Category: Federal Politics

Scarborough Southwest is old stomping ground for this Liberal. Those are our people the Toronto Star is toying with. Suggesting that (then) former Police Chief Bill Blair will want to run as a Liberal in that electoral district is a declaration of war against them. We are not amused.

First of all, Blair is no Liberal. He is the unindicted felon of the G-20 in Toronto in 2010. He was responsible for one of the most serious infringements on human rights in Canadian history when his police kettled innocent bystanders during a G-20 incident that can only go down in infamy with the events of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike and the use of the War Measures Act against the FLQ in 1970.

And now we have speculation in the Toronto Star stirring the pot with a worthless survey that probably means nothing. You have to be something of a fool to ever believe one of those interactive voice-response surveys.

What interactive voice-response surveys try to do is substitute volume of calls to overcome the inability to qualify the respondents. When you have no idea who in the household responded, you have no clue as to the demographics, probability of voting and accuracy of your sample. Even back when you could get a decent sample, you still used other identifiers to qualify the response.

If it was not for Bill Blair’s ignoring his responsibility for the G-20 affair as well as his arrogance, his force’s carding, his poor leadership and his handling of the Mayor Ford affair, we would have an open mind on the question of Blair running for the Liberals. Frankly, he would be much more at home with the Conservative Party. His only problem would be that Stephen Harper’s ego might trump Blair’s.

But you also wonder about the Toronto Star editors who are stirring this pot. This type of manipulation goes far beyond an impish attempt to build news stories from nothing. This is a strong desire to cause trouble.

It can even cause more trouble for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. His deputy flack in Ontario, David MacNaughton, has already got his fingers burned enough interfering in local nominations. Trudeau has enough scars from breaking his promise of open nominations. To suggest that Scarborough Southwest is being held for any star candidate is a red flag to the Scarborough breed of Liberals.

Interfering in that riding would simply mean leaving it to the New Democrats.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

You can only feel a sickening sense of betrayal in Bill C-51 that is now before our parliament. We are betrayed by Stephen Harper’s determination for re-election. It is a bill that begs for abuse. Ill-conceived and ill-defined, it is a reactionary bill better serving a lynch mob than reasoned jurisprudence.

All we can tell you is that this is not the answer to the fear of an enemy within. It is the same feeling we had 45 years ago when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau used the archaic War Measures Act against le Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). There was no war. And the measures were excessive. Back then, as now, there were no rights, no recourse, no oversight and no answers.

Yet it was a time of the highest approval rating for the Prime Minister and of his infamy. It almost cost him re-election two years later. Sure, the right wing flocked to the flag he carried but they neither stayed the course nor cared.

In their rush to appear firm against terrorism, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are also tromping hard on Canadian rights and freedoms. Obviously Conservatives do not give a damn but many Liberals do. The really conflicted are Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats. In a reprise of the split NDP caucus in 1970, the New Democrats are not all buying into Mr. Harper’s draconian measures.

Why should they buy into it? Nothing in this act says that you can always spot and detain an individual who chooses jihad adventures. One sick mind that murders a soldier standing ceremonial guard at a war memorial and then heads for the parliament building to do whatever(?) and is killed in the attempt cannot be anticipated. You hardly need new laws to apprehend fools who plot mayhem.

We have more than enough laws to protect our citizens. If our security services and national police need more powers, let them come before parliament to make their case. For politicians to tell them what they need is not just silly but smacks of what it is: a play for votes.

And what is even more askew is the lack of funding in Bill C-51. Does parliament now give a blank cheque to CSIS and the R.C.M. Police for a sense of safety?

Bill C-51 is grossly flawed. To propose it is foolish. To support it is a disgrace. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau needs to seriously rethink his position.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

The news media expect the MP Eve Adams story to be around for a while. The copy is just too good to pass up. The blonde (or brunette, depending on the day) Ms. Adams is an aging Cleopatra and her boy toy Dimitri Soudas is a besotted Marc Antony. Mind you, we are all waiting for the conservative-leaning Sun Media headline that denigrates her as “that bitch with an itch.”

As expected, few if any real Liberals are welcoming her to their party. It is not that they do not want to win Toronto’s Eglinton-Lawrence electoral district. It is just that they would prefer to win it with some shred of dignity left in the process.

While the attack on Finance Minister Joe Oliver was expected, Adams candidacy is over the top. While the immediate and scathing attack on her by local Liberal MPP Mike Colle was a bit ill-advised, it was honest and spoke eloquently for the mores of the riding. While Adams has possible potential in a newer GTA riding with a younger demographic, Eglinton-Lawrence is wrong, wrong, wrong.

First of all with about 25 per cent of the electoral district being Jewish, the old Jewish-Italian coalition that stood by former Liberal MP Joe Volpe can still be a winning combination. It was only 2011 when Oliver finally beat Volpe but it was well past either candidate’s ‘best before date.’ The riding deserves a more energetic and youthful MP.

Frankly the Liberals need to do a better candidate search for that riding. Surely they can find an up and coming candidate with more to offer the voters than what Adams brings to the table. Her record while a Conservative was pathetic and the party had good reason to toss her. They were sorrier to lose Soudas than her.

While Soudas made few friends as Harper’s communications guy and alienated more as executive director of the Conservative Party, he has no friends in the Liberal Party either. One of the rules this writer always followed over the years in political activity was to know your counterpart in the other parties and buy them a drink occasionally. You might be surprised at how many times you found it beneficial to have quick access to another party in a situation critical to both.

But we are all going to be watching to see how the Adams-Soudas affair unfolds. They might deserve each other but does the Liberal Party?

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

And you thought the Hair had already hit the wall in his search for talent in his Conservative caucus. When you have a guy like Pierre Poilievre on your team, the possibilities are endless. He can easily add Employment to his workload. Then there is Rob Nicholson, the Defence Minister who was ready to step into John Baird’s fashionable shoes in Foreign Affairs. And then there is Mr. Fix-It Jason Kenney, ready and able to add another portfolio, Defence, to his task of getting the Conservative Party re-elected in 2015.

And what do you think the Department of Defence and Multiculturalism have in common? When you can use Multiculturalism to pan for votes among the ethnic make-up of Canada’s voters, do you then use the military to convince the rest? It is bad enough that the Conservatives seem to have decided they do not need Muslim votes but that combined with the lack of safeguards on the anti-terrorism laws it is a bit frightening.

And if you thought John Baird was a disaster as Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, you have not seen anything yet. Rob Nicholson’s only experience in foreign affairs was in meetings with counterparts in Niagara Falls, New York when he was in municipal politics on the Canadian side of the Falls. Luckily the Americans spoke English so Nicholson got away with not speaking the language of diplomacy: French.

Nicholson is one of the few Conservative dinosaurs from the Mulroney era in Ottawa. Mind you he spent eleven years in municipal and school board politics in between.

But it is Pierre Poilievre that best explains Stephen Harper’s genius in making do with what you have got. This is the guy who brought election reform to its knees with his Fair Elections Act of 2014. A year later it is still in parliamentary limbo and everyone hopes it stays there. His intransigence in the face of expert and Elections Canada objections to the act showed a level of ignorance and lack of common sense that stunned opposition and some Conservative colleagues alike. He was obviously following the Hair’s orders to the point that he was embarrassing the government. When the Hair told him to pull back and allow amendments to the act, his eagerness to recant and comply was equally embarrassing.

But for the Hair, it is all in a day’s work. What everyone in Ottawa is waiting for is the American decision on sending troops to Iraq and Syria to deal with the brigands who are posing as the New Caliphate in the Levant. It is clear now that air strikes alone are unable to resolve the problem. Canada has already had specialist troops on the ground directing air strikes and it is a very short step to direct military force. The Hair wants to be a hero.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

It could have been a subplot written by Virgil. There was the beautiful temptress, hair blonde and loose for the cameras, and the gullible of Troy, our Justin. There were few  reporters in Ottawa the other day who did not react in surprise when 41-year old MP Eve  Adams from Oakville, Ontario and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau came to talk to them.

The news was that the Conservative member had been rejected by her party but was acceptable to the Liberals.

But the elephant in the room for that news conference was Eve Adams’ live-in 35-year old boy toy, former Conservative Party Executive Director Dimitri Soudas. While  Adams supplied the eye candy behind announcements in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister, it was Soudas who was running the Conservative Party according to instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office.

This has all the earmarks of a Greek tragedy. While we have no idea which electoral district she will choose to cast her wiles, Adams is expected to take on an entrenched Conservative in the GTA. Despite some easy choices in Brampton, Mississauga and Etobicoke areas, many party pundits are pointing her at Finance Minister Joe Oliver in Toronto’s Eglinton-Lawrence. That contest will be the easiest to win of all.

Stephen Harper’s hapless Finance Minister is a pale shadow of the late Jim Flaherty and is expected to go down with the ship in the coming election. Frankly taking out Oliver would be no guarantee of anything for her in a Liberal government as there are far too many longer serving Liberals in Toronto waiting for their cabinet reward.

The guy with the serious career problems is Dimitri Soudas. It will soon be obvious to Adams that he is no long-term benefit to her in the Liberal Party. Taking him to Liberal Party functions will be akin to inviting a Roman Catholic monsignor to a whore house.

He might find it interesting but he would be given a wide berth.

But all of that does not excuse Justin Trudeau in this tableau. He has been suckered. At least it is to his credit that he told Adams that she has to win the seat she chooses in an open nomination. Mind you, she and Soudas will not be able to pull the same dirty tricks on a Liberal Party nomination that she tried in her last attempt in the Oakville North-Burlington electoral district. We would all be watching too carefully.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

We had a great time in Barrie the other night. We would have liked to have federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and his team there but we had to settle for volunteers from other Liberal riding associations. They were there to make sure our nomination meeting was run by party rules and that our candidate would be the choice of the Liberal Party members in Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte. What we wanted Justin and his friends to see was democracy in action.

The only problem was that that there are not many reasonably priced meeting venues in Barrie for more than 500 people. We had to settle for a high school cafeteria/auditorium and it was standing room only for the speeches and the voting. And you had to be there early as a basketball tournament was taking up half the parking. With a wind chill of -16 degrees Celsius, you did not want to have to walk far from where you could park.

There was the usual hoopla of nomination conventions in progress when we got there with signs, buttons and people pressing for your vote. Identification was everywhere for the two candidates. One used smaller buttons and signs and the other used what could only be described as prayer shawls of red cotton yard goods. Frankly though, there were few there who would brave such a cold night unless they were already convinced of who was their chosen candidate.

Some long time party people were sceptical of a large turnout but in our reading of what was apparent in the hall was that the vote was very close. And it was surprisingly close.

There were some 750 Liberal members eligible to vote. About 65 per cent of the new riding is from the north half of Barrie, 20 per cent from Springwater Township and 15 per cent from the part of Oro-Medonte that includes Horseshoe Resort and Shanty Bay. The fact that we had over 500 paid up Liberal Party members vote that evening demonstrates an enthusiasm that we have not seen in Simcoe County for a long time.

It took over three hours for Liberals to select their candidate. While the exact count is never announced publicly, there were many senior Liberals present who had to admit that they had never seen as close a vote.

But it was time for democracy and that is what gives the best results. We might not be writing as many blogs about the contest in Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte in the coming federal election. This writer will be helping our nominated candidate Brian Tamblyn, the former president of Georgian College. He has a great deal to contribute as our member of parliament.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

In recent years, we have had the fun of writing about the Bobbsey twins of the Harper cabinet. Specifically, they have been Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Employment Minister Jason Kenny. While it has been pointed out to us that one of the original Bobbsey twins was female and the other male, their stories that we read as children made them out as androgynous.

And even as an adult, who cares if one or both or neither of them share Oscar Wilde’s bent. Two, somewhat portly, single gentlemen in their mid forties can be anything they want and who cares—other than a mother having to search elsewhere for grandchildren.

But what is all this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the loss of John Baird from parliament. What was his contribution? What did he accomplish?

Were those crocodile tears we saw in parliament as he made his leave? He had the obligatory hug from Prime Minister Harper but nothing was said publicly. The opposition were polite but other than Paul Dewar of the New Democrats, the comments could be taken as ambiguous.

There was no moral authority to his role as Foreign Affairs Minister. He was a hypocrite in Jerusalem and a coward in Kiev. He neither tried to understand the Muslim world nor did he care for their concerns. He got his marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office and he grinned, gritted his teeth and got on with what he was told to do.

It was Jason Kenney setting the pins in that bowling alley and Baird bowled his best games.

He learned his trade under Ontario’s Premier Michael Harris—a man reviled for his ideological approach to the political task. And what Harris could not understand, he destroyed. Harris did irreparable damage during his tenure in Ontario and Baird was an eager acolyte.

There is something both amusing and sad to imagining the choice of careers open to John Baird in the private sector. He is going there to get out of the spotlight, follow his own drummer, enjoy himself, make money and moral clarity be damned.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Our political parties have been discovering the social media solutions of the Internet. It is nirvana, the answer to a campaign manager’s prayers, or so it seems. It supposedly reaches new and expanded audiences, younger voters and it is inexpensive. Candidates and the elected all have to have their personal web sites, party web site, government web site and they are all interconnected to save time and trouble. Everyone has to have them but few draw much of an audience.

And then there is Twitter and FaceBook and YouTube and their spin-offs. Twitter is embarrassing when you recognize what it says about the shallowness of to-day’s society. YouTube might produce a few gems but there is so much dross, you wonder if it is worth it. FaceBook is becoming commercialized and is challenging web sites in its increasing depth. Mind you those individuals who spread out their lives on FaceBook seem to have a lot of free time that could possibly be spent in more productive pursuits.

And faux web sites and FaceBook pages, Internet trolls, spam, and the just plain badly written, poorly illustrated material leaves all of us commentators and creators swimming against the tide in our own cesspool. Regrettably, the Internet does not seem to be attracting many of the best talents of our North American society.

It was quite surprising to read a Susan Delacourt article in the Toronto Star about a forum in Ottawa this past week. She was intrigued by an event billed as a beginning of conversation on bringing government into the digital age. The billing seemed a bit behind the times. It was almost 25 years ago that there were regular forums in Ottawa under the auspices of Communications Canada and Supply and Services Canada on digital technologies for government departments. One of the new and emerging technologies of interest at the time was the exciting concept of the Internet.

While the Internet was originally proposed and developed at CERN, the European Nuclear Research facility in Switzerland, it was really the agreements on Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) that enabled the World-Wide Web to work. CERN provided the standard. We already had extensive experience at the time with the military funded computer networks that spanned North America. Canada’s leadership role in communications and telephony technology also provided another key to making the Internet happen.

Mind you, we might have been a bit too optimistic at the time about the quality of the material that might be made available.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

With the serious lack of talent on the Conservative backbenches, you really do wonder if Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s backup is the answer. The only thing we know for sure is that this guy cannot do the job. With Blaney responsible for public safety in Canada, we get the feeling we are in danger of being murdered in our beds.

The surprise for people about the Public Safety Minister is that he is a Quebec-trained civil engineer and has a reputation as an environmentalist. He did a quiet and responsible job as Minister of Veteran’s Affairs for two years before moving to Public Safety. In this portfolio since July 2013, he seems to have reached his level of incompetence.

And it is not his difficulty in explaining himself in English. Like former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, he has just as much trouble explaining himself in either of Canada’s official languages. Or maybe he is just deaf to questions.

Tom Clark got nowhere with him on Clark’s public Affairs program The West Block on Sunday. He tried to get Blaney to explain if the RCM Police and the Security Intelligence people were going to have the funds to support their new powers under Mr. Harper’s proposed new security act. Blaney kept ignoring the question. Obviously Mr. Harper has not told him the answer to that one. That is if there is an answer.

More than anything else, the lack of an answer as to how the government intends to fund the new powers for the federal police and security agency show what a sham the act will be. Without the increased personnel and the technical resources required, little will happen in regards to stopping home grown terrorists threats.

But you can count on a great deal of government advertising over the coming year extolling the new security act. The act is probably going to be challenged in any event by civil rights activists. It will be after the fact though as and Mr. Harper only needs the impression he is doing something about the problem until the likely October federal election. If he cannot win on his handling of Canada’s severely damaged economy, he wants to look tough on terrorists and trouble makers.

In a related story out of Montreal, Mr. Harper seems to be getting some less than wise assistance from Montreal’s mayor. The mayor is trying to stop the use of a local store front in which a Muslim iman says he wishes to preach radical religious subjects. It seems it would be better to have a simple sign placed outside the madrasa advising people entering in English, French and Arabic that it is under surveillance by Canadian security services and people entering could be subjected to abuse of their civil rights, restrictions on flying and periodic arrest and imprisonment for potentially believing what they learned therein.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

To suggest that automated telephone polling is right 19 times out of 20 or subject to variables of 3 or 4 per cent is something of a joke. When you have no idea of the age of respondents, no idea of the statistical viability of your sample, then you have no idea of the reliability of the result. And then there is the problem of people who always lie to machines. When the calls get heavier towards the end of the campaign, you get loyalties bouncing all over.

One example of this, witnessed in the vast databases being assembled by the federal parties in Canada, has been this writer’s schizophrenic presence in the Liberal Party’s database. Periodically being identified as a Liberal, a Green or New Democrat supporter is upsetting the parameters of the records. It would be laughed off if it were not for the monthly donation we make to the party. We got a tax receipt for 2014 the other day for less than 15 per cent of our annual contribution.

The very fact of these databases should be a matter of some concern to human rights advocates. The entire voter database for all electoral districts is provided to the political parties by Elections Canada. The parties add further information. When you declare you will vote for this party or that party, the information is recorded. Eventually it is recorded in all party’s databases. They know who to call to encourage your vote, if that is their interest. They know who to call if they want to send you to the wrong place to vote.

And when you go to your door to talk to a political canvasser they are there to do one thing. They want to know how you are going to vote. You might tell them outright how you will vote. You might tell them indirectly by your body language and your questions. And you might just lie to them. Sure they will leave some literature, in hopes, but they can most often tell from their experience.

But good canvassers are not available everywhere and the cheapness of automated calling is a lure to campaign managers. More than half the time it seems, those automated calls, saying press 1 if you are voting Conservative, press 2 if you are voting Liberal and so on, are from the political parties seeking to update their information.

When you have voted, their database is also updated and the parties can go on to get the neighbours out to vote. With the information about your reliability in voting and how you vote, you can be targeted in the next election as the parties learn more and more about you and your voting habits. That is unless you routinely lie to canvassers and callers.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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