Category: Federal Politics

If you are assuming that sometime in the next eight to ten months, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will leave off the platitudes and say something substantive, you could be disillusioned. If you were hoping that the Liberal Party’s plan for Canada is the road to Nirvana, you are just kidding yourself. And the real problem is that to win the election, all the Liberal Party has to do is be there.

Did you think that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was finally going to let his hair down and be honest with Canadians? Did you think that New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair was going to have a personality transplant and become the darling of the social media set? Frankly, Justin Trudeau can coast to victory in October or whenever.

The question for the voters will be simple: Will no one rid us of this troublesome Conservative? Harper’s failures are there for all to see. His tar sands economy has proved its vulnerability. His late Finance Minister has damned his income splitting for the rich. He has turned foreign affairs into vote pandering back home. He has alienated many of Canada’s international friends. He has micro-managed Ottawa to the point that the civil servants hate him and his sycophants fear him. His Conservative government has run its course. The voters must make the change.

But what are we getting in return? What Canada wants, it cannot have. What Canada needs, it is unlikely to get. What Canada will get is an uncertain future.

In a world of change, Canada is stifled by how it is governed. The Senate of Canada has lost all credibility and purpose. The appointed Governor General is an outmoded sham. Only an elected constituent assembly can address how we are governed and even then we will need a referendum to approve the chosen direction.

As prime minister, Justin Trudeau is likely to vacillate on pipelines for the tar sands by hoping new and stronger environmental controls will settle the questions. And decriminalizing marijuana will not be all that urgent. He will end the F-35 travesty and seek new resources for a guardian Air Force rather than one that answers to the American call. And do not anticipate Royal visits under his leadership.

To be fair, Justin Trudeau will be a new kind of prime minister and not in his father’s mould. He will usher in a new generation, a more collegial cabinet and a more outspoken parliament. Even if not radical in direction, it will be more in tune with Canada today.

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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry

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

Watching Tom Clark’s West Block program on Global the other day sent a severe chill up the back. The show had two American guests General David Petraeous, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Robert Zoellick, former head of the World Bank. The two gentlemen were promoting their study for the United States Council on Foreign Relations entitled, North America: Time for a New Focus. It sounded very much like a blueprint for the takeover of America’s two neighbours.

The study makes the point forcefully that while a great deal of attention is paid to Europe and China, the number one and number two trading partners of America are Canada and Mexico. The report says that this relationship has to be consolidated so that North America will be the dominant trading force in the world.

The study stems from the realization that with the new oil and gas fracking capabilities and the exploitation of tar sands, North America is once again self-sufficient in energy. They see the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline by TransCanada as a no-brainer and essential to ultimate integration of the economies of the three countries.

The two chairs of the North American Task Force danced a bit when Tom Clark asked how open the borders should be between the three countries, They were okay with Canadians but pointed to the Mexican drug cartels and Central American migration as problems to be addressed before there can be greater investment in Mexico’s energy resources—and taking down America’s southern ‘wet-back walls.’

The two chairs also seemed oblivious to the many problems forced on Canada in expediting free trade as it currently exists. Has the U.S. president approved the customs plaza yet so that Canada can go ahead to build and pay for the new bridge at Detroit that is so desperately needed? And that is just one complaint to be voiced over being a junior partner in the American version of free trade.

Further integration of North America is probably going to happen. It is just cannot be all that Americans think it should be. What we have to be wary of is the carte blanche control of our country’s relationships with other parts of the world. The Americans have to realize that their democracy is measured by how it treats the democracies of others. Canada has too much to offer the world as an independent nation.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

If you thought of Thumper back in his political days, they were not always warm and fuzzy thoughts. Thumper was better known at that time as Donald S. Macdonald, M.P. for Toronto Rosedale. He always had an itch back then to be the replacement for Pierre Trudeau and those of us on the left of the Liberal Party said, “Over our dead bodies.”

Don had reached his level of incompetence back then as Prime Minister Trudeau’s Minister of Finance. He was hardly a mover and shaker in the role but was a sop to the Toronto elite who never trusted Trudeau. And here Trudeau thought Thumper would be a safe choice to chair the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. The commission report, Macdonald signed in late 1985 was a denial of everything that Mr. Trudeau stood for.

There was a definite wind shift during the commission’s study in 1984 when Mr. Trudeau announced that he was leaving office for good this time. This writer had prepared an elaborate brief to the commission but Thumper refused to even listen and it was delivered to lesser commission members. We knew he was under pressure on recommending free trade with the United States and we gave him some helpful arguments against it. He ignored them.

The evidence is there for all to see today that Canada had no way of getting a fair deal with the United States. We will always be the junior partner in American eyes. We needed to build our free trade efforts in Europe and the Orient until we had the volumes of trade to force a fair deal with the Americans. When we let the Americans set the stage, we were guaranteed to be the losers.

Academics today recognize that the Macdonald Commission was responsible in part for the neo-liberalism that replaced Keynesianism in Canada in the late 80s and 90s. In a country that had previously used government to address societal needs, the governments of Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin and Harper used the neo-liberal stance of limited concern for the individual in society, non-interference in business and smaller government.

Canadian writers rarely get into discussions of neo-liberalism because it quickly becomes an academic argument and is of little interest to the average voter. And it is confusing because it has nothing to do with liberalism. Neo-liberalism is the antithesis of how liberalism developed in Canada. It will be far more fun in 2015 discussing the ebb and flow of electoral attitudes leading up to the promised October election. We will leave the labelling of trends to the political science grumps.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

If you have ever wondered how Canada’s Tories can lie to voters as they do, just remember MP Paul Calandra and former MP Dean Del Mastro. Both these gentlemen have served as parliamentary secretaries to the Prime Minister of Canada. They have salutary stories for future aspirants to be a Conservative Member of Parliament.

Dean Del Mastro from Peterborough, Ontario is better known for his being found guilty of breaches of the Election Act and his teary resignation of his seat in parliament. Yet his answers to questions in the House on behalf of the Prime Minister were often more interesting for their level of bafflegab than anything that might enlighten the subject under discussion.

Paul Calandra from Oak Ridges-Markham, Ontario. at the moment, is still a Member of Parliament. During his tenure as Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, he is expected to be advised of notices of questions to the Prime Minister that he will be required to answer. He is also expected to be given advice by the Prime Minister’s staff on how he might answer the question.

In his tearful apology to the House of Commons for his deliberate obfuscation of answers to straight-forward questions from the Leader of the Opposition, Calandra let the kids in short pants from the Prime Minister’s Office off the hook. He took all the blame.

While Calandra might write the truth in his memoirs, the best guess is that it was fellow MPs from his own party who demanded his retraction of his answers and his apology to the House of Commons. It might have been the same group who convinced Del Mastro to resign after being convicted of breaching the Elections Act.

For the truth of the matter is that not all Conservative MPs are sleazebags. We are unable to name these few members at this time because of the danger of having our comments used as an endorsement in the 2015 federal election.

But it is the lack of truth, sincerity, caring and concern from the top down in the Conservative Party that leaves us appalled. There are just too many of the elected MPs who are making no contribution to the betterment of this country that we love. We simply cannot allow them to continue in office.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

We knew it wasn’t the Hair raising the clatter,

He brought us nothing today that could matter.

His oil economy is destined for intensive care,

He’ll go down to defeat in October, we swear.

 

It is what he has done to Canada’s reputation,

We used to have so much pride in our nation.

We were peacekeepers an’ honest interveners,

An’ we’ve always been the best of neighbours.

 

The Hair has proved he knows little about sex,

With his new law on johns, the court he’ll vex.

The Hair’s never been friendly with the Court,

He’s found he cannot intimidate the legal sort.

 

He gags some federal scientists, fires the rest,

Ones who do as they’re told are never the best.

His spending is not always what we’d expect,

Spent more on advertising than you’d suspect.

 

Our Hair did a year-end interview on CBC TV

It was a very bad hair day for our voters to see.

He tried to explain an Alberta type carbon tax,

It sure would have helped if he had some facts.

 

But we got sidetracked in doing a blog today,

We sat down, with something special to say.

It is Christmas Day, a time of goodwill to all,

We’ll be polite to the Hair, if he makes a call.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

The good news in Quebec this year was that Philippe Couillard’s Quebec Liberals defeated the Parti Québécois. The bad news for federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is that Philippe Couillard’s Liberals defeated the Parti Québécois. Couillard’s Liberals are a noose around Justin’s neck. It is one reason that younger Quebeckers are wary of supporting the federal Liberals in the coming election.

Without a platform to judge him by, Quebec voters are assuming that Justin is just as right wing as Couillard. And it is difficult to be more right wing than the Quebec provincial Liberals. They are definitely more Bleu than Rouge. They are the natural successors to the old paternalistic Union Nationale but without the cynical slurs against the government in Ottawa.

And as things stand at the moment, Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats are the barrier to the Liberals defeating the Conservatives next October. Quebec has too many votes parked with the NDP for Trudeau’s Liberals to win a majority. It is not that Quebec voters are buying into what Mulcair is offering but at least he is starting to offer something.

There are two political corpses in Quebec. One is the federal Conservative Party. The hatred of Prime Minister Harper is visceral and open and the current five seats in Quebec could be reduced to three. The other moribund party is the Bloc Québécois. The two federal seats currently held by the Bloc will be history by this time next year.

What Trudeau and the Liberals have to do in Quebec is to reach over the New Democrats. They have to be more to the left, be much more conscious of the environment and make their pitch to younger Quebecers. And if they are really smart, they are going to make it clear to the younger people in Quebec that their future is within Canada. The separatists are aging. Quebec is not in itself the be-all for the province’s youth. They seek a broader future with greater opportunity.

Where Quebec youth used to look to the United States, they now see more potential for themselves across Canada. The accommodation that Pierre Trudeau offered Quebeckers 40 years ago is now in vogue. Where others in those days offered parochialism, Trudeau offered opportunity. Today, his son can offer the opportunity and win.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Please Justin, just shut up and listen. The other day, you told Campion-Smith of the Toronto Star’s Ottawa Bureau that the economy will decide the next election. You had better hope not. You have absolutely no credibility in that subject and the majority of the voters could care less. Stephen Harper even studied economics and look at the trouble it has got him into.

Your strength buddy is empathy. You obviously care. Stick to what you are good at.

You need to take a page from Jean Chrétien’s approach to the job of Prime Minister. In ten years as Prime Minister, Mr. Chrétien knew to let Paul Martin take the blame for the hard economic decisions. Of course it helped destroy Paul when he finally got to sit in the Prime Minister’s Office. Paul chose to ignore us left wing Liberals who told him he was a heartless bastard. Guess who ignored Paul when the voters ignored him.

As a politician Justin, you do not work for the banks, for business or for any one province. Nor is it your responsibility to proselytize for any particular religion, economic policy or dress code. Your job is to care. And there is much to care about.

Things have slipped badly in the past ten years in our country. Canada’s international reputation is in the crapper. It has to be repaired. We have to work hard with our friends and even harder with our enemies. We also have to find better ways to encourage our businesses to show better citizenship in all the countries where they do business. If they wear the Canadian flag, we want them to wear it proudly.

As a country, we have to do better by our first nations, our veterans, our seniors, our sex workers, our sick, our students, our medical workers, our researchers and the list goes on. And do not dare to forget affordable daycare!

And please stop saying you are not going to raise taxes. As long as there is a single child in Canada going to bed without a proper supper, we have to be open to fixing the problem. If it means we are all going to pay a bit more in taxes, so be it. Just make sure it is fair.

What this election desperately needs is a new vision of our country. Not the mean, selfish, narrow vision of the conservative right but the caring, promise of a strong future with a liberal interpretation of freedom, life and reform in an open society.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It is only fair after introducing the local Conservative candidate, we mention that there is also going to be a Liberal candidate. We actually have a contest to determine the Liberal candidate. Somehow the Liberal party made a slip and approved two candidates in Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte. (That riding name has something of a country music connotation.) And it might be an interesting contest. Both candidates approved to-date have some good credentials.

The first to announce was Brian Tamblyn, a well-known educator and community leader. While still in his 50s, Brian has had a 30-year career with Georgian College and the last 13 years he has been President and CEO. It was a time of unprecedented growth for Georgian and he has solid credentials throughout our community. He has shown himself to be very adept at dealing with politicians and functionaries at the federal, provincial and municipal levels.

But one good candidate must deserve another. Also approved by the Liberal Party is lawyer Trevor Owen. Trevor has been a litigation lawyer for the past 24 years and goes even further back as a Liberal since his father Bruce Owen was a Liberal Member of the Ontario Legislature in the Peterson government. Trevor is also a hard worker for groups such as Habitat for Humanity and in working with physically and mentally disabled children as well as his father’s cultural and musical productions.

The only thing that we do not know is when the heck the party is going to get around to letting the riding hold its nominating meeting. To prevent any hanky-panky, the party makes a practice of announcing the nominating meeting to all members of the riding association from the party’s membership database. If you have not paid your membership before then, you do not get a vote.

As a writer we try to be forgiving of the candidates for their desperate efforts to cram all the reasons someone might vote for them into their first letter. As a lawyer, our friend Trevor should know that the only time someone wants a lawyer to write a letter is to go to someone they are mad at. And as an academic, Brian should understand that only academics weigh curriculum vitae rather than read them.

While both candidates might be somewhat more right wing than we normally would want, they both seem attuned to people and that is always a good start. And, after all, the first job is to get rid of Stephen Harper. Anyone is to the left of that guy.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

To be interviewed by his nemesises at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on a bad hair day was really more than the Hair should suffer. And what has befallen Michelle Muntean, the hairdresser the Prime Minister lured away from CTV three elections ago? There are more questions than answers at this time. All we know is that you can see for yourself on the CBC News Network show One on One on Saturday, Dec. 20 at 6:30 pm EST or on both the CBC and its News Network on Sunday, Dec. 21 at 12:30 pm EST.

Just look at the Hair’s hair. It lacks any of the helmet-head security that Muntean brought to the job. There are only two shots in the show: the left profile of the Hair and the over-the-shoulder shot of Peter Mansbridge. The managers from the Prime Minister’s Office must have been locked in a room somewhere without a working television. The left profile was actually shot from slightly above which is the fixed camera shot we usually see of him in the House of Commons. The only difference is that this is not a long shot and we have better definition and depth. We can see where the hairpiece had been held in place as the glue dried. We can see where it is pushed over hiding the part.

And we knew for sure it was not Muntean’s makeup work when we checked the Hair’s eyes. Instead of the clear definition with mascara, the Hair’s eyelids look brown and the eyes sunken. On top of everything else being wrong, the Hair’s colour was terrible. He was pale and showed more years than he admits to. And here was Mansbridge with his shiny dome properly muted and the Hair looking like hell.

But on top of that, he showed how nervous he was. When the Hair is not sure of himself he uses the word “look” as his pause word. Unless you use a pen and paper, you will quickly lose track of how often the Hair says “look.” A few times, he almost said “Look, look, look” to cover his struggle for control.

And you can be sure that there was no agreement ahead to bring up the Hair telling the House of Commons that it would be “crazy to put in pollutions controls when the price of oil is so low.” He actually told Peter Mansbridge that we misunderstood him.

The worst part of the show is when the Hair tries to explain the Alberta version of a carbon tax. If that item was supposed to be news, the Hair needed better briefing notes.

The most telling little secret in the dialogue is when Mansbridge asks who he called after hiding in a closet during the recent shooting on the Hill. The Hair called his mother. He must have forgotten the name of his wife who he sometimes takes on his world travels. He always used to take his hairdresser.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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