Category: Federal Politics

The New Politics?

by Peter Lowry

In writing recently about the similarities of Pierre Poilievre and Donald Trump, I kept walking around the obvious. Putting a political label on either of them is difficult. The truth is that their politics needs a new name. It isn’t as authoritarian as European fascism. It lacks the corporatism. And only Trump shows signs of racism. And neither is a real libertarian.

Both Poilievre and Trump have this inability to stick to the truth. That might just be the belief of politicians that if you say something frequently and loudly, it can become a truth, of sorts. Mr. Trump is under the impression that he was the winner between he and Joe Biden. And poor Pierre Poilievre thought (until recently) that Bitcoin was a good investment. No doubt both the gentlemen can be easily deluded.

But I mentioned the other day that they both need their hard-core supporters. The ‘brown shirts’ (and shirtless) who carried out Trump’s insurrection in the American Capitol could have used some better leadership. Poilievre’s trucker convoy had lost most of its leaders to jail cells or restraining orders before the police got them properly kettled and ran them out of the nation’s capital.

I tend to think of the two as buskers, playing for nickels and dimes on the periphery of politics. Trump caught everyone by surprise by winning in 2016 and the American public made sure he lost in 2020. He was a sorry spectacle in the White House.

The striking difference between Trump and Poilievre is that Trump started out in 2015 with no clue about how politics really works and Poilievre has no clue about anything outside of politics. I would say that Poilievre is the loser in the sense that his entire working life has been nothing but politics.  

They both seem to think they can be dictatorial. It was probably Trump’s greatest disappointment in office. People kept telling him what he could not do. His only solution was to hire people who would lie to him. At least he felt better.

Other than ridiculous promises to end inflation, end government handouts and to prevent increases in taxes in the future, we have no clear idea of what Poilievre would do as prime minister. Like Trump, he obviously has no idea what to do about climate change or pandemics or inflation.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Lessons in Economics.

by Peter Lowry

It was regrettable that Justin Trudeau did not have room on his plane to take the new conservative leader to London. I was thinking that Justin could take in the pageantry of the funeral after dropping Pierre Poilievre off at the London School of Economics. The boy needs all the help on that subject he can get.

Over the years, I have met quite a few people who have been to that school. I find the conversation is enriched by their experience.

While considered reasonably intelligent, Mr. Poilievre desperately needs help in understanding some basics about the subject. Though I am reminded of the complaint by the late Harry S. Truman who said he wanted to hire a one-armed economist who could not say to him: “On the other hand, Mr. President.”

The problem with economics is that everything seems to be based on ranges. The Bank of Canada can use interest rates to deal with inflation but at the same time, has to be very wary of causing recession. And contrary to statements by Mr. Poilievre, the Bank of Canada does not print money at the behest of the prime minister. In fact, Mr. Poilievre might be very surprised at how little of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) actually involves printed currency.

And while Mr. Poilievre says he wants to fire the governor of the bank, he should be aware that it is a very active board of directors of the bank who provide the governor with advice and counsel.

The scariest aspect of Mr. Poilievre’s pseudo economics is his support of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is not real money. Cryptocurrencies are the equivalent of fool’s gold, mined on computers. They are an investment in fiction. They have no value other than what fools will pay.

My younger relatives might think I am over the hill and in my dotage but I am deeply concerned that they might be listening to this silly little man and his rage in going after the prime minister’s office. He really needs to be brought up short.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Yes, We Can.

by Peter Lowry

By now we should all be tired of the naysayers who say Canada’s constitution is impossible to change. The facts are that nothing is impossible. The ultimate authority on how we are governed is the people. We can, in a referendum for example, call for a constitutional conference to assess the need for change in Canada. If change is determined to be needed, we can elect delegates from the federal electoral districts across Canada to exam possible changes and make recommendations. Any recommendations can be debated at large and then a referendum vote can be called to accept or reject any or all of them.

There are many possibilities for the delegates to a constitutional conference. First of all, they have to care about the questions. Some could be politicians who have something to contribute. A few might be political scientists with ideas to build on. Most would be citizens concerned about the future of our country.

Back in 2007 there was a group of lottery winners in Ontario who were asked to consider methods of voting. They came up with a convoluted mixed member proportional voting system for the province. In the subsequent referendum, the idea was defeated by about two to one. In a similar vein, British Columbia had three attempts at reform of voting and Prince Edward Island had one. The conclusion seems to be that there is continuing support for first-past-the-post voting in those provinces.

What we need to consider in the election of people to the constitutional conference is are we going to elect enough people with open minds? Compromise and consideration of the needs of others are important if they are going to make the process work for Canadians.

Though there are those who have a strange view of the subject. There was a writer to the Toronto Star the other day who thought the crown’s only constituency is the constitution. He wrote that the royals are only given their high office to defend the constitution and be the living embodiment of the constitution and are therefore not responsible to the electorate. I wonder if the writer knows that the United Kingdom does not have a constitution. They have lots of customs; no written constitution.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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In a Land of Make Believe.

by Peter Lowry

It is surreal. We live in a time of floods and fire, when Mother Nature raises her ire. We fight nonsensical wars. And we are living in a fairy tale. The Queen is dead; long live the guy with the big ears.

The prime minister is taking our Canadian elites to London to see that the Queen is ‘done up proper’ in Westminster. Her nerdy family are standing by. The mourners in London bring new meaning to the English queue, while the elites of world leaders gather to honour the last monarch. That peasant Putin was snubbed. Did Xi Jinping send his regrets?

Did you hear the other day that some of the school boards in Ontario are telling teachers not to mention the Queen. They don’t want to frighten the children with tales of usurping the land of the first nomads who came here some 15,000 years ago.

And the fairy tale lives on. We are a free country; despite the promises of freedom by the new conservative leader. You know him now, don’t you? He is that nasty little man who thinks he knows about economics. He favours Bitcoin for investing. He blames the prime minister and the Bank of Canada for inflation. He seems to forget that Canada has handled inflation better than most developed countries.

The royals cost Canadians nothing more than our self respect. Why should we recognize and honour these people who lord it over us? What is their contribution to this country? Come visit us and we will turn out our children waving tiny Union Jack flags. Hip-hip-hooray?

A faux governor general belittles us. To pass legal judgement and laws in the name of a foreign monarch, is but a sham.

Instead of gathering to pass laws of importance to Canadians, our parliament chose to gather last week to make nice about the late queen. Hypocrisy ran rampant. The Bloc Québécois left the building, hopefully forever.

Enjoy your trip to London prime minister. Do some sight seeing while you are there. I can recommend a little pub down behind the Tower of London.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Trumping Trump.

by Peter Lowry

Our Canadian news media have been slow in comparing former American president Donald Trump and the new leader of Canada’s conservative party.  Maybe the media thought it could never happen here. But it has. And that boy, Pierre Poilievre, really thinks he is going to make it all the way.

Maybe there are major differences between Trump and Poilievre but both seem to see themselves as despots. Neither wastes time with truth to back their positions, nor are they populists. They are manipulators. Mr. Trump is a conman. Mr. Poilievre knows the politics. They both use the mantra of the political right to build their own fables. They are self-centred egoists.

In a different era, they would have their own Brown Shirts. Mr. Trump has his deplorables. They sacked the Capital for him. Mr. Poilievre has his truckers convoy people, who occupied Canada’s capital. To make sure of his ascendancy to leader, Poilievre signed up more than 300,000 of them to the conservative party.

Mr. Trump promises to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Mr. Poilievre promises ‘Freedom’ for fools in a country that is already free.

Both Trump and Poilievre decry the supposed elitists in their respective societies, yet they are, in themselves, elites. They both demand absolute loyalty among their followers. Their enemy is the liberal left. Poilievre directs his specious diatribes against the ‘Elitist liberal gatekeepers and corporate oligarchs.’ Mr. Trump builds towers in his name, claims to be a billionaire and denounces the media as the enemy. Their notion of news conferences are one-way events: ‘I talk, you listen.’ No Questions allowed!

Mr. Trump failed Americans when the pandemic started killing. He did next to nothing to help. Mr. Poilievre railed against the liberal government that did its best to help Canadians through the pandemic.

Mr. Trump makes friends of dictators. Mr. Poilievre attacks the Bank of Canada, Elections Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Neither builds on strengths. They use anger instead. The angrier their followers, the easier it is to manipulate them.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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‘Send in the Clowns’?

by Peter Lowry

When Steven Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns” for the musical “A Little Night Music,” it was not about circus clowns. It is a haunting song about the mistakes we make in life. It can also be easily applied to politics. Take the recent selection of a new leader for the conservative party.

You can easily visualize MP Pierre Poilievre with a whip and a chair inside a cage with the oversized pussy cats of the conservative party. And you know he will have them jumping through fiery hoops.  

But then you realize that to complete the job and achieve his ambition to be prime minister, they have to let him out of his cage. Will that be the time to send in the clowns? Will they be able to take away the image of the whip and chair or as Mr. Poilievre puts it, “Make the grand pivot”? His answer is no. He said “There is no grand pivot. I am as I am.” Or is it time to send in the clowns?

For the first time, at the announcement of the new leader, many conservatives were shown Mrs. Poilievre. She did a carefully scripted introduction for her husband on national television. Call her ‘clown number one.’

I remember another Pierre. Some of us communications people tried to get Pierre Trudeau to bring his wife and first son, Justin, to more events. Our pitch was rejected in very clear terms.

Yet, to make the point even more obvious, Pierre Poilievre brought wife and son to meet the conservative caucus a couple days later. Call the baby ‘clown number two.’

But who are the clowns who can humanize Poilievre for Canadian voters? What we know already is that only a small percentage of Canadian voters would consider him for prime minister. The majority do not think he is trustworthy. Women, particularly, dislike him. Assuming that there will be little need for members of parliament in a cut-down Poilievre parliament, are they just the clowns?

And, after all, what is he offering us? He wants a lean, mean government that leaves Canadians to fend for themselves. He wants fewer bureaucrats and a small civil service. He has no plans to try to alleviate climate change. And he can hardly fix the problems at the passport office or at airports or at border crossings with fewer people.

But there is no doubt that Mr. Poilievre wants to be prime minister.    

We will have to keep telling him: “Well, maybe next year.”

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Anguish of Anger.

by Peter Lowry

The new conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has told the news media that he does not pivot. That presents an interesting problem for his speech writers as we head down the road to the next federal election. That election could be as far away as three years. Will the anguish of the pandemic still be with us? Can prime minister Justin Trudeau be goaded into calling an election while the anger still rides high?

Are these extremes of anger still those that came with the pandemic? Was it the confusion of the lock downs and the isolation and the loneliness? Was it just the fear of some people of vaccines? Or was it the medical assumption of 100 per cent participation in being vaccinated? Maybe it was the fear of crowds, the fear of contamination? Or the fear for our lives? Yet this type of anger will ease over time. Some might never lose it. Others will control it.

As the pandemic gets less of the news cycle, world-wide inflation and the war in the Ukraine are feeding fresh anger. Mr. Poilievre has helped build that anger when he blames inflation on prime minister Trudeau and threatens the governor of the Bank of Canada.

Mr. Poilievre needs that anger to feed his campaign. He needs to hold on to that stridency and urgency. He uses the anger. He uses it as a replacement for clear and logical plans for Canada’s future. He has none.

Without the anger, people will realize that Pierre Poilievre is a sham. He is no populist. The last Prairie populist to be leader of the conservatives in Canada was John Diefenbaker. I admired John Diefenbaker. He really was a man of the people. I was doing on-air commentaries at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens as a liberal observer in 1967 when the conservative party chose Robert Stanfield to replace him as leader. One thing, for sure, Pierre Poilievre is no John Diefenbaker

Populism is simply not compatible with conservatism. Speaking out about vague elites is hardly an endorsement of populism. Saying that the prime minister could be personally responsible for inflation in Canada is rabble-rousing. Threatening to fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada is neither populist nor conservative. It is laying blame for inflation where it also does not belong.

Nor is the Bank of Canada planning on going into the cryptocurrencies business. Mr. Poilievre should listen more carefully to the bank’s official statements.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Darkness Falls.

by Peter Lowry

They say that bad luck runs in threes. The Queen died last week. Justin Trudeau said he was staying as leader of the liberals for the next election. And Pierre Poilievre won the leadership of the conservative party. That is certainly a hard-luck week.

Queen Elizabeth II has been the rock that anchored the United Kingdom for many years. Even in the depths of the roiling public concerns over Diana’s death, she was obviously evaluating options available to her. She, and the rest of the royal family, got on board the bus and rode it to a fresh acceptance. Charles cannot not compare with her and will soon start to wear on the family’s mystique.

Justin Trudeau was probably never able to understand his father’s relationship with Canada’s liberal party. Pierre Trudeau recognized in his second election that Trudeau mania was not reality. It was his realizing that he had to work with the party that gave him the majorities needed over most of his time as prime minister. Justin Trudeau’s weakness is that he has no respect for the liberal party. He has taken away its annual membership fee and turned it into a faux automated teller machine to which he can turn to for financing.

What the younger Trudeau fails to understand is that the liberal party is not just a financial backer but the workers who can validate party policies, do the door knocking, distribute the literature, erect the signs and bring out the vote.

To nobody’s surprise, MP Pierre Poilievre won the conservative leadership. It was a carefully orchestrated, overly long and unappealing event. What felt wrong was the lack of a future vision of Canada. Poilievre sits on the extreme right of Canadian conservatism. He spells out an austere and cruel vision of small and uncaring government. Despite the obvious objectives of the carefully crafted speech on the teleprompters, Poilievre lacks the warmth and personality needed in the party leadership. He has no life accomplishments to justify his new position. Using his wife to overcome his personal limitations is unlikely to help.

So those were the low points of the week. And the kids are back in school, so please drive carefully.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A Farewell to the Royals.

by Peter Lowry

It was sad to hear of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. She was a remarkable lady. What intrigues me about the whole business is the antipathy many people feel towards our new king, Charles III. They think that because his son William looks like a nicer bloke, we can just bypass Chuck and make his son King. Sorry folks, it just does not work that way.

The royals are a family business that has been handed down for many centuries.  Despite the beheading of Charles I, who was also disliked, the practice has been forbidden since. And even though the lineage has been refreshed when needed from the Houses of Orange and Hanover, it has been remarkably durable.

As kids in Canada, we were taught to sing There will always be an England, during World War II. Just how that helped English morale while being bombed by the Luftwaffe, I am not sure. I think that the fact that the royal family stayed in London during the war did much more for morale.

But the royals do nothing for Canada. We are not a real constitutional monarchy. We have a faux Governor General playing the role of head of state. We have the English monarch’s face on our coins and $20 bills.

Canada has a constitution suited to the needs of the late 1800s with only the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to modify it. We fail to recognize and relish the complexities and accomplishments of our country and our stature in the world of today. The world is at our doorstep, waiting for our invitation. We have arable land to farm, roads to build, businesses to build, homes to create for more people.

Canada is sanctuary. Canada is a land of forests and waters. Canada is a great country that can partner with the United Kingdom, yet it owes no loyalty or homage to that country.

Canada is a land of opportunity. It does not need royalty. It should never encourage tradition or privilege over the rights of all.

We can honour Elizabeth II for her charm, her selflessness, her attention to her duty. She was an example to us all. It is suitable time to end the monarchy for Canada.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Stalking Horse.

by Peter Lowry

The stalking horse is a strategy that has been used in politics over the past 200 years. A stalking horse in politics appears to be a candidate for an office who builds a base of support but delivers the support to another candidate in the actual vote. We will soon know if it worked in the Canadian federal conservative leadership being decided later today. The stalking horse was former MP and Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. He was doing the stalking on behalf of his friend, former Quebec Premier Jean Charest. The prize at the end of the game was for Charest to win the leadership against MP Pierre Poilievre.

While people such as former prime minister Brian Mulroney were working the conservative party sign-ups in Quebec for Charest, Patrick Brown was signing up temporary conservatives across Canada—supposedly for his own campaign. His main target was the sub-continent diaspora of almost 2 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who are concentrated in Toronto and Vancouver and other cities such as Montreal in Quebec and Brampton, Ontario. Brown signed up more than 100,000 temporary conservatives and renewals.

There are many theories as to why Brown was turfed from the conservative contest. There were rumours of illegal acts and there were rumours of rules violations. I think Patrick Brown set up his own ejection from the race. The problem was that with his sign-ups voting for him on the first ballot, he was risking coming second to Pierre Poilievre. For the stalking horse effort to work, Jean Charest had to come first or second on the first ballot. All was lost though if Poilievre had more than 50 per cent of 338 electoral districts on the first ballot.

Brown had no problem asking his temporary members to vote for Charest second to him. They would also accept his advice to vote for Jean Charest after he was out of the race. It did not matter that his name was still on the ballot. It is his second vote that is counted.

What is not clear is the obvious animosity between Brown and Poilievre. Neither of the two men are particularly likeable. Neither has much life experience. They both have had a life dedicated to politics with a conservative flavour. Brown’s conservatism is that of a smarmy, middle-of-the-road retail politician and Poilievre’s is to the extremes of the right wing of conservatism.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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