Category: Federal Politics

This might generate more sour e-mails from annoyed socialists but it needs to be said: New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair does have a role to play in Canadian politics. While Babel-on-the-Bay knew his mission to keep the NDP in second place in parliament was doomed throughout 2015, we hold to our suggestion of the time. He has a role to play in bringing the social democrats of his party into the Liberal Party of Canada.

And that can be done with pride. As a federal Liberal, Tom Mulcair has much to offer the Liberals and the Liberal government. He has much to offer our country.

The very fact that Mulcair’s New Democrats held on to 16 of the seats in Quebec that were at risk in the October election shows a strength that was unexpected. While holding those seats was more because of the four-way vote split, that also tells you something.

While this writer might be identified by some writers as a “promiscuous progressive” we do not consider Liberals and New Democrats to be interchangeable. They bring different strengths to the table. It is the combination of NDP social activism and Liberal individual rights that will create a powerful social democrat or liberal democratic party.

The public perception that the New Democrats are going nowhere is one created by the NDP itself. It was almost impossible for the Canadian voter to follow the meanderings of NDP federal campaign of 2015. In trying to move to the middle of the political spectrum, the party lost touch with its base. It was hardly the party Canadians have respected since the days of Tommy Douglas.

In many ways, the Trudeau campaign ran to the political left of the New Democrats. It was a replay of the fiasco in Ontario the year before when the provincial New Democrats lost direction and the election to Ontario’s so-called Liberals.

You would think that political people across Canada would have learned the basics of political strategy from Stephen Harper. Whether right or wrong, the voters clearly understood what they were getting from Harper’s Conservatives. The NDP confused us.

It was the same pattern as we saw earlier last year when Notley’s Alberta NDP defeated a split right wing. The provincial Liberals were missing in action and Alberta voters had a clear choice.

The reason there was no strategic voting on October 19 was because it had already happened. The voters had picked the Trudeau Liberals. Those moveable votes had already moved.

The next step is to bring the social democratic New Democrats into the Liberal tent.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

The Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno has all the answers about the war against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Her advice to the new Trudeau government ran Monday in the Star. Keep our F-18s in the Mid-East she advises. She has little understanding of what that costs and the small amount of success we achieve.

In her usual 800-plus words of turgid prose, Rosie actually demonstrates how little she understands her subject. She uses Department of Defence news release statistics to further the fiction that Canada is performing above its weight class. She makes the obvious point that air power does not win wars unless you have boots on the ground.

But then she gives the air strikes the credit for the Iraqi and Kurdish gains against ISIL. Despite the propaganda from ISIL, its troops are not trained in traditional warfare. They are pick-up squads of ill-trained religious fanatics fighting a holy war that they little understand. They rarely collect in sizeable mobs to be bombed unless there is opportunity for rape and pillage or they are listening to the exhortations of their warped imans.

A troop movement for ISIL is whomever can pile on to the back of an old pickup truck and drive the fastest to where their erratic leaders think they might be needed. While you should never underestimate your enemy, you can look just as stupid if you overestimate them. When you say that ISIL has a conventional command-and-control structure, you should add from which century. Frankly the ancient Romans might have had better command-and-control structures than these braggarts from ISIL.

Despite the examples of expensive guided bombs successfully killing a few people on the ground, the entire exercise in Iraq and the Levant is overkill. The amount of ground support required just to maintain those aging F-18s cannot be justified. We would be far better off fighting ISIL with World War II aircraft that were slower and better designed for ground support. We can always bring in the modern stuff when ISIL shows up with jet fighters.

The point of this is that whether he was shooting from the hip, or not, Trudeau’s election promise to end the use of our F-18s against ISIL makes sense. He should make good on his promise.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

Ottawa is a wonderful city. No it is not Paris. Paris is a city in its own right. France needs Paris because that is where the action is. It creates the culture. To most Parisians the location of France’s seat of government is irrelevant to their daily lives. And in some ways, you could say the same about many capital cities of the world–other than Washington. Without the federal government, Washington would be a backwater on the American east coast.

Ottawa is different again. As much as the choice of Bytown on the Ottawa River was considered Queen Victoria’s mistake, she was actually following some good advice. Those promoting the site of Ottawa knew that Canada’s capital should be the country’s face to its citizens, not the world. The world sees Canada through Halifax and Calgary, Vancouver and Quebec City, Montreal and Toronto—for this is the diversity of Canada.

And our nation’s capital is not just the federal properties in Ottawa but also the departments across the river in Gatineau. We are not all introduced to our government under the piles of dirty snow of an overly long and harsh winter. Nor is there anything wrong with touting the length of the public skating rink on the Rideau Canal every winter. Ottawa is also the masses of tulips in the Spring, the Summer crowds in the Byward Market or a hockey game out in Kanata between rivals like the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

While the concentration of museums in the area might be a mistake, Canadians have not demanded the mausoleums that dominate the scene in Washington. Ottawa looks to the future and that is the Canadian way. The Houses of Parliament are mausoleum enough to satisfy the need for historical identity.

What Ottawa does well is provide excellent hotels and good eating establishments. From hotdog vendors to fine restaurants, you can always find something good to eat.

While the town does not just cater to the business of government, tourists are well advised to stay away from the Queensway when civil servants are heading to work or home at the end of their day.

And if you can get in to see the Parliament Buildings when you are there, you can feel the history of Canada.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

If there was any redemption for the Dragons’ Den show on CBC television it was not financier Kevin O’Leary. He represented what we have always seen as the weakness of Canadian venture capitalists. He always seemed to represent the type of venture fund that demands to put their own face on the ideas of others.

But then it might have been the simplicity of the show and the implied ease of raising venture capital that was vulgar. The program might be improved without O’Leary’s presence. He is now debating a run at the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. He admits he got the idea from Donald Trump.

But it is hardly that simple Mr. O’Leary. Setting aside the fact that you do not speak French and have no idea what is involved in becoming leader of a political party, you obviously do not have the temperament for the job.

You started with the foolish gaffe of insulting the Premier of Alberta. You can hardly throw money at Albertans and say their premier has to resign. That was crude.

There is a long list of rich and supposedly powerful people from all parts of Canada who thought they could buy their way into power. There are a lot of failures on that list. They were all out of their depth.

And you should never confuse American with Canadian politics. There are some similarities but the differences are what count. The American primary system is a marathon. In comparison, Canadian party leadership races are a sprint.

But it took Brian Mulroney two tries to beat Joe Clark. Even then, there was a tremendous amount of back-stabbing done in between.

And if you think meeting a payroll is the measure of someone who wants to run the country you are absolutely wrong. The most effective politicians are the ones who can identify with their target audiences in the same way as the most effective business leaders are the ones who can identify with their target markets.

The thing you need to consider Mr. O’Leary is that Donald Trump must pay a great deal for the political advice that he so obviously ignores. The reason is that he is not really running to be President. He is running to be Donald Trump. What are you running for?

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

It started over morning coffee. The wife was lamenting the price of cauliflower. Frankly, she was the only one at the table who gave a damn about cauliflower. We had to listen anyway. And somehow the conversation got around to Prime Minister Trudeau. There was a front-page picture of him at Toronto City Hall. The wife wants him to do something about the price of cauliflower.

Who would dare confront our rock-star prime minister and demand he do something about the price of cauliflower? Just the wife it seems. She would get the selfie with him and then demand he do something about the loonie versus the American dollar and the cost of American vegetables.

But here he is getting away free and clear. Nobody can logically blame him for the diving stock market and the disappearing loonie.

The problem is that he is expected to do something about it. There has to be a finite amount of time for him to show that the situation is being corrected.

The next problem is that he might be waiting for those experts in the Finance Department to produce their standard approach to spending federal money. They want to stimulate the economy by spending money on building more community hockey rinks that the communities were going to build anyway. With the feds providing half the money, the communities grab at the deal and go into debt to pay their half.

But Canadians end up with lots of community hockey rinks and higher municipal taxes to try to pay down the municipal debt. And with a cyclical economy such as we have been experiencing, we just keep doing the same stupid thing.

Trudeau and his bunch in Ottawa need to do some fresh thinking. Maybe we should restrict our federal support money to projects that are going to put something into the economy. We need projects that can pay for themselves. We need the federal money as a loan against the projects’ long-term return on investment. That way the federal government carries the expense as an asset which makes everyone more comfortable.

Take the idea Toronto is promoting for surface subway system using existing rail right-of-ways. The province has already assured people that it is going to electrify the lines so that GO Trains can also use the rails to improve commuter service.

The feds can think even bigger. Electrifying the rail right-of-way from Windsor to Quebec City would pay off handsomely if the rails could also handle high-speed trains. And if the job is done right it is going to reduce carbon, improve tourism, enhance business travel and greatly improve trade between provinces and into the United States. Maybe we can also find similar opportunities out west and in the Atlantic.

And if we do this right, we will even be able to afford cauliflower in winter.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

Frankly, this writer could care less about legalized marijuana. That is by way of disclosure before commenting on former Toronto police boss Bill Blair taking over the pot file for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. We suppose that if you really want something screwed up, giving it to Bill Blair to implement might be the second best option.

Bill Blair is not just the new Member of Parliament for Scarborough Southwest. Blair is the Liberal successor to MP Tom Wappel who was the anti-gay, pro-life and sometimes anti-immigration embarrassment to the Liberal Party for many years. We always assumed that the people from that corner of Scarborough did not have particularly high standards. It was why we thought it was just Justin Trudeau’s sense of humour when he proposed Bill Blair for that electoral district.

It is important to remember that Bill Blair was the boss cop in Toronto on the weekend of the G-20 in Toronto in June 2010. In that position, he allowed and obviously condoned the actions of his augmented forces to desecrate the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

Blair was never charged. One of his underlings took the fall for the disgraceful kettling of innocent bystanders and lost five days pay. It was a failure of justice in Canada akin to the Winnipeg General Strike events of 1919.

But when it comes to legalizing marijuana, Bill Blair is a bad choice as implementer. He tells reporters that he knows nothing about marijuana and has never even tried it. His only experience with it was in arresting people for possession. If he was just a good administrator, he might be useful if he had a lot of experts to help him. He never proved that when he had more than 5000 cops reporting to him.

What Blair left behind him was an out-of-control, over-paid police force hiding behind their police union. By the time Blair left the force, Torontonians were afraid of them. They were too busy carding people to serve and protect.

Blair is also predisposed to go along with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne who has said she wants the marijuana franchise in Ontario for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. She seems to want it as an excuse to continue fighting off the people who want the LCBO privatized. She has little understanding where that will leave the provinces that have wisely gotten out of the liquor business. They might confuse the former Toronto cop.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

Justin Trudeau needs a shake. That elitist crap he keeps coming out with about the Senate of Canada shows he needs something. We well understand that he is afraid of anything that might smack of a constitutional change but he has to realize that there are many diverse audiences to satisfy before making any change in our government even it is within the constitution.

And we are talking real change—not that elitist B.S. about an elite committee to propose elite people for the Prime Minister to appoint. Or not.

And the senate question is not one that Trudeau can sweep off his desk. Harry S. Truman said it many years ago: “The buck stops here.” And he will hardly solve this one by only appointing women. Gender equality is not the problem. The functioning of the business of the Government of Canada is the problem.

Canada’s constitution requires a senate. It is that simple and it is that complex. Change of any constitutional requirement is not impossible but it might be well above Trudeau’s skill set.

But change within the constitutional requirements is possible. As long as he does not try to change the number of senators from each province and territory, he could have an easily elected senate.

One suggestion is that Canadians learn about proportional representation through the senate. What happens is that the proportional vote of the last federal election be used for each political party (getting at least five per cent of the popular vote) to nominate senators to fill that party’s percentage of senate seats. The prime minister will be required to appoint these political people to fill the requirements for each province and territory.

And choosing politicos over elites should be obvious. The role of the senate is to review and pass on bills presented to it after passing by the House of Commons. We need senators who can understand and debate the merits or weaknesses of the bills. We need people who understand the politics involved. As a proportionally selected body it would rarely have a majority and there would have to be co-operation between parties. It would be a good place to start.

Of course there is the problem of the sitting senators. That can be left to their respective parties. Financial incentives aside, they are the parties’ problem and they should be given first crack at solving it.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

Before the arguments about electoral reform get out of hand, everyone needs to back up and understand why we are arguing and what we are arguing about. The demand for a referendum at this stage is specious if we do not know what we are going to vote on or why. One thing for sure is that while people involved in politics might have reason to want changes, they need to be sure what causes their dissatisfaction with the status quo before they shout out for reform.

In almost 60 years of involvement in Canadian politics and electoral process, it was natural for this politico to develop an interest in how other countries did their politics. Maybe the writer had an advantage travelling around the world on unrelated business but it concerns us when we see how little Canadians really know on this subject. It is hard to fault them though when you realize that we have one of the best functioning First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) voting systems of any country using it.

We also need to understand that we also have one of the worst systems of government when it comes to the need for checks and balances supporting our democracy. When you consider that our system was inherited from Great Britain about 150 years ago, it was out-of-date when we adopted it. And without review or periodic refreshing, Canada’s political system is stagnating.

And the band-aids to the system have not been helpful. When the highly politicized Charlottetown Accord failed in 1992, politicians threw up their hands and said change was not possible. They would have had to eat those words if the Quebec referendum of 1995 had come out “Yes.”

It was 2007 when Ontario had a non-binding referendum on a proposed modified proportional voting system. It was disappointing that there was no vigorous debate on the subject. There was little public interest and the proposal was defeated by a ratio of about two to one. That was not a particularly surprising result but you would think when so much money had been spent, some serious effort would be made to explain what Mixed Member Proportional voting meant.

A proposal in British Columbia for a Single Transferable Vote (STV) passed by a slim majority in 2004 but not sufficient to be passed into law. When the province voted again in 2009, the motion was defeated. It is assumed that by 2009, the voters of B.C. had figured out what STV meant.

This writer had a friendly discussion on real change with Justin Trudeau more that five years ago but you could see him shutting down on the discussion when a constitutional congress was proposed to bring our constitution up-to-date. Real change only goes so far.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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

That is so tacky. In the Toronto Star the other day a reporter decried the misery of the squalid life in Ottawa of 1867 when Canada became a nation. What might have surprised the writer was that most world capitals of the era were no less squalid. Cities were rarely created at that time with built-in sewer systems. The Canada of the 19^th Century was a land of hopes and dreams and harsh realities. So what if this new country had a rugged, mean, bigoted and quarrelsome population made up of rapacious traders, an uncaring upper-class and work-worn farmers and labourers?

What the Star reporter wrote was a shallow piece about putting plaques on some of the hovels still-standing where the Fathers of Confederation had to bunk when doing business in their new nation’s capital. It is obvious that the writer would prefer to have the unimpressive places torn down before anyone finds out. And that would include the one that is currently reported to be in use by a Tim Horton’s franchise.

But Canada’s survival after 150 years needs to be recognized by more that just some plaques to recognize its entering the teenage years of nationhood. It is a time to start thinking about what we want to be as a grown-up nation.

We need to remember that Canada is no two-bit little principality. We already play with the grown-ups. We are a member of both the Group of Eight Industrialized Nations (G8) and the G20. Now that the nasty Mr. Harper is gone, we are more respected by other nations. We might just have a new Prime Minister who is of more than rock-star status.

When Canada celebrated 100 years of accomplishment and intellectual growth as a nation in 1967, it was a time to celebrate both our past and our future. We met the world at Expo 67 in Montreal as other nations joined our festivities.

Canada’s “hayseed colonials” dubbed the Fathers of Confederation were among the leading politicos of the day. A motley, hard drinking, suspicious bunch of penny-pinchers, there is little pretention as to their foresight or wisdom as nation builders.

But they deserved far better treatment for their efforts that they got. Maybe we do not need the vast mausoleums that the Americans use to honour their nation builders. We are so understated in this regard that it is a national shame. Any true Canadian who has taken the trouble to search out the grave site of Sir John A. Macdonald comes away shocked and horrified at our treatment of the man who more than anyone else created this country.

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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry

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