes quite clear that she is instinctively a liberal. And she is also more open minded and more consistent in her political direction than our poster boy prime minister.

It should be obvious to Elizabeth May that the Liberal Party of Canada needs a conscience. She should be able to supply that direction while also lending the prime minister some gender balance with knowledge and political experience. She might be the last liberal but somebody has to point the Liberal government back to the proper directions.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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