Category: Federal Politics

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 He said it for many Canadians who consider the royals as out of date and demeaning.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

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‘Justin Trudeau’s Party?’

by Peter Lowry

Squeezed in between the photos from the coronation this past weekend there were a couple reports in my daily newspaper on the Ottawa meeting of the Liberal Party of Canada. It is good to hear that the party is alive and well but it is not owned in any way by Justin Trudeau. He has it on loan, at best. He visited the convention and spoke to the attendees as the leader of the party before flying to England as prime minister of Canada, and as a member country of the Commonwealth of Nations, to attend the coronation of Charles III.

The liberal party was created by Toronto reformer George Brown and Ontario’s Clear Grits in Upper Canada in 1857 and was joined by Quebec’s Parti Rouge and the Nova Scotian Reformers after the 1867 Confederation of Canada.

While considered a ‘Big Tent’ party today, the Liberal Party of Canada is a centre left party that, over the years, when forming the federal government, has gradually expanded the social safety net for Canadians. It looked at Medicare and made it a fact for Canadians from coast to coast. It took an idea for daycare and is implementing it across Canada so that women with young children can also contribute to our economic growth.

Nobody owns the liberal party. When I joined the party in 1960s Canada, it was changing itself. It took control of the party’s direction. It made accountability of leaders a mandatory requirement. 

The liberal party is a progressive party. It invests itself in Canada’s growth and health. It invests in our future. It believes in investing in the Canada of the future.

Among the two most serious mistakes Justin Trudeau made when he became leader was his refusal to recognize the liberal presence in the Senate and to eliminate membership fees in the liberal party. He denied the party its history in the Senate and he denied the party its independent funding.

But the party will outlive, Justin Trudeau. And the Senate of Canada needs more than lip service to change.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Conservatives Colliding.

by Peter Lowry

It seems there is a growing rift between Doug Ford, premier of Ontario and Pierre Poilievre, leader of the federal conservatives. It is a bumpkin versus an idealogue. It is a street fighter versus a sleaze. They are not even in the same weight class.

And it is not only the Volkswagen battery plant that stands between them. Ford has already professed his admiration for deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland. He considers her his pal. Yet there is this shrill voice from the Ottawa cowboy screaming that Volkswagen is a waste of money. Poilievre is a half-ton trucker himself.

And you cannot expect Justin Trudeau not to keep rubbing salt in that wound. You would think he is toying with Ford just to annoy Calgary-educated Poilievre. It might cost the Canadian taxpayers a few billion dollars but it should pay off handsomely down the road. After all, what is Poilievre doing about the environment? What would he ever do but deny global warming?

Poilievre only drinks the Kool-Aid of the tar sands. Doug Ford goes with the flow. Of course, Doug looks after his pals. He gives up Ontario wetlands and good farmland to serve his developer buddies from Toronto city hall. He constantly shafts Toronto to revenge the treatment of him and his late brother when they were both in city hall.

But it is the liberals in Ottawa who are dealing with industry to bring more jobs to Ontario. Of course, it would help if the province had the housing for workers and they could afford to live there.

What seems to be annoying Poilievre the most is Mr. Ford’s saying that he stood shoulder to shoulder with the Ottawa liberals to invoke the Emergencies Act and sending the ‘Freedom convoy’ home to pout. Those truckers were Mr. Poilievre’s friends and he needed their votes to win the federal conservative leadership.

On top of that, Ford ordered the longest lock-downs in Ontario during the pandemic as well as making all his conservative candidates in the last election have their COVID shots. Pierre Poilievre and Doug Ford are not kindred spirits.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Call it ‘Compuphobia.’

by Peter Lowry

Compuphobia’ is my word for the ongoing irrational fear of using the Internet for voting. It amazes me that it is people who have little understanding of computers and computer safeguards who are blocking the simple step to using the Internet for voting. It is finally a by-election in Preston, Nova Scotia that is claimed to being used to test a secure system. It is only when you listen to the details of the system, that you realize that they are using computer tablets to print the ballots for the voters.

This is not computerized voting.

The test in Preston is using a tablet to mark the ballot. It is only coincidental that the system counts the ballots, before printing them. It is the paper copies that are supposed to be used if there is a judicial recount.

But they have solved the problem of spoiled ballots. The computer does not spoil them. If they are marked for a specific candidate, then that candidate gets the vote. When you stop and think about it, why would you need a judicial recount? The judge only rules on questionable ballots. The computer does not print questionable ballots.

We all have a lot to learn on this subject. My kid brother has a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a retired professor, whose hobby is designing secure computer systems.

But any locked door requires a key. That is the weakness to any secure system. You have to trust the person or persons with the key.

It is why I have always been skeptical of the conservative party leadership contests, with the with the ranked balloting and the weighting to 100 votes per electoral district. Everyone waits breathlessly for the next counting as they drill down the count. Yet we all know that the count is measured in minutes on the computers. The people running the computer program are just catering to the anticipation.

I think we should all forget the ‘James Bond’ style spy. The secret operatives for countries of the future will be computer programmers.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Dark Side of the Elite.

by Peter Lowry

It is good to see that a real grocery person is slated to take the reins at Canada’s largest chain of grocery stores.  It hardly means that the time of the galloping inflation in groceries is over, but we will not have it rubbed in by the scion of the Weston empire, Galen Weston Junior.

Galen Weston is no Dave Nichol. The late Dave Nichol was the marketing expert who developed the No Name and Presidents Choice lines of products for Loblaws back in the 1980s. He brought simple products to radio and television and made them famous. It is Nichol’s style that Galen Weston uses today to huckster the products for Loblaws.

As president of the family business, Weston was recently one of the three grocery executives invited to Ottawa to tell our MPs why grocery prices seemed out of control. He coldly told the MPs at the hearing that they did not understand his business.

I do understand his business and I go back to the days before he was born and my late friend Leon Weinstein moved from Power Stores to be president of Loblaws. I was out of town when liberal Keith Davey embarrassed Leon by taking him to a liberal party meeting that was choosing a candidate to run for mayor of Toronto. I was lucky Leon lost. Keith had me in mind to manage Leon’s campaign.

And I have nothing against the Weston family. I respected Junior’s father as a businessman and I liked his mother when she was lieutenant governor of Ontario. She understood the duties of the elite.

But when Galen Junior and others, such as Ted Rogers’ son Edward, inherit and try to run these huge companies, their first responsibility is to the thousands of employees who have also been part of the company’s success. The long-term security of those jobs is secured in the reputation of the firm. That means that there is a time to protect earnings and a time to ease up on earnings to maintain the position of the company. A company that has had an illustrious past, deserves a strong future.

Neither Edward Rogers nor Galen Weston Junior need worry about earnings growth quarter by quarter. They have a responsibility to the past generations and the future of the companies they control.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Egress of the Elite.

by Peter Lowry

For conservative supporters who read this: An ‘Egress’ means a way out and an ‘Elite’ is a class of person who are considered as above others in their society. Some of these elites just have money, others have accomplished something that makes them stand out among their fellows in academics, in business or in sports or on stage or screen. The prime minister would know that. And that is who we are writing about today.

Not that I think you need to be told but Justin Trudeau holds court among the elites of Canada. He is not terribly rich but he is not going hungry because of the current inflation. He also draws a substantial salary as prime minister and has a number of nice residences available to him and his family.

It seems logical that most Canadians would not begrudge the prime minister the perquisites of his position. He has a stressful job and he carries a great deal of responsibility on our behalf.

But the leader of the opposition is paid just $100,000 less than the prime minister and has Stornoway as an official residence. Obviously, Mr. Poilievre, the current leader of the conservatives is a bit jealous and tells everyone that he wants Mr. Trudeau’s job. His only problem seems to be that he wants to spend all his time trashing Mr. Trudeau instead of proving to Canadians that he might do a better job in the position.

It looks like the nastiness of his treatment of Mr. Trudeau is based on the frustration of being a conservative from Alberta. In all the years that Mr. Harper was prime minister, he said he was going to do something about global warming. He never did. And obviously Mr. Poilievre, being a good conservative, will never do anything about global warming. And the same goes for universal dental care or pharmacare.

Mr. Poilievre has many words that he learned in his Calgary school but it seems ‘care’ is not one of them. ‘Caring’ about the environment, ‘caring’ about those Canadians who cannot care for themselves, are not part of Mr. Poilievre’s concerns.

But between the choice of a tight-assed, western conservative and an elitist eastern liberal, the liberal is going to win. He knows the real meaning of “Nobless Oblige.”

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Way of the Weasel.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to complain about the wife spending time with Facebook when she shows me cute pictures of newcomers to our wide-spread family. I have to admit that is useful, where most of the puerile content in social media is not. It is even more obviously juvenile when supposed grown-ups such as our politicians whine and cavort with Twits, Tiks and Toks.

But when politicians such as conservative leader Pierre Poilievre waste time and effort to promote their hates through such a venue, I can only assume he follows the Trump School of Confusion. If he has no respect nor understanding of the better news media available to us in Canada, he is obviously not trying to reach the more educated and erudite Canadians.

You wonder sometimes just where he is going to find the ignorant and unread among us to vote for him. His outreach to the “Freedom” convoy was as direct as it could get. Those people wanted to change our government but decided to party instead. I could have told them that they would have enjoyed Ottawa more in the summer months.

I guess some of his constituency like his stand on cryptocurrency. Soon after he started promoting Bitcoin over the Loonie, Bitcoin took a serious dump. The one thing that was clear is that uncaring politician Poilievre is no economist.

But he does know that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has an excellent reputation for impartiality. Obviously, he is not targeting educated Canadians with his campaign to defund the Corporation. We get the CBC for bargain rates in this country.

Disparaging the CBC is one of Mr. Poilievre’s western traits. You cannot grow up in Calgary without hearing the CBC put down. Mind you, I spent much of my childhood just up Jarvis Street in Toronto from the English language CBC headquarters of that time. We always laughingly called the red sandstone building “The Kremlin.” It was also the home of the first television station in Canada. I never liked it when they built the new headquarters on Front Street—though I sometimes used the parking lot when going to Blue Jay games at SkyDome.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Mr. Ponzi would be so Proud.

by Peter Lowry

It is getting harder every day to support the unedited freedom of the Internet. Do we have to get used to faux sites, false advertising, scurrilous accusations and outright thievery? I just ran into an ersatz version of the CBC news site that purported to show a segment from Global Television’s Morning Show.

Setting aside the question “Why would the CBC do that?” You are caught up in what appears to be prime minister Justin Trudeau promoting what can only be described as a Ponzi scheme. What you saw was people putting $320 into this cryptocurrency site from their bank and then watching their money grow.

This is a very elaborate ruse. It was hardly built in a day. The reason they would have everyone start with the same amount is that they can show different results but they need to know an exact starting point. Everybody thinks they made money. They watch their money supposedly grow.

But the site goes on. There are faux ads on the site. Any attempt to leave the site sends you to a crypto currency site that shows supposed supporters of the scheme telling you how great it is. This site allows you to put any amount you like directly into Bitcoin. Anyone who goes along with this should take a picture of it before sending the money. That is the only way they are ever going to see their money again.

No doubt you think this is too obvious a scam. It’s not. It is just subtle enough to draw you in. My problem is that I know Justin Trudeau and he is far too stiff necked to be so silly as to do something such as that as a joke or anything else. And if you are still drawn into it after you hear the amount of money required to start, you might need the services of a financial conservator.

Of course, if you are as gullible as the premiers of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba that might be a problem. Did you hear that the federal justice minister was asked by the Assembly of First Nations if the federal government was planning to take over mineral rights that are currently managed provincially. Mr. Lametti, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, assured them that he would keep them posted on that change in the constitution.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Poilievre’s Poison.

by Peter Lowry

If you are wondering who is poisoning the political air in Canada, it is that smarmy little man who leads the unfortunate conservatives in parliament. Pierre Poilievre has little time for civility, decency or truth. He is a little man in a hurry and hardly cares about those things that make Canada a very liveable country.

Poilievre is like a poisonous snake striking out at institutions such as the Bank of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and even Canadian charities. He promotes gambling with uncontrolled Internet money as opposed to the respected Loonie. He wants to politicize the Bank of Canada. He wants to defund the CBC and Radio Canada after many years of unbiased service to Canadians. He attacks a reputable Canadian charity because it has the same name as the prime minister.

Mr. Poilievre stands in the House of Commons and sneers at our institutions. There is no telling what this man might do to Canada if he ever gets his wish to be prime minister. He regularly insults the prime minister instead of making any headway. He has no respect for the rules of parliamentary behaviour.

He is like an attack dog, cut loose. He attacks the liberals at every opportunity. He scorns the new democrats. The Bloc Québécois delight in his perturbations. The House of Commons is his playpen.

He attacks the carbon tax which is an attempt to cut back the harm greenhouse gasses are causing our environment. He has no answer when you ask for his solution. His friends exploiting the tar sands for ersatz oil will tell you that the impossibly expensive capture and store is the answer—but that solves less than half the pollution problems they cause.

He has no constructive plans if he can win the next election. I think he knows that Canadians want good government. That is not what he is offering.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Passing a Party in Purgatory.

by Peter Lowry

We might have to ask the Roman Church for help on this. It seems the liberal party in Ontario is stalled in some phase of existence that might take strong prayers to bring it through.

But just where it will end up is a good question. What the party leaders suggest is simply a leaderless phase, it still needs to get through. It could easily turn out to be terminal. I, for one, would be sorry to see that happen.

It was over 60 years ago that I joined the combined federal and Ontario provincial liberal parties. There was a liberal government in Ottawa and a conservative government in Ontario.  The attitude was that all the party needed was a good leader in Ontario and all would come together.

I found out that it was not that simple. While Ontario voters do not always differentiate between the federal and provincial levels of politics, they are known to show different attitudes depending on many factors.

I was deeply involved in leadership contests in my early days with the party and later on I organized a few. They were always delegated conventions in those days. There were more than 75,000 paid-up Ontario members and there was no venue that could hold that number. We had to settle for delegated conventions.

The largest of those conventions was the federal party convention in Ottawa that ultimately chose Pierre Trudeau in 1968. Of course, in my usual contrariness, I was working for second place candidate Robert Winters. I spent two months working in the labyrinth under the old Skyline Hotel.

Today it is possible to have every party member vote. Hopefully not in a ranked ballot. We need to think between ballots. We need the best candidate to win, not just the least offensive. The Ontario liberals need strong leadership and there are some good possibilities in the offing.

And we have time to choose a new federal leader. Justin Trudeau’s day is done. It is time for him to wipe off the grease paint and retire to the back benches.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]