Federal Politics – Page 108

A cri de coeur for Canada’s Conservatives.

February 12, 2017 by Peter Lowry

For the benefit of M.P. Kelly Leitch and that O’Leary person we should translate: a ‘cri de coeur’ is an impassioned plea from the heart. And that is what this is. Sometime in the next month, Babel-on-the-Bay will publish its morning line on the current Conservative Party of Canada leadership contest. This is a public service to assist conservatives, reporters and other political punters to establish a base line when analyzing the statistics for the rather large field of candidates.

And we respectfully ask that readers be aware that a morning line is not a prediction of a race’s outcome. It is an assessment of the political potential of the various candidates by a politico who has some expertise to share.

But by no stretch of the imagination would we try to forecast the moods and frustrations and motivations of the voting members of the Conservative Party of Canada. Whether an individual is a religious conservative, a financial conservative or just mean spirited is not something that you can easily tell at a glance.

And just because we gave Donald Trump longer odds than Hillary Clinton in the recent American fiasco, it hardly meant that he could not win.

The reason for our cri de coeur today is that there is a growing concern that the Conservative Party is letting all of us down. Maybe the party was just in power too long under that guy with the funny hairpiece. And that lady you have as interim leader is hardly showing the attention to detail that could keep the current prime minister’s nose to the grindstone, so to speak.

This is a call for Canada’s Conservatives to smarten up. You can hardly let the current mess in Alberta throw you off your game. And if the Conservatives there give that trouble-maker Kenney license to lead their provincial party, good luck! He has made it very clear that he intends to destroy the provincial party and replace it with the Wildrose Party.

The facts are that we have a situation in Ottawa today where we have a lame-duck opposition. We have a prime minister learning his job with limited critiquing. And there is very little time left to find which one of those no-name candidates has the potential to make the right kind of name for himself or herself.

The only good news for you today is that the federal New Democrats are in far worse shape. They do not even have any real candidates.

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We all need editors.

February 10, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Wandering through the web site called Progressive Bloggers the other day, we found a writer who inadvertently referred to a clique as a ‘click.’ That is one way to get noticed! It happens to all of us though as we keyboard our frustrations without the aid of that second look.

That particular blog needed more than just an editor. It would have been more merciful to spike it. It called for an insurrection because Prime Minister Trudeau put an end to possible change in how we elect our members of parliament. Luckily, Canadians are more peaceful than that and his call is being ignored.

But it was read. He also wanted a People’s Reform Referendum—whatever that might be? This was also where the ‘click’ was noticed. He asked if Canadians should “let a small click (sic) of gutless politicians decide their political future?” Since that is what we elect them to do, there is an obvious answer to that question.

Are you still trying to get your mind around the idea of a People’s Reform Referendum? The writer thinks individuals across Canada would be willing to donate to pay for this idea. He thinks they should trust the Fair Vote Canada organization to run the referendum. And he even thinks that the New Democratic Party and the Greens would help launch the effort.

And who would be foolish enough to think Fair Vote Canada would be fair? It is hardly in that organization’s interest to be fair. It has been a lobby for proportional representation for the past sixteen years. It is a ‘Johnny-one-note’ group since it is modelled on the American organization.

Fair Vote’s claims for proportional representation border on the ludicrous. The organization claims that when parties supply their lists for appointment to a legislative body, they make sure that minorities are well represented. What really happens is that many pressure groups form their own parties in hopes a larger party, trying to form a government, will make a deal with them. The proportional system actually works against good government.

What people do not notice in their scurry to change how we vote is that Canadians have one of the best developed voting systems in the world. First-Past-the-Post is easy for everyone to understand, makes it easy to vote, easy to verify and we trust it. No system is perfect but we have been unable to find one better.

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Waiting for Mr. Trump.

February 6, 2017 by Peter Lowry

The reporters and pundits are causing unnecessary concerns. Does anyone really believe that Justin Trudeau cannot handle a meeting with Donald Trump? What is to worry about? Trudeau meets Trump; each takes a couple selfies; they ask about the respective families; tell each other, we’ve got to get together for a state dinner sometime and kissy, kissy, goodbye. And then act coy with the media.

It is a no-brainer for both leaders. Is there anything that Donald Trump does not think he knows about Canada? Is there anything that Donald Trump might know about American history that school teacher Trudeau does not already know?

Do you think it might be a contest of egos? They both have lots of that. We have never seen Trump without a shirt but he is a lot older than Trudeau and arm-wrestling might be out. Nor would either care to try to outdrink the other. These guys have nothing in common. The possibility that Trump might be a billionaire is not something that would matter to Trudeau. He is comfortably off and would not be impressed. And he knows better billionaires.

And does Trump even know that Canada is a signatory to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)? Does he have a clue as to how the Canada-U.S. Auto Pact came about and what the almost 50-year old agreement means to both countries?

If Trump dares to tear up NAFTA, Americans are going to find that the fool is playing a zero-sum game. Trade is a two-way street. For every Canadian or Mexican he puts out of work, he can count on losing an American job. Trump could drive all of North America into a depression.

The truth is that Donald Trump is a bully. We all saw how he backed off when he met the Mexican President during last fall’s campaign. He gushed like a school girl when meeting British Prime Minister May recently. He will be hopelessly jealous of Trudeau’s relative youth and good looks.

But he does not seem to multi-task well. That can be beneficial to a business person who takes on one task at a time but the U.S. presidency requires an incumbent who can quickly move from one problem to the next. The Canadian’s visit will be a vague memory the day after they meet.

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A better role for NDP’s Nate Cullen.

February 5, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Frankly, it has been disappointing. Nate Cullen MP from British Columbia has been so busy bitching and whining, he is missing the real opportunity. He has the right to complain about what seemed like a wasted summer of 2016 studying vote reform. It was no waste of time; it was the best exposure he has had since being first elected. He can now step up to the bar and accept the leadership of Canada’s New Democratic Party.

And he is allowed to change his mind about that. In the fractious and demoralized New Democratic Party that had just fired Tom Mulcair, he said he did not want the leadership job. Nobody did. They hardly wanted the expensive, frustrating and unrewarding job of trying to bring the party back together. Now the party has to draft Cullen.

What the party knows now is that there never was an Orange Wave. They also know that the Leap Manifesto is as out of date as the original Regina Manifesto. Looking backwards is not meeting the needs of Canadians.

It is not that there is anything basically wrong with Leap but it seems almost defensive. You just cannot put those words to music. They do not show you the possibilities of a better future for Canadians. They fix what is past, not what is future.

Listening to Cullen on the special commons committee on voting reform last summer and fall, he showed an affinity for Canadians that other members of the committee seemed to miss. He outshone the erudite Elizabeth May of the Green Party. They were both on the same path for proportional representation but he made it more real.

While this writer was hardly swayed by Cullen’s support for proportional systems, you had to give him credit for listening to all sides of the argument. You could see some of his words in the all-party committee’s report. He represented his party better than the party deserved.

As much as the NDP needs to modernize its thinking and its policies, what there is, Cullen presents them well. There were times during the 2015 federal election that you wondered where Thomas Mulcair was finding the ideas he was presenting. It was bad enough that some seemed right wing, but there was no logical connection to New Democratic philosophy.

A reader told us in very strong terms a while back that Babel-on-the-Bay has no right to be telling the NDP what to do. It is just that you can get tired of writing about Trump. It is nice to write about a real politician occasionally.

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Weep not for vote reform.

February 4, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Among each successive generation there are those who seek to change how we elect our representatives to run our cities, our provinces and our country. Good for them. It is important that we think about it. We need to be sure we have the best system possible. And we do. Now that we have completed our study, we have moved the file to the bottom of the pile as there are other issues to address.

You will notice that Prime Minister Trudeau did not dispense with the department with the removal of Mariam Monsef as minister of democratic institutions. He gave the job to M.P. Karina Gould who is also a newcomer to government but with an impressive curriculum vitae. And while taking away voting reform in the new mandate letter, her challenges are no less daunting.

The Senate situation is far from solved. Appointments to our courts, commissions and crown corporations can hardly be handled by elitist selection committees. The concern for cyber security implies that the government and Elections Canada would like to move firmly in the direction of Internet voting. There is certainly a long way to go in bringing some sunshine on political fundraising and spending by parties and third parties in elections. Launching an independent body to arrange election debates is also long overdue as is fixing the falsely named Fair Elections Act. And if she can find time to address the problems with the Access to Information Act, the prime minister thinks it will be a job well done.

But what the prime minister fails to address are the concerns about his power and the control over the government exercised by the Prime Minister’s Office. This could be the greatest challenge we face. Every time someone says that the Donald Trump situation could not happen here, we wonder how much worse it could be. There are checks and balances in the constitution of our neighbours in America that do not exist in our parliamentary system. There could easily be a time when Trump will wish he could shut down Congress as easily as our prime minister can prorogue parliament.

Canada has a constitution designed for a parliamentary system rich in precedent. All we missed was the precedents. Maybe because we never had to contend with an Oliver Cromwell, we lack some safeguards.

It is about time Canada took a hard look at its constitutional problems. It might even justify the cost of a department to worry about our democratic institutions. It is also long past time for our country to assemble a democratically elected constitutional parliament to propose some constitutional amendments to the voters. God knows we cannot get our politicians to address the mounting problems.

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Which truth matters?

February 1, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Yet another report has been written on the train wreck of Canadian news media. Frankly, the Library of Parliament is already overloaded with such studies. There is always lots of hand-wringing and consoling for each new version but this new one can be guaranteed to gather dust as the many written before. It seems to be essential that such reports be written by a master of the journalism profession and they at least make for a good read.

But will this report get any further than its predecessors? Fat chance. Written by Edward Greenspon of the Public Policy Forum, the report calls on government to basically ensure that there is no tax advantage for Canadian companies to advertise on foreign websites. If that measure alone could redirect $200 million to $300 million back to Canadian news gathering and journalism, it would be a good start.

But there is still a chasm to cross for news media interests to meet the Internet news needs of Canadians. And nobody could be eager for the American owners of PostMedia to introduce their Canadian version of the National Enquirer and its alternative news to consumers. Even if it might be the first time Postmedia shows a profit!

The report certainly recognizes the failing coverage of local news but this alone does not justify Canadians spending tax money on a new in-depth Canadian Press organization. If you are old enough to remember the days when Canadian Press produced its Style Book and its Caps and Spelling companion piece, that was something that deserves support. We are on a slippery slope with the abominable misuse of English both in broadcast and print in this country and government help there would be appreciated.

What we fail to understand is Greenspon’s ambivalence towards the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio Canada. Maybe he sees the Corp as having already sold out.

But to whom? The CBC is hardly loved by the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission. It has been beaten to the ground by Bell and Rogers in its desperate attempt to provide decent sports coverage for Canadians and governments of all stripes deny it support for its struggling news service. And yet Greenspon wants to take away the bit of revenue it is getting for its timely and respected Internet news coverage.

As Senator Keith Davey remarked to us when he launched his 1969 study of Canada’s mass media, “Can you think of a better way to be noticed by the news media?

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The fix in foreign affairs.

January 31, 2017 by Peter Lowry

When Stéphane Dion was so unceremoniously dumped from foreign affairs by Prime Minister Trudeau, all most people could say was they hoped it worked. How would you feel if you were the new foreign affairs minister and the PM kept casting about for the advice needed to handle the situation in Washington? And how does anyone keep tabs on that fast-changing scene?

And it hardly matters a damn if our new Minister Chrystia Freeland knows all about Washington. If she does not understand Donald Trump, she is just going to be one more example of road-kill on the Beltway. Nor does it help if she has the keys to Foggy Bottom. (Foggy Bottom is an older area of the District of Columbia where the Department of State is located.) The bad news is that anyone of any importance at State Freeland might have known is gone. They were not fired. The department leadership listened to Trump, studied Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State and quit en masse.

And there is little hope for Freeland’s second line of defense, her media contacts. Those of her contacts still in the profession are busy digging their foxholes around the White House as Trump and his alternative facts people check their Ouija boards for the news facts of the day.

Frankly there is more reason for concern about our day to day relations in Washington with Trudeau appointee David MacNaughton heading up our embassy. After the pitiful performance MacNaughton turned in during the 2015 election campaign, his political pay-off should have been a poorly located shoe-shine stand on Sparks Street in Ottawa.

And if Trudeau is waiting anxiously for an invitation to meet Trump, frankly he should be busy that day. Trump has already shown his hand. With the Mexican president already having told Trump to get stuffed, Trump wants to make allies of those nice Canadians. What he also expects is a quid pro quo for approving the damn Keystone XL pipeline. Obviously, we need to convince the fool that it is more to his benefit than ours. He probably moved on it prematurely because he wants to keep Trudeau and Mexican President Peña Nieto from ganging up on him. He has probably been told by now that renegotiation of NAFTA would take from two to three years and would probably not benefit the U.S.

And Freeland could never pull a stunt with Trump such as she pulled in the deal with the European Union. She would be playing right into his hands. If she walked out on him, she would find herself declared persona non grata.

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Orwell Observed.

January 29, 2017 by Peter Lowry

There must be a dearth of honest work for lawyers these days. It seems more and more of them are devoting billable hours to being published. It must be part of their contract to get their firm noticed and to attract real lawyering work. One such example of this phenomenon is the recent op-ed in the Toronto Star by former Ontario premier as well as former interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Bob Rae.

It seems Bob is also a reader and his op-ed provides an interesting discourse on the similarities between Donald Trump’s rather sketchily defined plans for America and the dystopian views of the British author who wrote under the pen name: George Orwell. Bob might as well make the observation that U.S. President Donald Trump has characteristics of the leader referred to as ‘Big Brother’ in Orwell’s book 1984.

While it is not our intention to spoil a good read for anybody, the entire point of the book seems to be to explain how those of us in the middle class of a rebellious or left-of-centre political bent can also come to love Big Brother.

Bob’s intent though is to show how President Trump—as Big Brother—knows what his people want and is providing for their desires. It has always been our opinion that Orwell purposely never defined Big Brother as the vagueness of his character could attract a greater cross section of the populace. The more flexible the politicians’ policies the bigger their success.

The trouble with Trump is that there is the strong possibility he is promising things that even the President of the United States cannot deliver. There is even a growing awareness that building that wall for Mexico is impractical. Big Brother would never be called to account for such an error.

What Bob finds disturbing though is the “dark, grim nature” of Trump’s view of America expressed in his inauguration address. Like Big Brother, he is the only person who can fight off this “carnage.” He is convinced that only he can save the nation because only he knows what the people want.

Bob finds it fascinating how many in business and politics are willing to placate Trump’s protectionist policies. He thinks that too many business people are trying to accommodate Trump’s views without realizing the ultimate harm they will cause.

What Bob Rae does not seem to realize is that Trump is hardly the first American President seeking to create a world dominated by America’s self interest. He is just the first to handle it so blatantly and badly.

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As the world wearies of Trump.

January 26, 2017 by Peter Lowry

This is a bad sign. A world becoming wearied of President Trump already? It signifies an acceptance of something abnormal and dangerous. When the king seats his fool on the throne, is the fool now king?

And if you accept the largess of the fool while the fool sits on the throne, are you not the greater fool?

When a Trump triumphant fouls the fabric of common sense, silences science, pardons polluters and panders to the providers of pipelines, is he not the fool?

But are those of us concerned about our environment being gamed? There are many steps to go before this Keystone XL pipeline is put into its bed of earth. In the two years of delay given to us by President Obama, other routes have been utilized. And is there really a need for a glut of tar sands bitumen reaching the Texas Gulf ports when the pipeline is finished?

And who are the real fools when Prime Minister Trudeau and Alberta’s Premier Rachel Notley cheer approval of President Trump’s executive order to bring the pipeline back on the construction schedule? Are there really jobs to be saved north of the U.S. border? Or is it just more destruction of the Alberta landscape as settling ponds overgrow the environment.

An Associated Press photographer was allowed into the Oval Office to photograph the President with his signed executive order. It was interesting to see the increased bagginess under the eyes, the unkempt white hair, the growing flaccidness of his 70-year old face and the hardness of Mr. Trump’s expression. This is a man pushing himself as though the devil is about to foreclose on their pact.

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When a leader betrays a Canadian legacy.

January 23, 2017 by Peter Lowry

There was a time back in the Pearson-Trudeau era when tensions ran through English-French relations at the usual flash points in Montreal and Ottawa. And those of us not fully bilingual were the bruised. It is sad to tell of the disappointments suffered from those you had supported so fiercely.

That is why so many Canadians were understandably annoyed with Justin Trudeau last week in his Quebec town-hall meetings. For the Prime Minister to refuse to answer an English language question (about language rights) in English to an Anglophone questioner was both ignorant and ridiculous. If his late father had been witness to that immature lack of judgement, he would have wanted to spank him.

Justin Trudeau used the thin and fallacious argument that as they were in Quebec, he should answer in French. Somebody got to him afterwards and it needs to be reported that he did apologize later but the damage was done.

Insulting people over their limitations in one or another of our official languages can be very foolish. Many of us have spend a great deal of time and money over the years to try to improve our fluency. This is not always an easy task when you do not have an ear for languages. Back when this writer was building a new Quebec division of the Canadian Multiple Sclerosis Society, it was necessary to give a series of talks to people across Quebec. It took a great deal of discipline and practice to learn to give those talks in French. It was very gratifying in some ways that in the question period afterwards that people assumed a competence in the language that really did not exist.

But it is also why we laugh, in turn, at millionaire Kevin O’Leary who seems to think he is God’s gift to the Conservative Party. This guy, who was born in Quebec, more than 60 years ago, attended Quebec colleges and Royal Military College Saint-Jean where he could have become bilingual—and did not. It is just so unlikely that he could become bilingual at this stage of his life that it is laughable.

The last federal Conservative leader in Canada who did not speak French was John George Diefenbaker. While a conservative populist, as O’Leary considers himself, Diefenbaker respected Canada’s official languages. O’Leary has obviously never cared.

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