Federal Politics – Page 134

Dan Gagnier did nothing wrong.

October 16, 2015 by Peter Lowry

As was explained by Babel-on-the-Bay a few times, Trudeau campaign co-chair Dan Gagnier was an unusual choice for a campaign management team. Yet we regret that he has chosen to leave the Liberal campaign under suspicion of a conflict of interest. He has always seemed to be an honourable person. He is just one of the least political people we have ever met in politics.

Dan is a civil servant. He has had senior civil service experience in Saskatchewan, Ontario, Ottawa and Quebec City as well as having served in foreign service positions for External Affairs. In the private sector he has been a vice-president for Alcan and is currently the board chair. Dan serves on many prestigious boards and among them he is president of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada.

It is his role on the Energy Policy Institute that caused his departure from the Liberal campaign team. This institute is considered by many environmentally concerned people to be a front for the various companies involved in exploiting Canada’s tar sands. It is certainly well funded by them.

But Dan was criticized for doing nothing other than what any well-placed and conscientious civil servant would do. He advised TransCanada Corp.—the people behind the Energy East pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline—on how to lobby any new federal government. He told them nothing other than any knowledgeable government lobbyist could tell them. He just said it with more authority.

When meeting Dan almost 30 years ago, he was an activist deputy minister in Ontario. He was not one of those who waited for the world to come to them. Dan took an interest in his job, worked to get things done and took an interest in things political even back then. Before leaving Ontario, he had risen to be chief of staff of the premier.

Chief of staff is a highly political position. You are expected to be able to advise your boss with both a logistical and political viewpoint. And while few would be privy to what was happening in the premier’s office, it was a time when Premier David Peterson made the mistakes that ended his time as premier. He obviously took very bad advice on the Meech Lake Accord and his role in the constitutional talks at the time were contrary to the attitudes of English-speaking Ontario. When he called a snap election in 1990, just three years into his mandate, it seemed arrogant to the voters and Peterson was tossed.

That was also when Dan Gagnier headed off to Ottawa. Working in both Ottawa and Quebec City since then, you can get very good advice from him on government relations. Mind you, political advice might not be his strong suit!

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The Hair needs the Fords?

October 15, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Recently we were writing about bumper-sticker campaigning. Nothing seems to say this better when six days before the election, the Ford brothers come out to help the Hair campaign in Toronto’s Etobicoke. And it is hard to say who is joining who at the bottom of the dumpster?

There is no question that Torontonian’s know Rob and Doug Ford better than they know the prime minister. The former mayor and present councillor and his brother the former councillor are still considered to be power house politicos in Etobicoke. They call their followers ‘Ford Nation.’ It is a rag-tag collection of suburbanites kept angry and on edge by the antics of their heroes, the Fords.

Rob Ford actually made it all the way to the mayor’s chair in Canada’s largest city. He is loud; he is crude; he told the media that he used crack cocaine; and he is an embarrassment to the city. He is also one of the best ward-healer politicians we have ever seen in action.

Rob Ford’s claim to fame is that his father left him and his brother with a company and lots of money. It bought Rob Ford a career at the low-end of politics. He became noted for always calling a constituent back. He was responsive and people bought into that. It was not that he was more effective—he was just bombastic. He brought a lot of notoriety to Toronto as mayor. Not much of it was good for the city.

It was a bout with cancer that took Rob Ford out of the mayoralty race for a second term and it was his brother Doug who tried to succeed him. Doug Ford has all the political savvy of bulldozer and his campaign went nowhere. He wanted to run as a Conservative in the last provincial election and found they did not want him.

But the bugle call went out to the Fords the other day. Their friend the prime minister is in a losing campaign—could they rally their troops in Etobicoke? It was one of those staged rallies with just party faithful admitted, to cheer on cue and wave party signs for the media. The best cheers were when the Ford boys were introduced. It was a lacklustre event. The Fords are last year’s players.

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They promise to be interesting times.

October 14, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The supposed Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times” is neither Chinese nor really a curse. Many of us revel in a hectic and exciting life and we would have it no other way. And we are quite likely to get our wish in the next few years as Canada’s parliament heads for a time of transition and turmoil.

What we know for sure about next Monday’s election is that there appears to be no way that the Conservatives can hang on to power. We will have stopped Stephen Harper. He has bruised and twisted our national psyche to the point that there is a palpable hatred for him in many parts of the country. And never has there been a more pleasant task for civil servants in Ottawa than preparing the ministerial briefing books for the possibility of a new government.

For the Conservative party, there will be a time of renewal. Mr. Harper will fade into history. Mind you, unless the progressives who remain in that party do not recognize the need for a more enlightened conservatism, the party will continue to wallow in the maelstrom of extremism. And many have serious reason to choke at the thought of Jason Kenney driving the Conservative bus into a failing future.

The only regret we might have is that the New Democrats will be once again relegated to the ranks of the third party. It is a well worn rut for them. And they do handle it well.

But it would be a shame for Thomas Mulcair not to ensure a lasting legacy for himself in bringing the NDP into a union as a social democratic party with the Liberals. It has to be understood that Canada does not seem to handle a three-party system well. The sight of grown-ups racing around the country in this overly long election bribing Canadians with their own money has left a bad taste that could last for a long time.

And the opportunity is now. Mr. Mulcair is not long for federal politics. He was a fine leader of the opposition but a poor campaigner. A minority Liberal government needs his support and we will have at least two years to make the changes that are needed. We can look at re-orientating our politics in Canada—our political parties, how we vote and how our government functions.

We particularly have to restore democracy in our political parties. The power of the prime minister’s office alone is a very serious threat to a democratic future. We have to re-engage Canadians in the political process so that they can participate more often than just going to the polls every few years.

We should all be looking forward to these interesting times!

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The only poll that matters.

October 13, 2015 by Peter Lowry

The rollercoaster ride in this federal election has been the provided by the pollsters. They are guilty of creating more confusion, consternation, calculation crises and constipation than at any time in history. The only consolation seems to be that as their polls get wilder, they are also cheaper and frankly you get what you are paying for. It all goes to prove that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.

In times gone by we could get some reasonably accurate results from randomly selected home telephones. It was also a time when we used trained interviewers. And yet it was still the analysis that made the difference. Raw data from the calls were useless until you had balanced the demographics and weighed them against the analysis of previous voting. It was this analysis that we argued over and spent the most time on confirming.

It is amazing the times though when you picked up some literature and a clip board and went out to prove the conclusions. We would pick representative demographics in a riding and knock on the door for the candidate to confirm the polling. That was in the day when we were within a two per cent margin of error.

Today’s margin of error seems to be exceeding ten per cent (ten times out of ten). Cell phones have created an abyss of information from the younger generations. Some polls read as though they are just hoping nobody under 30 votes. And when they do, all bets are off.

And this is hardly helped by people pushing strategic voting. They think the time for strategic voting has come. The only problem is who do you trust to be able to vote strategically with confidence? Who is second, who is third and whose vote can help?

In Ontario strategicvote.ca has our local riding right. If as much as 20 per cent of possible NDP voters switched to the Liberal, the Liberal win would be guaranteed. As things stand, we are calling it an even money bet between the Conservative and the Liberal. There is no chance for the Green, NDP, Libertarian or independent candidates.

It helps locally that anyone who knows the Conservative and Liberal candidates realize that there is no comparison as to what they can do for the riding. The Liberal is the highly regarded president emeritus of the local community college who has an outstanding record of work for the community. The Conservative has only served with little notice on City council and has had a series of private sector jobs.

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With thanks to the Hair.

October 12, 2015 by Peter Lowry

This has been the weekend for firming up the opinions and decisions on our federal election in Canada. We are in the last week of a long and exhausting campaign. And it is all thanks to the Hair. He set the election date. He called for the writ early in an attempt to beggar the other parties. He put his ideology ahead of the concerns of Canadians. It is all contributing to the downfall of the Hair. We can thank the perpetrator for the outcome.

From a position of almost total control of the campaign two months ago, the Hair is on his knees. And for him, that is not a position of prayer. He has exhausted his repertoire, he has failed in his rhetoric, he has wasted his resources and he has been found wanting.

Talking to many Canadians over this weekend, the young at a family wedding, friends in the city, friends here in Barrie, the air seems to becoming cleaner already. We all know why the lines are long at the advance polls over this weekend.

If it takes a foolish woman with her niqab to bring down the Hair, so be it. It is not an argument of any merit. He has already been exposed for what he is by a picture of a child lying dead on a far-away beach.

A lot of confidence is being shown in Justin Trudeau. The Liberals chose him in desperation. The Hair raised him to stardom. If you slander an opponent, you have to understand how your own supporters will react. You embarrass your supporters at your peril. And the more you sling mud, the more that splatters on you.

And as predicted, Trudeau has proved he is the Energizer Bunny of the 2015 campaign. He is still beating that Liberal drum that few were listening to at the beginning of the campaign. Now he is drumming in the stragglers. He wants to keep drumming for a majority government. It is in sight.

The vaunted Orange Wave has crashed on the rocky reality of Quebec politics. Thomas Mulcair does not want to come third. And nobody wants the Bloc to once again obstruct the working of parliament for narrow objectives.

There will be no Hallelujah pass for the Hair in this political season. His time is over.

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It’s been a bumper-sticker campaign.

October 11, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Recently a reader accused Babel-on-the-Bay of using ‘bumper sticker’ arguments. The truth is that the simpler you make your arguments the more people listen to them. In these days of dumb-downed English, dull headlines and drab writing we are all racing to the bottom of a well of simplicity. And the worst example we have seen at the bottom of the well in this election is an advertisement for the two Barrie Conservative candidates wrapped around the Barrie Advance free newspaper last week.

It was a bumper-sticker advertisement. The price for this type of advertisement must be posted somewhere but we imagine it is in the many thousands of dollars. It was delivered to every home in Barrie. It was only the second piece of literature we have seen from the local candidate. This was two vertical half page ads printed back to back. Maybe the blank area was supposed to have been cut off but it was still there.

On one side were colour pictures of the two candidates and on the reverse a list of bumper sticker slogans for Conservative party promises. This seems to be the theme for most of the Conservative candidates. There was no reason given to vote for either. Maybe there is no reason to vote for either!

Candidates such as these would be nonentities in Ottawa. If elected, they would be there only to vote as they are told. They would be the same kind of nobody who represented Barrie for the past nine years. That MP only voted on his own conscience once. He voted for an attempt to re-open abortion and strike down the rights of women.

But it was the bumper sticker quality of the reasons for voting Conservative that struck us. It was a list of slogans; without any explanations. It was just vote for us for any one or more of the following slogans. It included simple things like “Lower Taxes’ and “Protecting Canadians.” It gave no explanation. It appears that Conservatives do not think explanations are necessary. And their party does not allow candidates to think for themselves.

At a recent all-candidates meeting, we watched the Libertarian candidate give a parody of the Conservative approach to politics. If his party handbook did not include an opinion on a question asked, he would refuse to answer it to ensure that he did not get in trouble with his party headquarters and the party leader.

It is a sad conclusion on the state of politics today that candidates are not allowed to have their own opinions. Is this not why we send them to our parliament?

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From here, you can smell the fear.

October 10, 2015 by Peter Lowry

There was a candidates meeting the other evening for the federal election candidates in the local electoral district. It was this national election in microcosm. The event in a church was sponsored by the Simcoe County Alliance to End Homelessness. Like this election, the candidates’ answers to homelessness were too long and yet inadequate. And we learn from Sun Media’s Barrie newspaper that the Conservative candidate came for a cameo and left.

But what the Conservative candidate was not hiding was his fear. Watching him closely at a previous all-candidate event, you could see the anger and frustration that he has been building throughout this long campaign. He obviously has no confidence in his generally weak and poorly run organization. He lacks the experience or knowledge of political campaigning at this level to understand his problems.

He is hardly unique in that. The candidate with the most experience in multiple previous election campaigns is the Libertarian candidate. His contribution to the evening’s subject was to not tax seniors for funds for housing and to legalize cannabis. Luckily nobody is too concerned about the Libertarians running the country.

The conundrum for the Conservative candidate is that he is posing as having been raised in poverty in Barrie. Yet he fled the meeting because neither he not his party has any thoughts or ideas to contribute on homelessness or poverty.

At least the party platforms of the Greens, Liberals and New Democrats have monies allocated to affordable housing. The Liberal pumped the party’s housing-first initiatives along with the seven per cent income tax cut for the middle class. (To be fair, he also pointed out that the Liberals have committed to working closely with the provinces and municipalities on this and other problems.)

Not to be outdone, the NDP candidate complained about the unequal distribution of wealth in Canada. She said that the NDP will build 10,000 new housing units for Canadians in need while also providing $15 day care for everybody.

Not to be left behind, the Green candidate promised 20,000 new housing units and 10,000 fixed-up fixer uppers per year for the next ten years. He said that this would all be funded by a carbon tax on the oil and gas industry.

All of this was much easier to say without the Conservative candidate there to confuse the issues. Mind you, it is just one more issue that the Conservative platform does not seem to recognize. It is also why you can sense the fear from top to bottom of the Conservative campaign. The party has no answers for Canadians.

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We are standing on guard.

October 9, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Canadians can vote today. You can see the end of the longest federal election campaign in modern history. You can vote throughout this weekend. You can also give thanks. And we Canadians have much to be thankful for.

If you do not vote this weekend, you can get into the line-ups on October 19. That will be your last chance to vote. You have no excuse for not voting.

Voting is not only a privilege. It is an obligation on you as a Canadian citizen. It is required of you. Your vote assures your freedom. There are other countries that would certainly like to have you if you do not want to vote. Those countries really appreciate people who do not know the power of a vote.

When you go to vote, you are standing on guard. You are standing on guard for Canada’s rights and freedoms. You are standing on guard for the rights of Canadians to question, to support or to reject their politicians.

You can vote for whom you wish. You have the right to vote for a wise person or a dummy. There are lots of both running in this election. There are men and women. There are members of political parties and independents. There are young and old. There are many to choose from but only one can win in each electoral district.

And no vote is wasted in Canada. Whether you vote for the individual or just blindly for a party, your vote still counts. It matters. It matters to the winners as well as the losers. If you voted for the winner, you also won with him or her. If you voted for someone else, you encouraged them for next time.

You should always remember that people have fought and died for the right you have to vote. They fought on land and sea and in the air for your freedoms. There were also those who fought many untold clandestine battles against those who would rule without voting.

We should also recognize that the right to vote includes all Canadians 18 years or older. And they can wear anything they want when doing so. They can wear cowboy hats or Raggedy Ann dresses. Nobody cares—as long as they wear something. They can wear the collar of a priest or the dreadlocks of a Hasidic or the niqab of a Bedouin. They identify themselves and they can vote. All are welcome in Canada.

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Where do the nice gals and guys finish?

October 8, 2015 by Peter Lowry

Canadians have always recognized politics as a blood sport. There is no quarter given. Nice gals and guys finish last. And in a campaign this year more noted for its mistakes than its strong points, analysis of the results might take some time to sort out.

From what we know now (and things are still subject to change) it seems unlikely to be a majority government. There is no question but if Canada continues through the campaign tangled in a niqab, we will be the losers for it. There are more important questions to address as we go down to the wire—from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership to women’s issues to the needs of our aboriginals to alleviating poverty.

But Canada remains a country divided against itself. It is a country of regions. Here is a brief summary, starting in the East:

Little can change the status in the Atlantic provinces. The consensus there continues to support the Liberals.

The Conservatives and their allies the Bloc are flaunting bigotry across Quebec and we can only hope that decency prevails.

The New Democrats like to think of Ontario by its five regions. They expect a small share of the ridings in the north and southwest and are leaving most of the seats in the Greater Toronto and Ottawa areas to the Liberals. There is also a swath of rural ridings across the middle of the province where the Conservatives are fighting it out with the Liberals. If the New Democrats really believed in strategic voting, they could deliver a number of those ridings to the Liberals and declare finis to the Conservatives.

But can you imagine the NDP’s Olivia Chow saying vote Liberal? Or the Liberal’s Bill Blair saying vote NDP? That is as likely as you could expect strategic voting to work. Sure there will be some strategic voting in Ontario but not enough to really notice or make a difference.

Nor is strategic voting going to be a factor in the West. Manitoba is listed in the ‘no change’ category. If there are changes coming there, we have missed the messages.

But Alberta and Saskatchewan could provide some surprises. It is more likely a few new Liberal seats than any major shift to the NDP. There are those in the West wishing that Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was running in this federal election. He brings a breath of fresh air to Alberta politics.

It looks like British Columbia will be the country’s decider on October 20. With no party expected to have a majority, B.C. voters will bring their usual surprise results to the table. The only thing we are confident of is that it will not be Conservative.

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Is it the Trans-Pacific Profit Protection Pact?

October 7, 2015 by Peter Lowry

There is a disquieting trend emerging in all these trading partnerships that are being negotiated around the world. Who do they benefit? The right wing talks about all the potential jobs but what guarantees do we get as to where those jobs might be? That seems to be left out of the plan. Does Canada just get on board because of its resources or does it really gain opportunities?

What people do not seem to be aware of is that the negotiations for these deals might be between trade ministers but the handlers in their corners are the global corporations. These are the real beneficiaries. And the worst trend of all is that these deals seem to exempt multi-national business from more and more controls.

Going back 25 years, we know now that the North American Free Trade Agreement was never favourable to Canadians. We have had to fight for fairness while losing manufacturing capability in almost every sector. We have spent more time in courts fighting for our trade rights for products such as soft wood lumber than in talks to improve the deal for both parties. Even when we included Mexico, the U.S. pitted the smaller countries against each other and continued to rule the roost.

And the Harper government certainly did not help matters vis-à-vis the Mexicans. The Mexicans have been left with sweat shops and drug thugs. The walls against Mexico in the American Southwest are a deep and lasting insult to a neighbouring country. When ignorant American political wannabes propose a similar approach to Canada, the insult should not be ignored.

And why should Canada pay for that new bridge to Detroit? We have put up with the obstructive and miserly attitudes of the old private bridge owners for too long anyway. Instead of helping with the border problems in the region, Washington bureaucrats have been just as obstinate and obstructive. Canada should open the new bridge and then close the road to the old bridge for construction—for the next ten years.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks he is some kind of white-knight of trade deals, he has also been the guy to screw them up. His arrogance and off-putting ego have left such a bad taste with European leaders that the deal with Europe that he touted so vociferously has been locked in a diplomatic limbo that Harper does not understand.

Trade deals that need to be negotiated in secret are obviously not the kind of deals that will please everybody in the light of day. Of course there has to be give and take. Different countries naturally develop varying regulations and incentives in dealing with businesses that do the trading. There has to be some levelling of the playing field. That is how it works. The rules have to be fair. Mutual trade has to strengthen the participating countries, not beggar them.

In this day of global corporations, these corporations have to accept their role as rowers of the triremes of trade. They are not the warriors who walk the upper decks. They have to be good corporate citizens in all the countries in which they operate. They have to be responsible for moving us forward. They cannot dictate.

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