Category: Federal Politics

It could not have been better news from Justin Trudeau. He came out flatly saying that he would stop wasting money on the development and procurement of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter for Canada. It was the kind of decisive statement that you expect from a Trudeau. What is even better; he is absolutely right.

Trudeau drew another firm line between the prime minister and that other guy and himself. For years now, those who understand what Canada’s air force needs have been struggling with the Conservative’s preference for a single-engine stealth fighter. It simply does not make sense.

The F-35 is a short-range attack aircraft when Canada needs long-range reconnaissance aircraft. And why we would need stealth fighters to protect our country is a mystery.

But for the first time, the prime minister has provided his rationale. It seems that the Hair is a hawk. He wants to go to war against other countries. He points to the bombing missions Canada’s F-18 fighters flew in Libya and more recently in Iraq. He wants an aircraft to be part of flying with the Americans in their wars. He does not seem to want to pick his own wars but is happy to fly along with the Americans.

The Hair must think the Americans will reciprocate on this and protect our Arctic for us. That would involve letting American patrol aircraft fly over our Arctic. If we allowed that there might be more questions about whom our Arctic really belongs to.

Mind you, the Hair does seem to forget that the Canadian navy needs boats and the army needs tanks and troop carriers and other equipment. And planes, boats and ground equipment all cost billions and billions of dollars.

But our hawkish Hair is also complaining that the Liberal leader is destroying the chances for Canadian companies to get contracts to supply parts and systems for the F-35. Since most of these companies are American owned, they are only located in Canada to take advantage of the Canada-U.S. defence production agreements. They will get their share of the contracts no matter what company supplies the right aircraft to Canada.

One can only wonder why the Hair is so virulent in his defence of the F-35. He obviously knows little about the needs of Canada’s air force and less about how countries share defence contracts. Other than that, it is fun to see him so shrill about it!

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

In checking out the two gerrymandered federal electoral districts in Barrie, we find that one riding is about as badly off as the other. Each riding is about two-thirds urban and one-third rural. Every one thinks those rural voters are all die-hard Conservatives. The surprise is that they might not be. The new riding for the south half of Barrie might surprise the pundits.

This was the part of the Barrie riding that appealed to Ontario Conservative Leader Patrick Brown when he was still a do-nothing federal Conservative. The mistake was made when Brown went to Queen’s Park as a provincial Conservative, the Tories had to quickly fill the slot. They picked a Barrie fire-fighter who is a municipal councillor. That seems to be the tradition here in Barrie. Conservative councillors are expected to go on to better salaries in Ottawa or Queen’s Park. There might be a problem with that though in the Innisfil area.

A few years ago the Ontario government allowed Barrie Council to annex a large area of land that previously belonged to Innisfil. The Innisfil citizens who disliked that land grab now get to meet the Barrie councillor who voted for that land grab ever step of the way. They should have a special welcome for him.

Another problem for him is a special welcome from a community called Sandycove Acres. This area is 300 acres of affordable housing in Innisfil that is a well-established adult type community with prefabricated housing. Many of these home owners can appreciate the anguish of the residents of the Burton Avenue Trailer Park in Barrie when the Barrie councillors voted to evict them from what was effectively the last affordable housing property in Barrie. The Conservative candidate voted for that eviction leaving more than 100 residents with nowhere else to go.

This is the same Conservative candidate who gave a harangue to a seniors’ audience last week about politicians going around offering goodies to Canadians for their vote in the October 19 election. He could have been more specific as at about the same time as he was saying this in Barrie, his Leader Stephen Harper was offering single seniors in Vancouver a tax credit if they elected a Conservative government.

If this guy is so unlucky as to be elected on October 19, He is going to need supplementary oxygen he will be seated so far back in the House of Commons away from his leader.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

At one time in a varied career, we were trained in grocery store management. It culminated in being a very young district manager for a large group of stores. This is mentioned as groceries were one of the last all cash businesses and the smart manager watched the cash registers as closely as he watched the back door. When you are dealing in such a close margin business as groceries, you have to be sharp. One of the first signs of trouble with a cashier is not shortages on the till at the end of a shift but overages. Shortages can be accidental or careless. When a till is over too often, you look closer.

It was the recent surprise and delight of Stephen Harper at the $1.9 billion surplus from the last fiscal year of our government that brought this to mind. And with Tony Clement as the government’s cashier as President of the Treasury Board, it did not allay suspicions about the nature of this windfall.

Canadians can never forget that Tony Clement was the guy who built lavish public washrooms and other facilities for his riding with $50 million of Border Services money. This was needed he said when the G-7 countries met at Deerhurst Resort in 2010. It was certainly helpful for Tony’s re-election in Parry Sound riding in 2011.

Clement is a product of former Ontario Premier Michael Harris’ ‘Common Sense Revolution’ of the 1990s. He is an extremist conservative ideologue and is located somewhere in the vicinity of Stephen Harper’s right hand—if anyone could get that close to their fearless leader.

But he has been the obedient servant as Canada’s guy holding the purse strings. Nobody has built any washrooms on Tony’s watch. His job was to tighten the purse strings and that is what he did.

Tony saved money. He closed veteran’s offices that he did not think were needed–despite the protests from veterans.

Tony had money allocated in the federal budget to buy new carbines and training in their use for the R.C.M. Police. They needed these to supplement their pistols. While Mounties were being killed by people with more long-range weapons, Tony doled out the money as some sort of Scrooge.

Many departments of government complained about not getting funds allocated but Tony was adamant. He was there to save money, not to spend it.

Mr. Harper was surprised and pleased by a less than one per cent saving of the federal budget. He should give Tony Clement a medal.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Just when you are hoping that politics in Canada will not sink any lower, you get an evening of politics even worse.

It started innocuously with the evening news on Shaw’s Global National with Dawna Friezen. Every newscast today seems to have its own panel of experts ready to tell us all what to think. Global is no exception. The only problem was that this panel was made up of surrogates for the three major party leaders. Friezen quickly lost control of the panel and the control room did not have the smarts to cut certain microphones. Great start!

And then we tuned in the debate being broadcast from Calgary to advertise the Toronto Globe and Mail. We thought we would have to watch it on streaming video on the computer but we found it by accident on Hamilton’s orphan television station.

And it also started with another inane panel. These were all Globe and Mail employees trying to show us how smart they are. They are not but we had lots of time to make popcorn and settle down for the show.

Nice set though. It looked like the parliament buildings. In Calgary?

The moderator was some other high Globe and Mail mucky-muck. He should never be hired by the local primary school as recess monitor. He looked like he wanted to get into the mêlée rather than control it.

And if Stephen Harper had started just one more sentence with “Well look,” the wife was going throw the popcorn bowl at an expensive flat screen television. Luckily she got bored and fell asleep before he said it ten more times.

Even after the debate, it continued. The CBC National News was ready with its panel to analyze the debate. It goes on forever! And that guy from the National Post, who has an opinion on everything, thought Mr. Harper won the debate. That shows how biased he is.

At least Peter Mansbridge controls his panel. When he asked Chantal Hébert who she thought had won, she demurred but said the Radio-Canada people with whom she was watching in Montreal thought Mr. Trudeau won.

And, in a sense, he did. He was the only participant with any vision of where he was going. Mr. Harper was the same old-same old. And Mr. Mulcair was smarmy and trying hard to be funny. He failed.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

In an otherwise pleasant evening the other day, we attended a Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP) meeting to hear the local political candidates. Since Barrie has been split in half for this federal tryst, we had to listen to the candidates from two ridings. It certainly was not double the fun.

The Green Party and New Democrats were a quartet that was loud, strident and sure of their parties’ platforms. Whether they had any personal contribution to make in Ottawa seemed to be a mute point. The Liberal candidates were interesting and brought their individual strengths to the party. What struck us though were the problems faced by the Conservative candidates in coping with the format of the meeting.

All candidates were asked the same set questions that they were expected to answer in a tightly controlled time frame. As both Conservative candidates had the same party song sheet to read from, you could understand why their party headquarters advised them to stay away from these situations. Most Conservative candidates are staying away from all all-candidate meetings. The Barrie candidates have both served on Barrie City Council and figured they could handle it. They did at first but their answers to the questions seemed similar, irrelevant and pure fiction.

By the fourth question, the Barrie-Innisfil Conservative did not feel like reading the same answer as his compatriot and got into an off-the-script diatribe against pandering to voters by going around the country bribing taxpayers with their own money. What was really funny about it was that his leader Stephen Harper was out in Vancouver at the time pretending to play bingo at a seniors’ event and offering single seniors a tax credit for voting Conservative.

What surprised the Barrie audience was that the candidate actually knew the definition of a panderer beyond offering sexual services. Mind you if he really needed a picture of pandering he only needed to consider Stephen Harper and the millions spent pandering to the Jewish vote in Canada. When some schmuck candidate was whining to him at the Temple Wall about wanting a picture for his campaign literature, Harper should have seen the error of his ways.

But he did not. Instead Harper went on to pander to Canada’s extensive Ukrainian Diaspora by insulting Russia’s Putin. He might have been right in his assessment of the Russian leader but it showed that he had a lot to learn about international diplomacy.

And all of this came to us as we sat in a pew of a funeral parlour chapel in Barrie.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Canada’s ‘tough on terror’ prime minister wants you to be afraid. He wants you to believe there might be a bogeyman jihadist under your bed. It is the reason for his anti-terrorism Bill C-51 that his majority government forced into law before the election. It is a bad law that supposedly let’s Canada’s security forces look under your bed for you.

And if the news media will just let the Stephen Harper campaign to get back on script, he will tell you all about it. Security is part of Mr. Harper’s spiel for law and order in our generally peaceful land. What he really needs to emphasize his point is to get some Islamic State jihadists over here to run around with guns to scare the populace.

But with the court challenges mounting against the draconian Bill C-51, it looks like more and more Canadians think the bill goes beyond what Canada needs. They have no enthusiasm for allowing or paying for the security forces to look under peoples’ beds.

And paying for increased intrusion on Canadians’ rights and freedoms is the main problem with the bill. It places a great deal more responsibility on the federal police, the security investigation service and the border guardians than they have the personnel or financial resources to handle. They simply cannot do the tasks the bill calls for.

It was obviously in the campaign script for Mr. Harper to start promising specific funding objectives for the security people. This would enable him to show how tough he is on crime. It would also show his Conservative base that he is doing what they want.

Mr. Harper has also been trying to get to his law and order script by pointing to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and blaming them for the refugee crisis in Europe. All we really need to do is bomb the oil fields and pipelines that are bringing those brigands millions of black market oil dollars a day and block their financing from Saudi Arabia to end their involvement. And then all that is needed is for some country to bomb Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end the war.

But the wiser role for Canada is to stay out of foreign wars that do not involve us. We need to use diplomacy and we need to do a better job of delivering foreign aid. We certainly need to speed up our bringing refugees to safety in our country.

But before we fund Mr. Harper’s Bill C-51 to make sure we are safe in our beds, we should remind Mr. Harper of the words of Justin Trudeau’s father: The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

When first viewing the boundaries of the new federal electoral districts that now divide the City of Barrie, the reaction was ‘Why would they do anything that silly?’ It was when the Ontario Commission came to town that the term ‘Gerrymander’ came to mind. It was also after listening to local Conservatives compliment the commission on the brilliance of the design that we were convinced. And when we realized that the other local party organizations were not going to complain, we left in disgust.

Canada does not have a strong tradition of gerrymandering. It is an American term that describes the manipulation of the boundaries of an electoral district to the benefit of a particular party or race. What happened to Barrie is that with many younger, well-educated homeowners moving into a rapidly growing city, the trend was towards more progressive voting. By cutting the city in half, there was an opportunity to add heavily Conservative rural areas to the urban vote.

And that is why both Liberal candidates, each with a riding two-thirds urban and one-third rural, have their work cut out for them. The riding of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte has the added ignominy of having Canada’s least effective Member of Parliament Patrick Brown being elected to the Legislature of Ontario during the federal election by the voters in Springwater and Oro-Medonte townships who live in the provincial riding of Simcoe-North.

And the Conservative candidate for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte has shadowed the new leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives. He apprenticed the guy for years. He served two terms as a Barrie Councillor ineffectually without getting more than a few people mad at him and now thinks he is ready for Ottawa.

Mind you, he needs little preparation to be as bad as his predecessor. The first time we heard him speak to Barrie Council at a council meeting, we asked someone why they did not fix his microphone. The answer was that his microphone worked fine. He mumbles. When asked why he did not take speaking lessons, the answer was that he had nothing important to say. This guy was chosen by the federal Conservatives after he got bounced from a provincial nomination contest because he tried to break the rules and pay the membership fees for some of his sign-ups.

This prize Conservative candidate can best be explained as being too young to have a biography and has never held a job long enough to have a career. He wants to be our MP. He is running against the President Emeritus of Georgian College who helped develop the college into one of the top community colleges in Ontario.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

The reason political campaign buses are so big is that there needs to be enough people to be used as scapegoats when things go wrong. And in all campaigns, winning or losing, things will go wrong. The infamous Murphy of Murphy’s Law rides on every bus.

A critical measure of any party leader is how he or she responds when the inevitable glitch happens. That response can be anything from a quiet word with the malefactor to the screeching halt of the bus to deposit you at the side of the road. At that point you might as well throw yourself under the bus. Your days as a campaign guru are over.

While there is usually a continuing effort to keep spirits up in a collegial atmosphere, a very clear hierarchy is determined early on the bus. And you stay away from the leader’s space unless you have a briefing responsibility. To be called forward to talk to the leader is an honour that is cherished.

But there are tensions and nail biting on that bus to last a lifetime. Those with media responsibilities keep their sanity by often riding in the follow-bus with the news media. There is enough tension there if the media feel you are going too far in spinning the day’s story. They can also be lavish in their ridicule when you try to rescue your guy from the day’s gaff on the platform.

Stephen Harper did Campaign Manager Jenni Byrne a favour sending her back to the Ottawa headquarters this past week. Obviously the spin on the story was not by any of her friends. That is a very soft landing though for a scapegoat. It should also be noted that if she really is the campaign manager, she should be running the campaign from the party headquarters anyway.

The media reported that the prime minister huddled with some pals in Toronto after that to review where the Conservative campaign was at. The first thing that is hard to believe is that Stephen Harper has pals!

What the dinner probably revealed is that the Conservative campaign is tanking. And what really upset these obviously wealthy ‘pals’ is the possibility of the foolish ads about the Liberal’s Trudeau being young helping Mulcair’s NDP, not the Conservatives.

But one of the firmest rules on the bus is the ‘Las Vegas Rule’ that what happens on the bus, stays on the bus. When a bus develops too many leaks, it usually means the entire campaign is about to go under.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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