Federal Politics – Page 133

Bobbsey Baird is out; Is Bobbsey Kenney in?

October 28, 2015 by Peter Lowry

This might be a last chance to write about the Bobbsey Twins of Canadian Conservatism. They are sure breaking up that old gang. Without the Hair to crack the whip over those sled dogs of his, they are scattering to the sounds of different drummers.

The first Bobbsey Twin John Baird has already left for the allure of anonymity in the private sector. And nobody cares how he spends his idle hours as he accepts the right directorships and consults for special billionaire friends. Would he have survived in his Ottawa area electoral district in the 2015 Liberal sweep? It is unlikely.

But the Bobbsey Twin long-considered heir apparent to Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney is still standing in his Calgary Midnapore seat after the October 19 devastation. Kenney is the Conservative Party’s expert on pandering to ethnic groups. (Ontario Conservative Patrick Brown paid close attention to Kenney’s advice on the 100,000 Indian Sub-Continent immigrants in Ontario to elect him provincial party leader.)

This ethnic expertise of Kenney was what the Conservatives were counting on in the election. He let them down. His problem was that in the cascading crumbling of the Conservative Party, Kenney was not only the main attack dog on the Islamic State terrorists. He was kept busy answering for Canada’s military, immigration and anything else the Prime Minister did not want to handle. It was only when Kenney was answering for Finance Minister Joe Oliver that the party realized how ridiculous it looked.

But the challenges ahead for the 47-year old bachelor are daunting. Kenney had much of his rigid Catholicism muted by orders of the prime minister but it is in his resume to haunt him. Maybe it will assure him support by the party’s right-wing extremists but will lose him the older, more understanding progressives that still linger in the Conservative Party, particularly in Ontario.

The conflict in Kenney’s position is that while progressives will not care too much about his attraction to women or lack there of, the questions will challenge his more extremist supporters. The guy might just be androgynous for all we know or care.

After all, Canada had something of that question with long-serving William Lyon Mackenzie-King. It was only after he died that we realized his most influential advisers were his long-dead mother and his dog.

-30-

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

A return to the boredom.

October 27, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Tom Clark’s West Block show on Global went back to its half-hour format last Sunday. Tom was away and it was a return to boredom. If we really wanted to be bored that much, we could have gone to church. Just look at the line up for the show on Sunday:

The first guest was the long-serving Ralph Goodale MP from Regina. Goodale is supposed to be a Liberal but seems to always get elected by reassuring his constituents that he is more fiscally conservative than either his Conservative or New Democrat opponents. Goodale did a typical political run-around of all the questions asked of him and we were glad when the interviewer finally got a chance to say “Thank you.”

Next was Major-General (Retired) Lewis Mackenzie. Maybe the producers meant the interview with the general to be funny. He actually told that nice reporter Vassy Kapeolos that the only way the Liberals could bring in anywhere near 25,000 Syrian refugees in the next several months was by bringing in only widows with children. He actually said this category did not need security clearances.

That shows you that former soldiers neither make good immigration ministers nor financial advisers. These are not Filles des Roi we are importing to correct any boy-girl discrepancy. MacKenzie seemed to have no idea of the economic cost to the public of bringing just single parent families to our country.

To round out the children’s half hour, the next guest was Canada’s former Finance Minister Joe Oliver—who was seriously trounced last Monday in his Toronto riding. Of all the Conservatives defeated in this year’s election, Joe Oliver might have been the last to realize he did not have a job anymore.

There used to be a Progressive Conservative Party in Canada that had a heart. It cared about people. It understood the responsibilities of government. It understood that government was there to serve people. The Harper government never understood that. It thought government was there to serve an ideology. So did Joe Oliver.

Luckily Vassy Kapeolos was rescued in the last interview slot by Mark Kennedy of the Ottawa Citizen. Mark is a regular on Tom Clark’s show because he is a very smart observer of political Ottawa. He brought the viewers who stuck it out to the end up-to-date on the challenges ahead for the new government. He also thinks that the Conservative Party could use a good psychiatrist.

Hopefully, Tom Clark will be back soon.

-30-

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

Where have all the pipelines gone?

October 26, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Dan Gagnier of Justin Trudeau’s election team was the only person in the federal election campaign without the political smarts to stay away from pipeline questions. And the TransCanada people who asked Gagnier how to lobby a new government must have been impatiently stupid. There is plenty of time during the transition to the new government for questions such as that.

What is also stupid is the basic question of pipelines themselves. Canadian experience with pipelines for transmitting gas and crude oil long distances has been good. Sure, we have had some spills but gas and crude oil are known quantities and can be cleaned up by the pipeline companies.

What we have to remember is that today these companies are lying about the product, the destination, the safety and the clean-up problems of a spill. These new or retro-fitted pipelines across British Columbia, east across Canada or south across the United States are to carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands. And this stuff should not be shipped.

Those old gas and crude pipelines (with some new sections) are to be used to carry this bitumen mix at high temperatures (to keep it fluid) under higher pressures (to move more) to export points—to ship it to countries that do not give a damn about global warming.

What they do not tell you is that the refining of this bitumen into synthetic oil is the most polluting process of all. If the contents of the Kinder-Morgan twin pipelines alone were processed in B.C. the wind-swept pollution over the Rockies would cut a swath of destruction all the way to Manitoba. We would have a lot less wheat to sell and the City of Calgary would have an entirely new definition of a Chinook.

What the new government really has to do is accept the resignations of the entire National Energy Board, move the headquarters out of Calgary and choose replacements for the Board who care about our country and our environment. We must have fair and open review of these pipeline proposals—without the flagrant and insidious pandering to politicians by paid lobbyists.

Hopefully American President Obama will put an end to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline that exemplified the problem. We can also hope that the Americans also smarten up about the destructive nature of the diluted bitumen that Enbridge is shipping though the U.S. these days.

-30-

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

A simple solution for Canada’s Senate.

October 25, 2015 by Peter Lowry

During the honeymoon that our new Prime Minister Trudeau deserves, we should all try to be helpful. It is in this spirit of cooperation that Babel-on-the-Bay would like to extend a helping hand in resolving what to do about the Senate of Canada. And in as much as Justin has already told us what to do with suggestions that involve constitutional change, we will stay away from that pitfall.

As matters stand the Senate is a constitutional commitment that involves so many appointees from each province or territory and that the senators should represent their home province or territory by owning land there worth at least $4000. And that is the easy part. Where the difficulty arises is that senators are appointed by the Governor General in Council (meaning the Prime Minister) to serve until age 75.

We should change that. First of all we need to ask the current senators to resign en masse. If any are reluctant, we can probably bribe them. Since we know from the last senator to be bribed it is the senator who is charged not the briber. And if they accept the bribe, they would no longer be a senator and nobody would care.

We would then use the popular vote of the recent election to assign party standings in the senate. Those who think we should have proportional voting can have a proportionally elected Senate while we keep the first-past-the-post House of Commons. The only stipulation we need make to the new Senators is that, before they are appointed, they agree to resign at the calling of the next federal election.

It would be ideal if the different parties listed only their best and brightest to be senators as these people would have the job of reviewing all their legislation. If they only spent their time repeating what had already been said in the House, it would be a waste of our time and money.

Senators who did the job properly for a term would also have the best chance of a repeat performance after the subsequent federal election. This would give us some continuity in the Senate and the lists of potential appointees would be public to show whether the parties are taking it seriously.

The only problem that has been noted in the plan is getting rid of the present office holders in the Senate. There is some fairly serious deadwood in that house but you never know what will be left if you come up with the right bribes. And even if there are still some holdouts, just remember, they get older every year.

-30-

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

Welcome to FPTP-Central.

October 23, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It was never of our choosing. First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting was just something we were used to. We never thought we would be an advocate for it. It was more of a coincidence that travelling in Europe over the years, we were interested in how people voted and why they used different systems of voting. And who would have expected that fist-fights in the Japanese Diet would prove fascinating. What we have found is that it is very difficult to find a good discussion of the relative merits of various voting systems.

But Prime Minister-Elect Justin Trudeau has ordained that he no longer wants to use FPTP to choose Canada’s Members of Parliament. Since he would obviously object to using Ouija Board selection, he is expected to want something like proportional or preferential voting. And there are many different versions of those voting systems to choose from around the world. There are also some voting systems from ancient societies that could be quite helpful to modern thinking.

No doubt some aspiring PhD candidates have written lengthy theses on the subject but none seem to survive exposure to direct sunlight. When asked to head up the “No” organization for central Ontario in the 2007 referendum on voting systems in Ontario, we found our only strong supporter was a rather hide-bound conservative. We can hardly complain though when we handily won the referendum by two to one.

What really annoys us are the silly lies spread by the advocates of preferential or proportional voting. It would seem from their web sites that a revised voting system can also solve the problem of halitosis. The only thing that proportional voting can usually solve is to preclude the possibility of a majority government. While we are not adverse to horse trading among the political parties, a true democracy requires that this trading be done in public.

But what these other systems mostly do is take the choice of who will be members of the national legislature away from the public and put them entirely in the hands of the political parties. While Stephen Harper tried very hard to be a party of one, he also showed us what was wrong with it. Sending drones to parliament to support one person’s ideology is not only a waste of money but it is demagoguery.

We do not particularly mind helping protect our democracy but we sure do hope we can get some help. It is your democracy that is being threatened.

-30-

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

Canada comes over from the dark side.

October 22, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It is a night and day comparison. Stephen Harper embodied the Darth Vader of Canadian politics. Liberal Justin Trudeau is bringing us into the light. He promised Canadians the change that was so badly needed and they followed him. And we can assure you that he is not Pierre Trudeau redux. Justin Trudeau is a very different person.

This realization came five years ago when we were arranging a dinner for the young Member of Parliament and Barrie Liberals. This writer and the wife both had a chance to just sit and chat with him. We came to the same and separate conclusions: Justin is more like his mother than his austere and aesthetic father.

Trudeau the Younger lacks his father’s intellectual curiosity. His thinking is Quebecois-based and not as worldly. He has an uncanny ability to turn himself on to dealing with a crowd. And in dealing with them, he seems indefatigable. It is as though he is drawing his energy from the hands he shakes, the selfies taken, the quick kisses and the adoration of the women. He is a ladies man.

The dark side’s Hair had no chance. The most serious mistake, the former prime minister made was to try to beggar the opposition by creating a 78-day election period. Like the times, he prorogued parliament, he used a trick to supposedly gain advantage. He lost. He had neither the youth nor the stamina to stay with Trudeau for the extended election time.

Instead of impoverishing the Liberals, the extended campaign period gave them the opportunity to extract even more money from their growing ranks of supporters. It has given rise to the suggestion that if Harper had left the election length alone, the Liberals would never have gained the momentum that took them over the top.

Sitting here in the sea of blue of central Ontario, it was hard to see the momentum growing. Who would have called for a clean sweep of the Atlantic? Who could see through the confusion in Quebec with the four parties vying so stridently for the attention of the voters? Our Toronto region certainly came through for the Liberals. The breakthroughs for the Liberals across the Prairies were isolated and urban. And thank goodness for our wonderful and beautiful British Columbia.

And Canada has come into the light. The trials of Trudeau the Younger have just begun. We just no longer have the Hair to kick around.

-30-

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

Win some; lose some.

October 20, 2015 by Peter Lowry

It is the morning after the federal election and there are a series of thoughts to share. They are somewhat disconnected. They range from Peter Mansbridge’s tennis shoes to John Tory’s toupee. Maybe the excitement last night was too much for us.

John Tory’s toupee was new last year for his run for the Toronto mayoralty. It looked much better than the old one. His problem is that as mayor he does too many outdoor events and without a staff hairdresser, he is taking serious chances. There is nowhere near the interest in John Tory’s hair piece as there was in Stephen Harper’s. Since first writing about the famous Harper Hair in the summer of 2012, more than 15,000 first time visitors have come to Babel-on-the-Bay to check out the Hair.

The original comment about the Staten Island ferry and machine politics is somehow credited to Franklin Roosevelt. It was about the amount of floating garbage that washes into the shore when a large ferry docks. The point is that when you have a turnaround such as October 19, you get the bad mixed with the good. It is like getting a problem such as Bill Blair calling himself a Liberal and winning in Scarborough.

At the same time, an out-of-touch Olivia Chow had no concept of the difference all those condominiums made in Spadina-Fort York. Liberal Adam Vaughan had no problem beating the New Democrat icon.

Watching the sweep of the Atlantic Provinces last night gave us just a small taste of the evening to come. We expected the win, not the crushing of the vanquished.

But reality was our home riding. The carefully gerrymandered Barrie ridings did what the Conservatives wanted. In this writer’s new electoral district a highly qualified Liberal candidate was defeated by 110 votes out of more than 40,000 cast. The voters in Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte sent a non-entity to Ottawa to support a Conservative machine that no longer exists.

From the Ontario-Manitoba border on west, the election unfolded much more as we expected. It is nice to see a few Liberal seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan. And British Columbia did us proud with about half the seats going Liberal.

A reader sent an e-mail yesterday saying she expected a majority. So did Babel-on-the-Bay. We just did not want to appear pushy.

Flipping channels last night did not lead us to praise any network. We did notice the day before, when they were practicing for the big night, that the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge was wearing white tennis shoes behind that desk.

-30-

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

Cheer tonight: the real work starts tomorrow.

October 19, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Everything seems to say we were right in our morning line. The odds in early September on which party will win were 3 to one in favour of the Trudeau Liberals and we have never had reason to doubt that prediction. The unbroken streak of predicted wins for Babel-on-the-Bay appears to be continuing. Rather than feeling tired from this long election period, we feel invigorated. There will be lots of work for a new government.

Mind you, there is little expectation of a majority. A turnaround on that scale in both Quebec and British Columbia seems unlikely. And it would take a major shift in either or both those provinces to give the Liberals more than 170 seats. With a majority government the objectives would be the same but more leisurely. The following priority items are likely to be crammed into two years rather than four:

First there is the question about how we vote. With a minority, the New Democrats will make a change in voting one of their demands. They want to change the first-past-the-post to some form of preferential or proportional voting. Since the Trudeau Liberals have also promised to study this, there will be some action. While it might not be a constitutional question, both Ontario and British Columbia have asked their voters if they want to make a change and both proposals have been rejected. It would be foolish to make a change federally without asking the voters’ opinion.

Bill C-36 was the Conservative answer to the Supreme Court on the sex trade and few expect the judges to agree with it. It is an act that says the buyer is the bad person and it solves nothing. It leaves the sex worker in jeopardy. This needs to be fixed fast.

Similarly there is a deadline on the Supreme Court’s request for clarification on physician-assisted suicide. This will require extensive committee hearings to get the wording right. While the court might allow some more time for a new government, it will hardly be longer than two years.

Just as urgent politically is the Senate problem. The New Democrats want it simply abolished and that cannot happen without a constitutional change. The Liberal solution is an elitist committee to recommend elitist senators and that will please nobody but a few elite senators. We have an idea that might just fix this and we will spend some time talking about it over the next couple months.

The Liberals also have to fix that awful Bill-C51 terrorism act that they voted for. If they do not give it priority there will be as many Liberals shouting at them as New Democrats. It will be a busy time in Ottawa.

-30-

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

But the Hair is the Conservative Party.

October 18, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Nobody expects humour on the editorial pages of Toronto’s Globe and Mail. The old and creaky building on Front Street has never had time for humour while reporting on the financial health of the nation. And it will never do to set the nabobs of Bay Street laughing. And that was what happened last Friday when the lead editorial suggested that the Conservative Party could rule if they just got rid of the incumbent prime minister.

Every time you spend a minute or so contemplating that piece of wisdom, you end up confused. The problem is not in removing the Hair. We absolutely agree with that. The problem is contemplating what is left.

Is there any other substance to the party left if the Hair is removed? Where we live there are new candidates for the Conservative Party. They are non-entities and only running to support the Hair’s program. They are neither thinkers nor doers. They are zombies. What kind of a party is that to vote for?

Look at the Hair’s cabinet. His Finance Minister will not even win his Toronto riding. The guy who delivered the Progressive Conservatives to the Hair’s Alliance/Reform was Elmer MacKay’s son Peter. He betrayed the soft heart of the Conservative Party and has quit politics as of this election.

And where are John Baird, James Moore and others who might be capable of a coherent thought? There is no potential cabinet in that novitiate of nobodies.

You simply cannot re-elect the Hair and you can hardly give the Conservatives another mandate without the Hair. And if the Globe and Mail is thinking Minister of Everything-Else Jason Kenney can fill the breach, we have a serious problem.

The Globe and Mail is building this silly house of cards based on the supposed strength of the Conservatives in managing Canada’s economy. This is a strange appeal they find in lying, cheating and stealing. The Hair has been managing our way to the poorhouse. You cannot seriously say that a Canadian economy based on exploiting the Athabasca tar sands is an effective long-term strategy.

And as much as the Globe and Mail espouses laissez-faire economics, it is not working worth a damn for Canadians. After nine years of watching the Hair at work, the Globe and Mail needs to understand that leadership of a nation has to include caring about the citizens. We do not live well just on supposed economic success.

-30-

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

Running for the Roses.

October 17, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The horses have rounded the final curve and it is a straight run to the finish line. It is a time when jockeys whisper, whip or whine to encourage their mount. It is when the handicappers close their eyes and shudder at the possible outcomes of their folly. That damn horse is running as hard as he or she can and cannot hear your prayers.

Nor can God. The late Senator Keith Davey used to tell us though that if your numbers are above 35 per cent and rising just before election day, you were heading for a majority win. And that is where Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is heading. He has the wind at his back and it might all come down to good weather on October 19. He has added hundreds of thousands of volunteers to the Liberal teams across Canada whose hard work is needed to get out the vote.

We have been kidding throughout this campaign that Justin is going to win this campaign all by himself—one selfie at a time. He has been indefatigable.

But a majority is only something of hopes. Justin is the campaigner that we all wanted his father to be. Pierre Trudeau was austere, intellectual and aloof when his son can simply turn on the charm and work a room like he loves and needs the support of every person there. He was the only leader in this election who could fill an arena with thousands of supporters and have them screaming for more. Pierre Trudeau should have seen how his three grandchildren calmly handled the hysteria when they were brought to the stage with their mother and father.

The ignorance and scurrilous lies of the Conservatives in this past week as they see their control falling to another party have not really been directed at Trudeau’s voters. The Conservatives are desperately trying to shore up their own vote to try to hold to at least a minority position. The niqab seems forgotten as the ludicrous proposal of a new government mandating whore houses is being threatened at the door step. There has been no discussion in this campaign of the Supreme Court’s demand for the government to take a clearer view of the rights of women in the sex trade. The solution is obviously being left to the new government but it will take a lot of good will and modern thinking to bring about an acceptable resolution.

Some pollsters are already making predictions of a Liberal majority on October 20. That would rate as one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history but it would hardly displease us.

-30-

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