Category: Federal Politics

Could 20^th Century writer Ayn Rand have imagined Canada’s Stephen Harper? Would she have lauded him for his Objectivism or would she have scoffed at his failures? At best guess, were she alive today, Rand would have been but another apologist for our failed prime minister.

He certainly has his apologists. Nobody could have forecast the events in world oil reserves and pricing since late 2014. The oil production glut from non-OPEC sources that include fracking and tar sands has been answered by lower-cost OPEC producers driving down prices. The results have meant serious losses to both Canadian and Venezuelan tar sands producers and financial problems for both countries.

In Canada, the Conservative government promised a surplus from which to offer tax goodies to the greedy in an election year. Tax savings for those who least need them are right in line with Ayn Rand’s extremist philosophy. Much of the Conservative base vote were expecting those pay offs and it is considered disastrous for Harper to renege.

Many wonder just how much of the government’s solutions to its budget problems have been based on subterfuge and outright lies? It was like listening to Global’s Tom Clark asking Defence Minister Jason Kenney why NATO figures show that Canada has been short changing the military budget. It seems that the Kenney’s government is claiming a couple hundred million was spent that NATO says does not show up anywhere. It was likely never spent. It appears that the government has been penny pinching on the backs of our military personnel and veterans.

A more obvious deception is the carbines that were supposed to be distributed to Canada’s R.C.M. Police in their role as federal officers and in providing provincial services to various provinces. That weapons program requires many millions of dollars in weaponry and training and these federal employees have been waiting for over six years for these guns to be distributed to all detachments. Commissioner Paulson has provided some cockamamie story about testing but that does not wash. The truth is probably that Treasury Board President Tony Clement has not been releasing the money for the weapons. That is how Clement is finding money for Mr. Harper’s tax cuts throughout the government. It might also be a reason for the number of R.C.M. Police killed in the line of duty lately because they are not armed adequately.

It is a long time since a tortured reading of Atlas Shrugged. We seem to recall a dialogue in the book that the mythical Titan (Atlas) was holding the world on his shoulders and it kept getting heavier and heavier. The question was asked how he could sustain that weight and the answer was supposed to be that “Atlas Shrugged.”

If we rid ourselves of Harper’s Conservative government later this year, can we say that democracy shrugged?

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Have you been following the stupidity of Bell Canada owning CTV? It has been a steady downhill slope for CTV news under their masters at Bell Canada for the past five years. Former CTV boss Ivan Fecan really stuck it to Bell and his network when he sold CTV to the uninformed Bell management. The sale was approved despite many objections because of the political pressures of the Harper government on the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) of the time.

What the experts were talking about those days, but few understood, was the rapid convergence of digital transmission of radio and television with digital telecommunications. Canada ended up with financial consolidation in a communications market that was neither fully understood nor effectively planned. In their greed, Bell Canada, Quebecor, Rogers and Shaw simply grabbed for the biggest pieces of the market players.

And nobody in the know envied the new CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais’ position when he took over three years ago. If he does not speak nicely to some of the huge companies he is supposed to be regulating, they will call their friend Stephen Harper’s office and complain about him. They are not only quarrelsome but think he should bow low before them.

But he got even last week. Justice was delivered. The CRTC is still the regulator. The first shoe fell when he declared that the there will be a “skinny basic” package of television channels offered for just $25 by all the satellite, cable and telecommunications carriers. We had been asking the CRTC for this for the last decade and with an election later this year, the commissioners acted. They have also announced a pick-and-pay smorgasbord approach to specialty channels. There will be no more free rides for channels of questionable value to viewers.

The Prime Minister must have a sore ear by now if he listened to George Cope of Bell Canada about what the CRTC was doing to his company. George’s minion who runs Bell Media for him made the mistake of calling the head of CTV News to tell her to keep the CRTC chairman off of CTV news. That step finally caused an insurrection by some of CTV’s senior news people and the silly Bell guy had to apologize.

But there are far more subtle ways for Bell to manipulate CTV News. There could be some re-assignments down the road for certain news people at CTV. And never forget that it is the person who controls the budgets who ultimately calls the shots.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

There is something that needs to be understood by people afraid of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): It is neither a state nor a country. It is an Internet and public relations savvy band of brigands and thieves feasting off the current civil war in Syria and the turmoil in leaderless Iraq. They are neither disciplined troops nor well commanded. Maybe Iraq asked Canada for help against the brigands but only a fool would get involved in the fighting in Syria when you have no side to support.

It is amazing how the Middle East always has handy heroes for the followers of the Prophet. From the mysterious Saladin of the Crusades to the Mahdi of the Sudan to Bin Laden of al Qaeda and now al-Baghadi, the false Caliph of ISIL, they raise the rabble and feed off of the Europeans and their progeny who so rashly challenge them.

Why should we follow fools to destruction? The British have 200 years of experience of providing army rations to the Afghans. And yet nobody has ever been smart enough to destroy their opium poppies. All the time Canada was in Afghanistan, we were fighting the Taliban’s recruits from the madrasas (religious schools) of Pakistan to protect Afghanistan for its opium overlords..

Canada has no purpose to send armed personnel to the Middle East. There is no peace keeping to do there at the moment. There is much humanitarian aid needed—if we could just get the aid to the right people.

We should ask proponents of war with ISIL what they think we will accomplish. Does name calling by ill-informed, immature jihadists demand revenge? Does the cavorting of a few mentally ill Canadians demand the extremism of Harper’s Bill C-51? Is the purpose of the government to control our lives because of the bogeymen of their imagination?

What it comes down to is that for Canada to send its fighter aircraft to Syria is sending our pilots to their death. There are sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles available in Syria ready for their incursion. Who is there in that country who can rescue them, if they manage to survive a missile hit?

There can be no support for Mr. Harper in this foolhardy venture. Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau have to travel their own paths but neither could pull their party behind them in support of the harm Mr. Harper is doing to our country.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

The other day, one of the more interesting progressive bloggers was discussing what he perceived as the three eras of Canada’s democracy. To discuss the three eras that interested him, he really needed to start with Canada at the end of the First World War. The reality is that Canada left its childhood behind when dispensing with R.B. Bennett and came of age under the leadership of William Lyon Mackenzie King.

But the writer was absolutely right to key his eras of democracy to prime ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. Mackenzie King only laid the groundwork. Maybe neither of us is old enough to remember what Mackenzie King accomplished for this country. We are both old enough though to remember John Diefenbaker and the great populist that he was. He tended to drive Mr. Pearson to distraction but he was the best opposition leader this country ever had.

Having met and talked privately with the three leaders is part of an interesting life. Mr. Diefenbaker was old-school and a very courteous gentleman. Mr. Pearson was also very much a gentleman and he had a warm sense of humour. It was Pearson, more than any other, who created the favourable world-wide reputation of Canada that Harper and his Conservatives are trying so hard to destroy.

Mind you, helping with many of Pierre Trudeau’s public functions in the Toronto area when he was prime minister was a special delight. He was by far the most intelligent of Canada’s leaders and always fun to talk with.

But what the blogger was addressing was the tearing down of our democracy in the Mulroney era. Mind you the seeds of that destruction came from Pierre Trudeau’s Royal Commission on Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada—The Macdonald Commission.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was something of a blow-hard who used subterfuge and guile to destroy and replace Joe Clark and he was leading Canada nowhere other than under the economic control of the Americans. It was right-wing Don Macdonald who saw his chance to convince Mulroney of free trade with his report. Maybe Thumper (as we called the Trudeau’s former finance minister) was not to blame for the mess Mulroney made of the deal but he should have recognized the incompetence.

To accuse Mulroney of neo-liberalism is to give the guy too much credit. He might not understand the term. And it is almost impossible to define Jean Chrètien as he always seemed to be a populist—a French Canadian version of John Diefenbaker.

If we understand the term ‘illiberal’ that the writer used, we will certainly apply it to both Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. They have set Canada on a path of increasing discomfort for Canadians. If we progressive liberals really believe in democracy, we have to fight for it.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Canadians are getting mixed messages from their Prime Minister. His message last week to a gathering of rural municipal leaders in Saskatchewan was that there was a certain level of safety in having a gun in the home “when you are a ways from immediate police assistance.” Other than it sounding like a straight lift from American National Rifle Association handouts, the Hair was in conflict with Canadian law.

Canadian law requires that a gun be stored unloaded and both gun and ammunition be kept locked up in separate locations. You have no chance to put things together if the home is invaded. If you are smart, you let the thieves help themselves and let the police and insurance companies look after the fall-out.

When anti-gun lobbies responded about the foolishness of the Prime Minister’s statement, he dismissed them as accusing him of vigilantism. The problem is that it is urban gangs that use guns and other killers in Canada seem to prefer kitchen knives.

And invoking the image of rural home invasions is about as silly as you can get. Home invasions in rural areas are something from a writer’s imagination and do not even make it into Canadian crime statistics.

And the Hair also needs to remember that Canadians are not in tune with his out-of-date stand on guns and gun ownership. This is the Prime Minister who removed the long gun registry that was needed and used by our police.

It makes very little sense that the Hair is going in the wrong direction with guns. It is almost as though he was on a quest to open up the ownership of guns in Canada.

Most recently his government had an opportunity to take better control of gun shows in Canada. What his government did instead was to throw out what regulations there were.

At a time when the United States is trying to stop the killing of children with guns, Canada’s Conservative government is busily opening the doors to more freedom for our gun enthusiasts.

Back in the 1990s when the Hair was just good-ole boy Steve Harper, Reform MP from Calgary, he actually voted against his own party and for the Liberal Party’s creation of the long gun registry. Times do change in politics.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

If there had not been so much ice in the harbour last week, they could have got some great shots of the New Democrats’ Tommy Mulcair arriving in Toronto. He could have been dressed in buckskins, cradling a musket and standing in the prow of a Voyageur canoe. He could have invoked the memories of the arrival in Toronto of Samuel de Champlain. The only difference was that de Champlain brought real trade goods and Mulcair brought his typically hollow political promises.

There will be much of the same foolishness by all parties over the coming months leading up to the federal election. When you have three major political parties, you know you will get many promises—and little reality.

As the least likely politician to win the coming election, Tommy Mulcair can make the easiest of promises. He can make them sound good. He can wrap them in the finest BS with lots of sugar to make them easier to swallow.

Mulcair can force himself to unbend enough to talk the talk and walk the walk as though he might even give a damn. He can stand beside his failed cohorts from Toronto ridings and offer them victory under his banner but with the sure knowledge of many defeats.

His is a campaign of hope. He is hoping to salvage some of the Orange Wave in Quebec from 2011 that Jack Layton left him. He knows how difficult that will be. He also knows that Toronto’s New Democrats are on a losing streak. Nothing says that more poignantly than a picture of Tom Mulcair with Layton’s widow Olivia Chow.

But all he can do is hope. He must have spent a great deal of time in front of a mirror practising his smile for this trip. His handlers knew he would need it.

Tommy Mulcair does not know Toronto. Nevertheless, his speech to the party faithful on Sunday was sprinkled with dialogue about Toronto neighbourhoods. The speech actually reported to have included the statement that “Only when Toronto is strong is Canada strong. He was also well briefed for a meeting with Toronto’s new Conservative mayor.

We already know that the Conservatives and Liberals have no choice in this election but to offer Toronto new guarantees of partnership in funding infrastructure, transit, housing and jobs. How memorable will be their promises and how credible have yet to be seen. All parties have to fight over Toronto votes.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Bad legislation is bad legislation and to approve bad legislation even temporarily is a denial of principles. The Harper government’s Bill C-51 supposedly to end terrorism is bad legislation beyond any possibility of repair or amendment. It is time for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to get up and speak for principles.

No real Liberal can support legislation that denies any Canadians their rights. This bill against terrorism is also a denial of free speech. And the bill is unnecessary. No Canadian police force or organization has said that the extreme provisions of the act are needed. The extra security and police measures in the bill are unfunded and unsupported. It is a bill with little thought or planning other than as a platform for posturing.

And that is all that Bill C-51 is designed to be. It is posturing as being strong against the bogeymen of terrorism. It is part of being strong against crime. It is part of building more prisons to find Canadians to fill. And when the Harper government is busy posturing, you can look for truth elsewhere.

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney was invoking the Holocaust the other day in support of Bill C-51. While Blaney might not know much about the Weimar Republic, he posited that the Holocaust started because of words. He followed up that brilliant statement with the further observation that the real threat today is from “radical jihadists.” What else jihadists might be beyond “radical” he left to the imagination.

Even in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister has invoked the image of crazed Muslims wearing Niqabs (veils) supposedly murdering us in our beds. He sees the use of veils as a put-down of women in misogynistic societies. For a guy who by now must be our most traveled Prime Minister, he shows very little understanding of customs of different societies in our world.

But the major concern in this confusion of postures is the Liberal position. At one point, Justin Trudeau seemed to be afraid that he had been out-postured by Stephen Harper and therefore he should support the bill and change it later. It appears now that the weaknesses of the bill have been exposed and there would be no harm if the Liberals told the Harper Conservatives to stick their bill where the sun does not shine.

Frankly Canadians would probably think more of Justin Trudeau if he and the Liberals in Parliament voted against Bill C-51. Canadians smart enough to find their way to the voting booth will understand that does not mean he is in favour of terrorism. Far from it. It is easy to understand that you can be down on terrorism without blowing away Canadians’ hard won freedoms.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

It was about time. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau prides himself on his ability as a stump speaker. With no notes and no prompts, he can keep a Liberal audience enthralled. And if all he had to talk to was Liberal Party members, no change was needed.

But with the oncoming federal election it is time for broader audiences. There can be no more off-the-cuff remarks and no more gaffs. It means Trudeau must be provided with carefully crafted scripts that he can stick to. It means he must become as one with his teleprompter. He has to join the big kids in this big time game of politics. There is no shame in being in tune with your teleprompter.

The best English language speaker we see on television today is U.S. President Barack Obama. You also never see him making a major speech without a teleprompter. It simply goes with the territory. It is no grocery list he is reading. The man feels what he is saying.

And for any of his announcements from the Greater Toronto Area to Nunavut, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is never without his staged presentation and his teleprompter. His reading might be stony and pedantic, the people making up his backdrop irritating and bored and, for that matter, he seems bored with himself.

The surprise of the last federal election back in 2011 was seeing the late New Democrat Leader Jack Layton using a teleprompter. We saw it as a crutch because of his health problems but it also freed him to animate and mug with his words. He came through that election well ahead of his rightful place.

Mind you it was in part Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s professorial approach more than his political shortcomings that cost him the election and any political future.

Young Trudeau with a teleprompter has great potential. He can appear guileless. He can take time to smile. He can convince and he can win.

But no teleprompter is better than the prepared script. You have to use words that connect with the target audiences. You need to use the power phrases that motivate. You need to present ideas that stimulate and you have to close the deal.

It was a great warm-up the other day at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel speaking to the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Trudeau spoke of the differences between himself and Prime Minister Harper. He reminded his listeners that the Liberal Party is by far the best champion of Canada’s vaunted liberties, freedoms and inclusiveness. And it is only a beginning.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Maybe we all need to get involved in this exercise. In a world full of band-aids, we need to rethink our way to health. We are talking here about a guaranteed income for every man woman and child in this country. It is not an idle dream or a panacea. It is just a beginning. It is our future.

It is mainly liberal thinkers who have shaken this tree in the past but it is becoming more universal as more people see the essential fairness of the concept. It is as understandable as universal medical care. It is as complex as a heart transplant and as simple as resetting a broken arm. A guaranteed annual income for every Canadian is a basic human right.

When you consider the alternatives, you see the logic. Without the guarantee, you have to have structure and funds to cover welfare needs, parenting allowances, unemployment funding, seniors’ supplements, as well as supplements for the disabled and make-work funding for business. Instead business can attract workers by topping up perks and challenging their creativity and self-worth. It will be an entirely new world of business.

And it needs to be business that puts the revenue into the common pot to carry the plan. We have to rethink income tax in a world where work is more of a hobby, an emotional fulfillment, a fair exchange for time spent and challenges met. People will be able to work in their community to further the quality of life for all to enjoy. The arts will benefit from those who see creativity opportunities that enrich life. Children can be cared for in fulfilling environments, taught in schools planned and built by the community and universities can become centres of lifetime learning.

The danger in thinking of guaranteed annual income is of applying figures to it. It is a trap that demands debate but the figures are not the substance of the plan. It is the plan itself that matters.

Nor is the basic question as simple as: Can we afford not to do it?

The most disheartening argument against this is by the people who ask why they should pay for others. That is not only the wrong question but it is a display of ignorance. Nobody is being asked for charity here. There are no winners or losers. What do you want to do? Are you going to euthanize the old, the sick, the disabled and the challenged? Are you going to cherry-pick the genes you want for your progeny?

The human race is going to continue to evolve—let’s hope for the better.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

There seem to be many ways to use the term ‘Social License.’ Natural resource extraction and pipeline industries use the term to describe the theoretical license the community provides to allow the necessary disruption of the environment in the process of extracting, processing and transporting our natural resources. The only problem is that social license is viewed from many different angles by the government, the regulator agencies, aboriginal rights activists, environmentalists and the community as a whole.

According to former Environmental Minister and current Finance Minister Joe Oliver, social license is being misused by environmentalists and aboriginal rights advocates to block resource development that he believes is in the public interest. This is the chap who, as environment minister, refused to put any restrictions on tar-sands extraction and processing—the most seriously polluting methods ever seen in producing oil.

Joe Oliver represents a government that severely restricts who can speak to the National Energy Board at their hearings. This is also the regulatory board that ended hearings in Toronto that were not going as was preferred.

Mr. Oliver needs to understand that once you have completely corrupted a federal agency such as the National Energy Board, it hardly deserves to be referred to as ‘independent.’

Mr. Oliver admits that even though pipelines, such as the Northern Gateway Pipeline planned to cross Northern B.C., have been approved by the Harper government and the National Energy Board, they are not in danger of proceeding in the near future. He fears that a small minority of Canadians are using social license to block construction of the pipelines. This small minority, according to Oliver, is made up of aboriginal bands whose lands are in the way of the pipeline and environmentalists. He assumes that the rest of us have given the pipeline a pass.

But what seems to be lost in discussion of social license is that it is not a stamp on a document that commits anybody to anything less than fair dealings. It is not a license to lie about the true destination of tar-sand’s bitumen. It does not allow the shipment of highly volatile crude oil from fracking in old tanker cars through Lac Megantic, Quebec with unsafe train procedures.

Only a fool puts profit ahead of safety. Social license is a bond between the public and the company. It is the trust that people are entitled to in protecting them from harm caused by industry in pursuit of progress, profit and performance. People like Joe Oliver seem to miss that point.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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