Federal Politics – Page 115

Labouring against logic.

September 7, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Pundits are asking if the New Democratic Party is a labour party? Frankly folks, if you do not know the answer, nobody in the party is ready to answer it either. Even an authority such as left-wing writer Thomas Walkom of the Toronto Star is wondering where the party is headed.

In a recent op-ed for the Star, Walkom puts forward the thesis that the NDP should become a labour party. He suggests that the provincial wings concentrate on provincial labour laws and minimum wage laws in protection of the working persons and that the federal wing could do important work in understanding free trade agreements.

What Walkom misses in his thesis is a logical reason for the New Democrats to want to head in that direction. The recent LEAP Manifesto of Toronto’s elitist lefties really did nothing for labour. Neither have any of the provincial wings in recent elections. And that hardly leaves us with any excuse for Thomas Mulcair madly swinging from left to right in the recent federal fiasco.

And, to be frank about it, what have unions done for the NDP in recent years? It has been a time of back-stabbing, confusion and indecision. Our largest national union opted for strategic voting in the last federal election and that hardly saved the NDP from a Liberal win.

The NDP might have blamed Leader Thomas Mulcair for taking the wrong road but nobody knew of a better one.

And before blaming the party, we need to take a hard look at modern labour unions. From anaesthetists to brick layers and school teachers to stationary engineers, they all seem to be out for getting the most they can for themselves. It is perceived as the ‘I’m all right Jack’ attitude and they try to stay away from politics because they know it is also self serving and they are going to make a muck of it.

This is not to say that there are not some effective and intelligently run labor unions in Canada. They are just not the ones trying to dictate to the NDP. Some of the smartest unions in Ontario made deals with the Liberals and have helped keep them in power for the past decade. The only problem is that they destroyed the provincial NDP in the process and left the poorly led Conservatives as the only alternative to a now faltering Liberal regime.

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Leitch and Brown Trump Ontario.

September 5, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It is the unwise politician who adds to the silences of their eulogy. The silences are caused by those things you said or were said on your behalf for which apologies were demanded, delivered or denied. The smart politician knows where the line is drawn and keeps away from it.

Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown and federal MP and Conservative leadership hopeful MP Kellie Leitch think they can dance on that line.

It is a practice becoming known as the Trump Syndrome. It pushes the line hard on decency and fair play in politics. You say it to one audience and deny to the next. It confirms the low opinion many people hold for politicians.

In Kellie Leitch’s defence, she can claim a lack of political smarts. The second-term Conservative MP for Simcoe—Grey is not ready to play in the high-stakes race for her party’s leadership. Her and another new Harper cabinet member Chris Alexander were the dupes who announced the RCMP tip line for “barbaric cultural practices.” This Conservative ploy was used to fan the flames of anti-immigrant sentiment in the 2015 federal election.

But it worked in Kellie Leitch’s electoral district and next door in Patrick Brown’s new provincial riding of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte where he plans to run in 2018. Both Conservatives are social conservatives with no compunction but to take hard lines against abortion and other social issues.

The only difference is that Leitch might have principles that will keep her out of main stream politics in Canada. She will try to defend her position. Brown knows that he has to find more middle ground for his provincial party and that is why he is currently confusing his supporters. Marching in the Pride Parade in Toronto hardly wins him votes among the rural Ontario Landowners and Right to Life members but he has to make inroads in Toronto to help him win the province.

Brown’s flip-flops over sex education are the typical vacillations of a person without principles. He knew exactly what the risks were when co-campaign manager Doug Ford sent out that English and Chinese letter to households in Scarborough—Rouge River. So he was caught? So what—he only had to apologize in English-language media..

Brown knew that the letter would not change anyone’s mind. What it did was get a few more Conservative voters to the polls and discouraged a few Liberal voters. That is all that needs to happen when less than a third of the eligible voters go to the polls.

Obviously Mr. Brown knows far more than Ms. Leitch about the Trump Syndrome. Brown’s challenge is to win for the Conservatives in Ontario in 2018. There will be no quarter if he loses. He loses and he is gone.

Kellie Leitch should stick to her rural electoral district. Lots of those right-wing voters will tolerate bigots, prudes and racists. She is just wasting time and money on the Conservative leadership.

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Watching the Prime Minister suck and blow.

September 3, 2016 by Peter Lowry

One of these days, our dear prime minister is going to have to make some decisions. Watching him doing selfies while trying for an even higher approval rating is getting boring. Some time, soon, he will have to take a stand. There are too many moves on hold.

It is best exemplified by the pipelines questions. This involves a multiplicity of complex decisions that could result in a green light to highly polluting tar sands exploitation. There are billions of dollars poised to take advantage of this decision and promises of a real boost to the Canadian economy. The only problem is that what is good for the oil sands exploiters is bad for the environment. The bad news for Justin Trudeau is there is no middle ground.

It is like Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan telling Canadians about Canada returning to a peacekeeping role. He hastens to point out that most of the wars around the globe are the types of wars where there are no battle lines. There are no combatants to get between. When you cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys, how do you keep the peace? You can hardly go into peacekeeping wearing a blindfold.

Nor can you so simply switch from making war on insurgents to keeping them peaceful. Are our military trained and ready to move from one mode to another? Can you bomb people one day and fly mercy missions the next? Are our military equipped to switch roles? And how much do we really know and understand about the world’s tensions?

Or is it just the naiveté of a prime minister who promises that the next election will do away with the system of election Canada has used for the past 150 years? This foolish election reform committee has been listening to biased academics and special interests and is heading down a questionable path for Canada. It is not listening to those most involved in politics nor understanding the risks of destroying Canada’s national political parties.

And are we mishandling the most precious of Canada’s strengths? We have a responsibility to this land of ours. We have to protect it for ourselves and we have to protect it for future generations. And did we lose lives in Lac Mégantic just to erroneously justify pipelines?

Are Canadians going to spend billions on attack fighter aircraft so we can go to war along side our American allies? Do we need submarines or icebreakers? Are we fish or fowl? Is leadership so elusive?

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Powering pipeline protestors.

September 1, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Are you sitting and scratching your head over the pipeline protests in Montreal? The National Energy Board (NEB) hearings seemed to be planned to fail. Three years ago the Toronto hearings on Enbridge’s Line 9 shut down because of protests. And if you noticed that, why would you want the same outcome for TransCanada’s Energy East hearings in Montreal? Who benefits?

We should pay attention to the outcome in Toronto because despite the protests and the many thousands of written objections received, the NEB approved the very dangerous Line 9 across southern Ontario.

And the Energy East pipeline has all the same problems even though it does not cross over Toronto’s Young Street subway. It is the same because it is mainly older pipe that is to be modified to carry high pressure diluted bitumen. It will have a new section down to Saint John, New Brunswick that will end at a marine terminal that can put the bitumen onto ocean tankers.

There are more than 70,000 Saskatchewan residents who can currently tell you about the problems in getting potable water when some bitumen was spilled from a pipeline into the North Saskatchewan River.

But in Montreal there were two types of protestors at the start of the NEB hearings about Energy East. There were of course environmentalists stating their objections. There were also some well organized purported construction workers with professional signs supporting the few construction jobs to run the pipe through Quebec. We wonder who hired those people?

But the person who interrupted the start of the hearing. He was on all the newscasts. He was the big guy in the green plaid shirt. It was hard to tell what he was protesting but his objective was clear. He was there to disrupt the proceedings. The NEB commissioners, there to hold the meeting, immediately cancelled the meeting. And is it not strange that it is the same outcome as we saw in the NEB’s meeting in Toronto three years ago. It seems it is just Canada’s news media that has a very short memory. Hell, they even tell people that the pipeline is to carry crude oil!

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre was obviously disappointed that he did not get to give his speech against the pipeline. Mind you, he was calling for the suspension of the hearing anyway because of the obvious conflict of interest exhibited by two of the three commissioners running the hearing.

It is little wonder that people might suggest that the Calgary based NEB commissioners might be biased. Bear in mind that former Prime Minister Harper extended the terms of some of their colleagues last year before leaving office. This is just his legacy!

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In the refuge of electoral reform.

August 31, 2016 by Peter Lowry

There appears to be no relief for the confused in the hearings of the special commons committee on electoral reform. It has been heavy going to just watch the recorded sessions and read transcripts of those sessions not televised. Even in the odd bit of wisdom among the chaff of the academic opinions so far, there are few solutions to the hollow promise of Prime Minister Trudeau that willy-nilly, we will change how Canada votes.

Not even the grandiose theories of the academics and special interest groups include information on how this promised change is going to happen. And the upcoming public hearings of the committee across the country are hardly going to give the committee any answers. (Did you know that the one entire day is to be allowed for citizens of Ontario to speak to the committee? While Quebec gets three days?)

In listening to academics and people with vested interests who want to see change, there is no clear understanding of the how or why of making it happen. The three countries that the committee is studying more closely (New Zealand, Scotland and Republic of Ireland) are each less than 20 per cent the population of Canada. They have different histories, far more homogeneous populations and very different electoral requirements.

Very few of the academics have even noted that Canada is a federation and there are major constitutional considerations that cannot be ignored. Prince Edward Island still has to have four members of parliament. We can hardly have an election in 2019 under new rules that could be taken to the Supreme Court to verify.

If Justin Trudeau’s Liberals really wanted reform in this country, how we vote would not be high on the list of things to change. We have a senate that is not only an embarrassment but it is 150 years out of date. We have an all-powerful prime minister whose office needs some checks and balances. We have a judiciary that are politicized. Our largest province now holds a third of the country’s population. We need to look at restructuring.

We can no longer apply band aids to all our constitutional problems. This is a country desperate for leadership into the future. It needs an elected constitutional conference with no constraints. It will then need the knowledgeable consent of the Canadian people

We cannot continue with the elitist patch-work solutions of Justin Trudeau. We hardly need to be appointing quasi-independent elitist senators. Nor to have elitist appointments to the Supreme Court! Canada must reach out to create the democracy that we promise newcomers. Elitist solutions are not the answer.

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Mr. Harper, we hardly knew you.

August 28, 2016 by Peter Lowry

As we read and listen to the various obligatory farewells to Canada’s former prime minister, there seems to be lots of hypocrisy going around. The Hair and his hairpiece have left the building in Ottawa and that is that. He was not liked while he was there and he left with no wisdom to share with us.

But he is for sale. Business can hire him. If you like his brand of solutions, he has advice to sell. Business can have him on their boards for a substantial fee. He is certainly not riding off into the sunset in poverty.

But Canadians have had enough of him. He never liked them. He was never there for them. He is an ideologue. He has never been motivated by anything other than dogma. He believes in a dog-eat-dog world of right-wing economics and that was all he was willing to share. He is an unfeeling, uncaring economist of the Milton Friedman School and he was hardly out to save anyone from anything more serious than government regulation.

He is a user. He is cold and calculating. He created and ran an imperial PMO (Prime Minister’s Office). He used back benchers as drones to carry out his wishes in parliament. There was no warmth wasted on his cabinet colleagues either. He flew out of Ottawa with his hairdresser at every chance he got to get away. He is an ugly tourist vaunting his supposed wealth and privilege on the world stage. He made an embarrassment of Canada’s foreign affairs.

He despises the news media. He put some who pandered to him in his sham senate only to find them accused of running rampant on perks and privileges.

He abused parliament. He had parliamentary secretaries make a farce of answering questions for him. He obfuscated with the best of them. He shut the place down when it headed towards censuring him. He manipulated the governors general to his bidding.

He left time bombs for the incoming government. He made the National Energy Board native to Calgary and extended its appointments. He ran out the clock on Supreme Court rulings. It will take years to bring serious improvement to Canada’s environmental problems.

The challenges he left to his successor in the Langevin Block can hardly be solved in a single session of Canada’s parliament.

All there is left to say at this time is: The King is dead. Long live the King.

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FPTP: What if it is not broken?

August 27, 2016 by Peter Lowry

As the first witness before the special commons committee on electoral reform Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef gave the committee eight principles for their task. These principles might be conflicting in some ways but they are definitely in conflict with the path the committee is taking.

The first principle promoted by the minister is to promise that Canadians can be assured of the legitimacy of the outcome. It is a puzzle as to how the minister can make that assurance when she starts with the assumption that first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting creates distortions?

That seems to conflict with the government’s second principle of assuring Canadians that they can influence politics and that their vote can make a meaningful difference. Today, Canadians have direct contact and involvement in the political process and selection of their members of parliament. None of the proposals being made to the special committee of the house have offered more direct involvement.

The third principle is that changes must ensure the inclusive politics Canadians want. It would be interesting to have each of the individual MPs on the special committee explain why their campaign for election in 2015 might not have been inclusive?

The fourth principle is that changes should not make the voting overly complex. Is there a voting system simpler than FPTP?

The fifth principle is very important, it is that voting should be accessible and user-friendly. In a computer-savvy nation, there is no excuse for us to not move to Internet voting. The trust exists, the will is there, we should move.

The sixth principle is that the system we use has to reflect the relationship between citizens and their MPs. FPTP does that best.

The security and confidentiality of voting is the seventh principle. By using existing, linked computers across the country, we can meet that challenge.

The eighth principle challenges any voting reform to find common ground, pursue consensus and include all Canadians. And just what does changing how we vote have to do with those lofty ideas?

What we know now is that FPTP provides involvement to Canadians to the degree they wish to contribute. It provides a close involvement with those who wish to lead us. It contributes to strong and effective government. And when we want to change government, we do. The only thing we have been remiss on is moving to a longer period of voting and the use of the Internet to assist everyone to participate. That is the only vote reform needed.

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Leaping nation building at a single bound.

August 26, 2016 by Peter Lowry

In analyzing where Canada’s New Democrats are headed, we took another look at the LEAP Manifesto. Frankly LEAP stumbles on the first hurdle. It reads like the Regina Manifesto without the socialist ranting. It fails us.

And where does this document get off treating Canada’s first peoples as some sort of pathetic wards of the state. They are not just people you use for pageantry. They are people just like us. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. They are not stuck in some time warp that forbids them to evolve, grow and learn. They want opportunities, not handouts. They share this land with us. Preserving this land matters to all.

But New Democrats have barely just discovered concern for the environment. You can also read the same sort of words in most other party literature and web sites. What people look for today is action. We assume Premier Sharon Notley of Alberta has not signed onto the LEAP Manifesto. Is LEAP something you sign onto if it does not cost you personally?

What really surprises us on this more critical perusal of LEAP is the shallowness when it gets into the economics of a socialized society. Economics are the key to a society that looks after its people first. It is easy to think you can just tax industry but after you lose too much manufacturing to low wage, low tax ignorance, you look very silly starving to death. We are not a closed loop economy. We have to interact with the rest of the world.

A first principle with business is that it matters that you are a good citizen here as well as where you come from. If you want to do business in our country, you play by our rules. And we make the rules here. Free trade does not mean we cede any rights. Free trade has to be built on fair trade.

Our advantage in world trade must always be the fact of a well educated and healthy work force that is encouraged to innovate and create. Education, health care, dental care, medicines must be basic human rights as we move towards a better future.

And the resources to build that future are not a grab bag of financial changes but carefully planned and logical advance to the future that Canadians want. It takes leadership and consensus and planning and the will. Leaps will only get you so far. Canada has a journey to undertake.

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Justin Trudeau has his Angels.

August 25, 2016 by Peter Lowry

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau certainly has his angels. We are talking the kind of angels that Charlie had in the old television series about Charlie’s Angels. Those were flesh and blood actors who supposedly made a living solving problems. While the fictional problems often involved murder and mayhem, Justin Trudeau’s angels are just supposed to make him look good. After all, it is 2016!

While we might never know exactly why Justin’s friend MP Dominic LeBlanc wanted out of the House Leader’s role in the Commons, there was an angel ready to step in. Neophyte Minister Bardish Chagger is now House Leader as well as retaining her role as minister of small business and tourism.

While the tradition is to give the house leadership role to a highly experienced minister, Justin broke the chain on this one.

And frankly, we thought Chantal Hébert of the Toronto Star was being a bit sexist when she wrote that Ms. Chagger would not find the job much of a challenge. Hébert thinks that the major opposition parties are too involved in their leadership problems to make things difficult for the new Liberal leader of the government in the House of Commons .

They will though and it will probably involve three of Justin Trudeau’s angels. It will include Ms. Chagger, as well as Environment Minister Catherine Mckenna and Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef.

Without an acceptable work-around solution to the prime minister’s careless promise of ending first-past-the-post voting before the next election, both Monsef and Chagger are going to find themselves thrown to the wolves. There does not appear to be a way the special house committee can come to a compromise on change. And without MPs who loved the intricacies such as late parliamentarians Winnipeg’s Stanley Knowles or Windsor’s Herb Grey to help, there is little hope.

This is not to say that there are no solutions but the committee has to stop wasting time with academics trying to sell their own voting system model. It would be a novelty but they need to start looking at the problem from the voters’ point of view.

An even deeper concern are the problems facing Canada’s environment minister. After the splash she made at the environment meeting in Paris as Canada’s flag bearer for environmentalism, we have had only pictures and platitudes from McKenna. There are many who now expect her to speak up. Leaving carbon pricing as a revenue solution for the provinces is not one of her options. And there are too many liberals and environmentalists waiting for answers on tar sands exploitation and pipelines to carry that land-locked tar sands production to the oceans.

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A federal failure of FPTP.

August 21, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It has been noted occasionally that first-past-the-post voting is not perfect. You get failures in the system such as has happened to the voters in the federal electoral district of Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte. Our elected member of parliament is an embarrassment. We like to think of him as a failure in strategic voting.

Our MP is proof of gerrymandering defeating democracy. Instead of a Liberal representing the north half of Barrie, the rural voters of Springwater and Oro-Medonte gave us an embarrassment. He won by 86 votes in the recount—mainly because of the Conservative voters in the two townships who did not know him. Barrie voters had a chance to see him on city council. We considered him to be ineffective there.

On city council, we always complained that he would sit there and mumble. He has not changed.

Here is a guy who never seemed to hold a job for long in Barrie now enjoying at least four years of an MP’s annual salary of over $150,000 plus perks and expenses. You would think they would throw in some public speaking lessons. Not that we have to listen to much that he has to say but a friend and the writer were interested in an item on the agenda for his first town hall meeting since being elected last October.

When our friend attempted to suggest a change in the printed agenda, the answer was a blunt “No.” There seems to be no way this MP is interested in what his constituents have to say.

The meeting was in the rotunda of Barrie City Hall which has terrible acoustics and with about 40 people attending, you could only guess at what the MP was saying. And you could only clearly hear about a third of the speakers from the audience. Nobody had thought to use a sound system.

The MP tried to control the two-hour meeting without much success. The best part of the meeting was when he tried to explain his stand on electoral reform and decided it would take too long. He had only allocated 15 minutes for the subject. It was the most animated part of the meeting. Several in the audience had ill-considered opinions.

One chap even brought what looked like a grade six poster board project as a prop to explain his position. When noticing his board had all kinds of small plastic animals glued on it to represent the different party’s MPs, we asked him if some pigs were more equal than others? It turned out he had never read George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Regrettably, he also did not seem to be well read on proportional representation.

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