Category: Federal Politics

The Canadian government’s special parliamentary committee on electoral reform has now had a number of hearings. You can see some of them on computer at the cpac.ca website. While these hearings are engrossing for the Members of Parliament on the committee, the rest of the country can continue to enjoy the summer months.

What is particularly amusing about the hearings to-date is the preponderance of academics the committee has chosen to hear. MPs might choose to listen to academics but they would never be so foolish as to have one of them run their re-election campaign. It would be akin to appointing someone general of an army because they had read the books on war by Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz.

One particularly amusing hearing was two academics from Dublin on Skype extolling the virtue of single transferable voting. This is the form of proportional voting proposed to British Columbia voters several years ago. In the first referendum, B.C. voters approved the idea but did not reach the 60 per cent threshold. It was close, so the government gave the voters another chance to vote. This time a renewed effort was made to make sure voters understood it better. They obviously listened closely, had a better understanding of the proposal and then made sure it was turned down.

Referenda in both B.C. and Ontario were to pass judgement on solutions by citizens’ assemblies. Some consider the citizens’ assembly akin to a jury because of the similarities in choosing the members by lottery. Whether right or wrong, guilty or innocent, it is not a process calling for creativity. In Ontario, the assembly members believed they were there to try to pick a different system. And that was what they did. Ontario voters rejected it.

That is a cautionary tale for the federal government’s special committee. The committee is clearly split along ideological lines and creativity or problem solving might not be their strong suit. They are going out to listen to the general population in September and October while their report is being written back in Ottawa.

If the Liberal, New Democratic and Green MPs get together they will come up with some form of bastardized proportional voting. Such a solution could be easily passed by the Commons but would crash in the Conservative-dominated Senate. And it would probably never be accepted by the voters in a national referendum.

Canadians might predominantly vote for a political party but they want the attachment they have to their own MP. We might not have many really good MPs but at least we want to keep as many of the good ones as we can.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

This is the “unkindest cut of all.” Luckily for William Shakespeare, he did not have to contend with the unkind vagaries of modern news media. Slipshod reporting and careless editing are feeding the problem but they are also helping the oil and gas industry to side-step the critics of shipping diluted bitumen through pipelines.

The latest incident in Saskatchewan has cut off the water supplies to cities such as North Battleford and Prince Albert on the North Saskatchewan River. Whether it is measured in barrels, cubic metres or litres, Husky Petroleum, the owner of the pipeline wants to keep the figure small but the best way to visualize the spill is to imagine poring at least three railway tank cars of diluted bitumen into the North Saskatchewan River upstream from North Battleford.

CTV, Canada’s largest television network and the CBC boldly refer to the spill as oil and give no explanation as to why it should require a diluent to enable it to be forced through a pipeline. The media pays no attention to the age of the pipeline and why it has been converted to allow heated contents to be pumped at a higher pressure. And you have to wonder why Global Television, owned by Calgary-based Shaw Communications, tries to ignore such a serious incident that has been reported by news media across Canada.

But the print media have been no better in describing the incident. A Globe and Mail article waxed poetic as people without water gathered on the shores of the North Saskatchewan and wondered about the brownish blobs floating by in an oily scum. The media neglected to mention that the diluent that enables the bitumen to be forced through the pipeline floats the pipeline contents down river but the heavy bits of bitumen gradually separate from the diluent hydrocarbons and sink to the bottom of the river.

(A scientist friend informed us recently that this bitumen does not create a new surface for the bottom of the river forever. It is believed that it takes between 20 and 30 years for the combination of bacterial action and silt filling in to return the river bottom to the production of vegetation to help support the waterway’s ecosystem.)

This recent spill makes you wonder just whose side the Canadian news media are on. They are certainly not bringing us impartial news.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

It would be hard to think of anything sillier than for our Canadian politicians to make voting mandatory. They might just get more than they deserve. Anyone promoting the idea of making it mandatory probably has no idea of the why, when and how of voting by the general population. They might not realize that not voting also makes a clear statement.

While there might be a tendency for people who do not vote to be the first to complain about the results, they obviously have decided that they cannot make a change in the outcome. This could be frustration speaking in that the person feels they cannot effect change. It could be a dislike for all the candidates. More likely though, the actual act of voting might have been an inconvenience. The complaint about frustration can be just a cop-out.

The truth to be faced though is that politicians are not always the ones to promote the privilege of voting. The Conservative government’s so-called Fair Elections Act during the last parliament did not exactly encourage voting across all demographics. There was an automatic assumption that doing away with the practice of vouching—where a registered voter could vouch for a person lacking identification—would benefit the status quo. Also stopping the Chief Returning Officer from impartially promoting voting would also support the status quo. Despite these so obvious efforts, the government lost the subsequent election anyway.

It was the Conservative MPs themselves that stressed the importance of political parties taking responsibility for encouraging Canadians to vote. And while there have been claims made for some alternative systems of voting that they will encourage higher turnouts in elections, they are probably just as likely to cure baldness. It is probably not in any political party’s direct interest to just say ‘Vote as you like but be sure to vote.’

Over the past 100 years of Canadian elections, the political parties have developed more and more sophisticated systems of identifying their vote. ‘Can we count on your support?’ has never been an idle question from those ubiquitous door-to-door political canvassers.

Voting for elected positions at all levels of government has been an ingrained right of Canadians before Confederation in 1867. Our new citizens each year and our young people turning 19 can look forward to that right. It is their right. It is not a duty. They should be able to exercise that right if and when they wish.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

It was another step backward towards the abyss. Ontario’s Tony Clement must have found a hat somewhere to throw into the ring of the Conservative leadership contest. It was a pathetic pronouncement by a pathetic politico.

It was no surprise. Tony has been on the list of likely losers in the Conservative contest for some time. He is another 100 to 1 long shot. Maybe if we have a list of just losers, one of them has to prove us wrong.

And we have no intention of risking our reputation for accurate forecasting by making any prognostications at this time. We will tell you who is going to win sometime next February. That is when in Canada; Hell freezes over, the Toronto Maple Leafs look like winners and nobody answers the telephone for the pollsters.

Tony is joining losers such as Maxime Bernier from Quebec and fellow Ontario MPs Michael Chong and Kellie Leach. Everyone expects Peter McKay to finally and reluctantly enter the Conservative race but the truth is that he will be as much inspiration as a bowl of oatmeal.

As for Tony, he would have had a better chance of success if he had joined Jason Kenney and headed west with him to fight the fight for the heart and soul of Alberta.

Tony has gone a long way to convince Canadians that he is not very bright. His wonderful washrooms for his electoral district that he built for the G-8 summit will live on much longer than his political career. His killing of the long-form census gave hope to stupid politicians everywhere. His artful control of federal spending in the dying days of the Harper Regime actually got RCM Police officers killed because they did not have the carbines and training that the government had so publicly voted for them.

As a promising product of the Michael Harris government in Ontario, Tony Clement has always put party before people and doctrine before doing. He brings nothing to politics but his ego. He was an eager henchman and lackey for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

When Tony’s offer to lead his federal party is rejected, we will expect him to return to Ontario provincial politics in support of his friend Patrick Brown. He will have a triumphal return to provincial turf to run in the 2018 Ontario election. He will be expecting Patrick to make him Finance Minister. If anything could guarantee the return of Kathleen Wynne’s impoverished Liberal government, that should be it.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

It was amusing reading the editorial in the Toronto Star the other day that urged the Liberal government to “Go slow on election reform.” The ghost of Torstar founder Joseph Atkinson must have done another ceremonial spin in his grave. It sounds like a last gasp from an overly opinionated crowd down at One Yonge Street. The summer doldrums have combined with cost cutting and they have run out of all ideas and guts.

If the Toronto Star whiz kids have not already figured it out, the Trudeau government has had the ship’s enunciator on ‘Dead Slow’ on the electoral reform file since Day One of the regime.

Take the cabinet member given the file, for goodness sake. Has this wet-behind-the-ears debutante shown any progress? Do you think she knows what this is all about? Does anyone care? Just try to help her and see how far you get?

Fellow cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc has been her designated mentor on this file and he appears with her but can hardly stay long enough to hear what she says before going off to do something important.

She set up a committee along the lines that she was told and finally told the Opposition what was going on. What did the Opposition do? They got into a snit about it. They said the question was too important to have a Liberal-dominated committee. She must have taken her time getting back to Dominic LeBlanc on that but he must have told her: “So what if they want more Opposition grunts on the committee? We’re still the government and they can’t pass anything we don’t like. Give ‘em what they want.”

That is why we now have a committee with more opposition members than Liberals. Nobody cares.

And the Conservatives on the committee are demanding a referendum. They have no idea what the committee will decide but they want a referendum anyway. They can shout all they like. Nobody cares.

The chair of the committee has a reputation as a bit of a maverick. Nobody cares.

The chief electoral officer was the first witness for the committee. He warned them that there is not really enough time for them to consult with Canadians and for his office to do its work on a changed system. And nobody really cares.

The real danger in all of this is that when the committee does ask the public their opinion, they will find nobody cares.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

It has to be more than 25 years since we last chatted with one of our favourite Conservatives. His name is Patrick Boyer and he is a gentleman of the old school. You rarely meet a Tory today with his charm and intelligence. A writer, a former MP and a scholar trained in international law, Pat has written books on referenda. We can only hope that he is asked to explain referenda to the parliamentary committee on voting reform. He is one of Canada’s few experts on the subject.

The simple explanation of a plebiscite or a referendum can be that it is a reference by the rulers to the public for guidance in a decision. Whether or not the rulers are committed to the decision is something to be made clear in the authorizing of the vote. No doubt Pat could add considerable sub-text to that simplistic explanation.

But in a recent interview with the Toronto Star, Pat is quoted as saying that the United Kingdom has to be satisfied with its recent vote on leaving the European Union. In effect, Pat said that you cannot take it all back and say something like “Let’s go for the best two out of three.”

In a representative democracy, the attitude is usually that the politicians are elected to make the decisions. That is not the case though in questions dealing with how people will govern themselves and will choose their representatives. These questions place the representatives in a conflict of interest and they have no alternative but to request a reference to the voters. Questions such as Quebec independence and the Charlottetown Accord are clearly questions that could not be entertained otherwise. And questions related to fixing the out-dated Senate of Canada have the added impediment of being tied up in the constitution.

While the Trudeau government seems to be resisting the possibility of a referendum on voting reform, it does seem foolish for the opposition Conservatives to be insisting on a referendum on the subject before we know what change might be proposed. Canada hardly needs a referendum, for example, to move to Internet voting. Internet voting would enable low-cost run-off voting—which would solve the major complaint people have with our First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system.

If Pat Boyer is to appear before the special parliamentary committee on voting reform, we will want advance notice so that we can be sure to watch it on Canada’s parliamentary cable channel (CPAC).

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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