Federal Politics – Page 129

Is there a Ghost of Liberals Future?

December 18, 2015 by Peter Lowry

His late partner Jacob Marley promised Ebenezer Scrooge there would be three ghosts visiting him in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In relating this tale to the concerns of Liberals past, present and future, the greatest difficulty is to come up with a Ghost of Liberals Future. This might only be a ghost of challenge.

Many political pundits of the past summer had already written off Justin Trudeau and the Liberals before the election was called. They saw no future for a party that seemed to be neither of the political left nor right. They bought into the premise of the Conservative’s foolish attack ads that wrote off Trudeau as too young, too naïve.

And whether the ultimate win in October was by design or happenstance, it was none the less a remarkable turnaround for the third party to trounce the two frontrunners. It is by understanding where the votes originated that we can fathom what was accomplished.

Urban and young was a big part of the new base. In building an image of the Ghost of Liberals Future, she would be young, fit, educated, urbane and interested. It is her confidence in herself that is most noted. She picks her partners and a husband as it suits her. She exemplifies the emergence of the millennials.

And nobody in this election could sway her vote easily. She believes strongly in human rights. She wants the planet protected. She hates war and the angry trash of violent video games. She sees the beauty in nature and in the arts. And her greatest discovery is that there are men and women of all ages who agree and care as she does.

But different from Marley’s ghost, this Ghost of Liberals Future will not paint a bleak and luckless picture of the future with death and despair. This is a ghost that sees the good. Not in a naïve way but in a positive framework.

The ghost will see the future of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals as a work in progress. This new and untried collective has yet to show its cohesion and purpose. We have seen little of the potential interplay with parliament’s opposition parties. Maybe there will even be some background work in the potential merger of the Liberals and NDP into a new Social-Democratic coalition.

There will also need to be a better understanding of the potential for changing how our country is governed. The Senate of Canada is just an example of the problems in need of addressing. Canada should not have to wait for its two-hundredth year to come of age.

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The Ghost of Liberals Present.

December 16, 2015 by Peter Lowry

When the second ghost confronted him, Ebenezer Scrooge was hardly convinced to mend his ways. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it was the spirit of the under classes that was highlighted by this ghost. In the same way, the ghosts of Liberals present can assure Justin Trudeau that maybe if he does not need them now, they will be there for him in the future. No political roads stretch smooth forever.

He can count on a much higher level of partisan questioning in parliament in the New Year and Justin has put some parliamentary neophytes in some tough positions. Minister of Finance Bill Morneau has struck fast and hard but he has yet to really show how he will handle constant attacks from across the aisle. He can only pass the buck to the last administration for so long.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale might not be a neophyte but Justin will have to watch that Ralph does not get the bit in his teeth. When the news media write about Liberal arrogance, they probably use Goodale as their poster boy. Trudeau promised that the C-51 security bill will be fixed and it is not just the news media but concerned Liberals who are waiting to see the results of the needed changes. We would feel even more secure if the bill was scrapped and we started over.

A major concern at this time is the neophyte Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef. The minister has promised that there will be consultations but what worries us is that the status quo seems to have been discarded as an option. This was the same ridiculous position as faced the lottery winners in the Ontario attempt at changing how that province voted.

What happened in Ontario is that they ended up with a proposition that nobody really cared about one way or the other. It was just that they were asked to suggest some changes, so they did. What is obvious is that we are faced with people who lack broad experience with the Canadian understanding of our democracy driving this initiative. How we vote is neither a hypothetical question nor something you can change on a whim.

There are different types of consultation and you can hardly recommend a change without discussing the long term impacts of that change. Making airy, fairy claims for gender and ethnic equality in some new purity of parliament are sad promises that have never worked. For example, we are waiting patiently for the first time Justin Trudeau has to replace a cabinet member—will only the same gender need apply?

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A six-pack and a toke for Premier Wynne.

December 15, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The publicity opportunities for Ontario’s premier come thick and fast with Justin Trudeau in the prime minister’s office in Ottawa. The other day Premier Kathleen Wynne got in on the act out at Pearson Airport welcoming Syrian refugees to Canada. And now that we finally have beer in a few Ontario grocery stores, she wants to add marijuana to the mix.

Wynne wants to steer any federally approved marijuana sales to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). Can you just imagine the outrage from British Columbia Premier Christy Clark when the first LCBO store opens in Vancouver?

Alright, maybe Wynne only wants the LCBO involved in Ontario. And that leaves the feds with a problem. Not all provinces have a pickle up their hindquarters about the exclusivity of the province selling liquor. Some provinces are even quite liberal about how they sell booze.

But here you have Ontario’s premier telling the media to come and see her buy the first six-pack of beer from a Weston Empire’s Loblaw store in Toronto. That is designed to prove how liberal the Ontario government can be. Can you not just see the premier and her partner sucking back on President’s Choice beers and getting on a buzz from a toke while watching Toronto’s Leafs lose on Hockey Night in Rogers’ Land?

Mind you, it is just the times that change; not the quality of the actors. Ontario has had to put up with puritanical governments since it became a province in 1867 under the British North America Act of Westminster. If it had not been for the mineral wealth of Northern Ontario, there would still be farms in the premier’s North Toronto electoral district.

We have to assume that there is no alternative to the type of repressive and bad government, Ontario endures. And we are unlikely to see any of the spunk shown by Justin Trudeau and his team rubbing off in Ontario. In the recent federal election, the federal Liberals had nothing much to lose. They went a little overboard on some of their promises but their hearts seem to be in the right place.

While the premier and her partner could well pose for a poster of Ontario Gothic, it would only make an interesting counterpoint to the Trudeau’s pose for the cover of the U.S. magazine Vogue.

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On behalf of Liberals Past.

December 14, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It was great fun reading Chantal Hébert’s requiem for the Liberal Party generations left in the dust by Justin Trudeau’s team. In the Toronto Star the other day, she told of how the old-school-Liberal insiders are unknown to these new movers and shakers. We also need to remember that Chantal went to the Magdalen Islands back in August and reported that the Orange Wave was carrying on in Quebec.

It was a vivid reminder of Justin’s father who believed he had won the 1968 election single handed and had little need for us apparatchiks. Sure we were shunned for a while. We were all too young to vanish but many of us turned our attention to making a living. There were other causes for us in those years.

We were deeply concerned though during the October Crisis of 1970 when Trudeau used the draconian War Measures Act against the Front de Libération du Québec. We were aghast when Trudeau decided to campaign in 1972 on a slogan that “The Land is Strong.” Yet people like Senator Keith Davey and others rallied to help the party and we eked out a bare two-seat margin over the recovering Conservatives. And we all came to appreciate New Democrat David Lewis who sided with the Liberals to keep the Trudeau government in power for the next couple years.

But we are not just ghosts of Liberals Past. We have voices. We are not reluctant to use them. We were the ones who expressed anger at Justin Trudeau going back on his word and interfering in party nominations in Toronto. We waited impatiently for his brain-trust to realize the obvious solutions to many of the problems this campaign produced.

And with the Harper idiocy of extending the campaign beyond reason, we went through interminable frustration. When Dan Gagnier left Trudeau’s inner circle because of doing a little of his regular work on the side, it showed that his team had too much waste time on their hands.

Chantal tells us that dismissing the old guard will allow the Trudeau team to change the way we do politics in Canada. She notes that Justin has made it very clear that we will have reform of how we vote in this country. It will hardly be the first time a Trudeau has thought he has all the answers.

And this is just the ghost of Liberal politicians past speaking.

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The bathroom builder blunders on.

December 13, 2015 by Peter Lowry

This news flash is courtesy the Toronto Star. Campion-Smith, Star Ottawa bureau chief, and Benzie, Star Queen’s Park bureau chief, have discovered that Conservative MP Tony Clement from Parry Sound—Muskoka electoral district is thinking of running for Stephen Harper’s old job. This is the same Tony Clement who made sure nobody was caught short while visiting the Huntsville area during the infamous G-7 summit in 2010.

With his qualifications in building public washrooms, Tony is positioning himself as a man of the people. He is also checking to make sure that Harper’s former minister of everything, Jason Kenney, is not in the running. The reporters reason that Kenney is more inclined to making an effort to unite the right in Alberta and bring that province back from the brink with the New Democrats.

With as much as two years of organizational work to do before the leadership convention, Clement is as likely as any of the other contenders to build the coalition of support that will be needed to win. In a contest between non-entities, Ontario’s Tony Clement might have a chance.

Nobody is particularly impressed with the field to-date. Kellie Leitch, the former labour minister, is also from Ontario but lacks Clement’s background in both provincial and federal politics. Lisa Raitt, the former Harper transport minister, has had more exposure than Leitch but still cannot match Clement’s experience.

People who are trying to bring Peter MacKay back into the political scene would probably do better with a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald. They seem to forget that Peter MacKay betrayed the old Progressive Conservative Party and handed it to Stephen Harper. Any and all kind memories of the old Red Tories were trampled into the ground during the Harper era.

If you are waiting for Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall to make his bid, you will have to wait until he is able to announce his candidacy in acceptable French. He is busy now with his French lessons.

And Tony Clement has much to answer for himself during the Harper years. As a Harper sycophant and as Treasury Board President, he decimated the Ottawa civil service while filling the gaps with contract workers.

While it was questionable if Clement really saved any money for Canadians, his cancelling of the long-form census was an excellent example of pandering to ignorance over logic. It was his expertise at building public toilets that assured him re-election in Parry Sound—Muskoka.

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Referenda have stature not status.

December 12, 2015 by Peter Lowry

A reader took a few minutes yesterday to remind Babel-on-the-Bay that referenda are not legally binding on governments in Canada. And neither, for that matter, are opinion polls.

But the point is that we live in a democracy and in a democracy where our representatives are chosen to rule for us, not to rule us. It is very wrong to ever suggest that the persons in government can just ‘get on with the job’ without considering the wishes of both the majority and the minorities who are their constituents. When our governments hold a plebiscite, it is on a question of wide-ranging and long-term impact. The result of a referendum is not legally binding but government ignores the result at its peril.

How we vote is that type of question. Anyone who has ever studied the various voting systems in use around the world realizes that there are very specific effects of the various systems on a democracy. What we might consider to be a simple and safe solution can potentially change our country forever.

In his frustration with our first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting, Justin Trudeau has made some very naïve promises about changing how we vote. And there are some people who would also be happier if he had picked someone with more political experience as minister for democratic institutions. It is going to take a very level-headed person to manage the zoo that is going to develop in a properly conducted and thorough examination of both the Senate of Canada and how to improve how Canadians vote.

The problem with the senate is one that really needs to be on the table when we finally reopen the constitution. Until then anything that can be done will be patchwork.

How Canadians vote is not a constitutional question. It deals with the custom inherited from the British Parliament of FPTP elections. When you have more than two people contending in the election, FPTP can create anomalies. Many people are displeased with the idea of only needing a plurality to win. It is only when you study alternative systems of voting that you realize they each have their own anomalies. Nobody is really happy with the expense of run-off elections or the problems with preferential voting (also known as a transferable vote) but there are potential solutions to that.

What we really need in considering these questions is people with open minds. You simply cannot consider solutions to the voting system until you have a clear idea of why you want to change it and what really are the options available. This is not as simple as people think.

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Electoral reform help is happening.

December 11, 2015 by Peter Lowry

You have no idea how good it felt to see someone else carry the can for first-past-the-post voting the other day. It was a professor from Toronto’s Ryerson University and it was a weight lifted from our shoulders. Mind you, it makes you wonder where he was when we were fighting off Ontario’s attempt at changing voting in 2007.

His aid was in the form of an opinion piece in the Toronto Star. The headline was a bit strong in suggesting that Justin Trudeau’s approach to electoral reform is arrogant and misguided but it is likely the headline was written by an editor displaying his or her own bias. In reading the article, you realize that the writer considered Trudeau’s approach to be misguided and naïve. There is a lot of that type of opinion on this subject.

One point of disagreement with the professor is that he says voting for an opposition party entitles you to criticize the government. Babel-on-the-Bay criticizes everybody—particularly the ones we vote for. All our politicians need to govern better and strive to meet a higher standard.

Admittedly, the professor does use strong language about the ‘unprecedented arrogance’ of the Trudeau team to suggest that the government can unilaterally change the way we vote. While such a change would take an unequalled amount of gall, it is more of a moral question than a legal concern.

The precedent has been set by the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario to stage a referendum on changes in voting. The federal government can do no less.

The professor’s point is very clear that “The electoral process is not Ottawa’s to change unilaterally.” Canadians would have every right to boycott a change that was made without the support of the electorate.

The professor makes the point very well that the way we vote “shapes our political culture.” Canada has a strong political culture. While we are of many ethnic heritages, multiple languages, religions and backgrounds, we live in a country of accomplishment. We have unprecedented freedom. We are educated and strong minded. We have been known to turf governments of many stripes when they fail to serve us.

And as the professor says, when we are defeated in our partisan positions, we know “We’ll get them next time!”

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Proportional politics for paranoids.

December 9, 2015 by Peter Lowry

There are people who believe that first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting does not work for them. And they really do seem paranoid about it. Since paranoia can be a serious mental condition, we would like to propose a reasonable test of proportional voting for Canadians to see how it would work for them. It seems fair.

What we are proposing is that the Senate of Canada, which is as much a part of our parliament as is the House of Commons, becomes a proportionally elected chamber. To do this, you first need to have all current senators resign. There might be a few holdouts but maybe we can bribe them.

Next we establish that all future senators to be appointed serve only for the term of the then current House of Commons. Each party in the Commons will then appoint senators according to that party’s proportional vote in the previous election. That way when the citizen is making a FPTP vote for a Member of Parliament, they will also be making a proportional vote for a senator. It gives the citizen another reason to cast a vote.

There will, of course, have to be some rounding of the numbers. It might be hard to find a senator with a split personality who could vote 70 per cent NDP and 30 per cent Green.

The first thing Canadians will notice is that while the Liberals have 54 per cent of the current seats in the House of Commons, they will only have 39 per cent of the seats in this proportional senate. At the same time, the Conservative Party will have 31 per cent and the New Democrats will have 19 per cent. And that would be a first for the NDP as the party has never had senators before. The Bloc Québécois’ 4 per cent would all have to come from Quebec. Picking provinces for the 3 per cent of Greens would be an interesting problem.

There will of course need to be some fine tuning of this idea but it seems to be a far better test of proportional voting than to completely screw up the House of Commons.

What needs to be understood is that proportional representation is no panacea. It does not ensure more women and minorities in parliament. It certainly does not create friendlier and more consensual parliaments. What it does is take away from the citizen their direct connection with their Member of Parliament. That is the single most important value we have with FPTP. To deny us that connection with our elected members is attacking the very core of our Canadian democracy.

Justin Trudeau has said that “2015 will be the last election under first-past-the-post.” It makes great rhetoric but he is going to have to start back-tracking on it. First of all he made no suggestion of what the replacement system will be. Most people think he will opt for ranked ballots but some people have figured out that instead just a majority government in 2015, he would have had a huge majority with a ranked ballot system. Canadians would probably prefer run-off elections and that is possible—if we move immediately to Internet voting.

But whatever we do, we have to think about it, talk about it and then see if we can find a consensus. Anything else would be very, very foolish.

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Trudeau takes strike one on Senate solution.

December 8, 2015 by Peter Lowry

He has to admit he was warned. The only people cheering the current dumb idea are the sycophants around him. Prime Minister Trudeau cannot use elitism to choose elites. Canadian senators need to be reasonably experienced politicos. And who knows politicos best but their own political parties. That is why the prime minister of the day is expected to choose new senators.

And the system worked reasonably well until Stephen Harper screwed it up by being careless. He made the mistake of choosing his favourite journalists based on their loyalty to him but not their ethics. He started them off by showing them how to beat the system. He told a Torontonian to be from Saskatchewan and an Ottawa native to be from Prince Edward Island. They thought the system was there for them to use, not follow.

Now it is Justin Trudeau’s turn to screw up. Justin picked an unknown and inexperienced Member of Parliament from Peterborough to drive the parliamentary reform bus. She seems to lack the experience to realize that when someone offers to help you, you are polite enough to respond even if you are uninterested.

(By way of disclosure, the writer sent a letter to Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef after her appointment offering to share some of his experience and expertise on voting systems with her office. She probably thought it was an employment application—which it was not. It is just that you keep questions such as that ambiguous in case the acceptance of your offer entails a large amount of expense. And we have been in that boat before.)

But before anyone had a chance to exchange ideas or thoughts on the subject, Canadians were presented with a hastily prepared solution to the senate question. Yes, there was a need for speed. We just did not need an obviously ill-conceived, thoughtless solution that is going to make the situation in the senate worse.

It is the same stupid solution Justin’s father came to back in the 1970s. He could not find anyone smarter than him to advise him so he made some very bad additions to the senate until he got some good political help. It was not that the politicos were smarter than Pierre Trudeau; they were more practical.

Until we rewrite Canada’s constitution, we need senators who know why they are there in the senate. Elite, apolitical people are not only a waste of time but they will make life difficult for our elected politicians who might not be very smart but are political. The senate is a house of sober second thought. That is not a happy home for smart, creative people. It is a happy home for people who understand political possibilities. That is why political has-beens, hacks and bag-men like the senate. And until we are willing to change the constitution, we should leave the damn place alone.

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By way of apology to our Barrie Whigs.

December 7, 2015 by Peter Lowry

This is about as close as Babel-on-the-Bay can come to an apology. For the life of this blog, we have tended to disparage a faction of the local Liberals in Barrie. Calling them Whigs was not a compliment. (Whigs are Liberals about 100 years out of date.) This change of heart needs an explanation.

It started by being cold-shouldered by the Liberal candidate in the 2007 provincial election. Being introduced to her by a former federal cabinet minister should have been an immediate entrée but she seemed in no mood for it. She won the election but her organization seemed to be a closed shop. The only opening for us was the supposedly weaker federal riding organization.

While helping with the federal party organization for a couple years while it rebuilt and became solvent, it was a surprise to see the division with the local provincial organization. Part of the problem was the intransigence of the people who were on both boards as they tended to drag their feet on anything progressive.

They were also very angry at Babel-on-the-Bay’s claiming the right to be critical of some of the actions of the Liberal government at Queen’s Park. Instead of healthy dialogue on the issues, they tended to be viciously negative. It was so bad that the only solution was for the writer to leave the federal board lest it come down to people taking sides. The board needed us more than we needed the board.

It was only when there was an attempt by the former provincial MPP to take over the federal organization that the federal supporters rallied and her take-over failed.

The only other point of contention was the gerrymandering of Barrie by the last redistribution commission. The Conservatives in Barrie got behind the idea of adding solid Conservative rural areas to both the north and south halves of the city. Neither the federal nor provincial Liberal factions complained to the commission.

And that was where things were left until earlier this year.

A seemingly lacklustre nomination in the north Barrie area turned into an interesting battle for the Liberal nomination. It was a hard fought contest between a former community college president and a well-known local lawyer. Over a thousand people turned out on the coldest night in February to choose the former community college president by a reported 26-vote edge.

But there still seemed to be barriers to our involvement. What was annoying was that the Liberals subsequently ran a terrible campaign in the north half of Barrie and a good candidate desperately needed help. There was no decent literature. There was no targeted advertising. Communication with Liberal supporters was sparse and ill-managed. The sign campaign was badly organized and slow to respond to requests. We had a hard-working candidate but he was new to politics and had no idea what a good campaign should look like. Even the recount at the end was badly organized for the Liberals. Out of more than 50,000 votes cast in Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, our Liberal candidate lost by 86 votes.

We all feel terrible about it but we now know it was not the fault of our local provincial Liberals. We will have to be nicer to them.

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