Category: Federal Politics

This is like a plaintive cry in the night across the prairie. A fellow blogger who goes under the pen name The Curmudgeon, a.k.a. The Mound of Sound, says he has had too much and he is giving up on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

But the problem is that the Curmudgeon is one of the brighter Liberal bloggers in Canada. He is among those who write about liberalism and its future. He is a thinker and we need him. It is far too big a job to do alone. Given a free hand, Justin Trudeau and his dubious brain trust could reduce the Liberal Party to fewer seats in the House of Commons than poor Michael Ignatieff.

At least the Curmudgeon does not spend all his time polishing his ego as most bloggers do. He can even use big words and spell them properly. And he says what he thinks.

The final straw for the Curmudgeon was the flip-flops of gymnastic hypocrisy by Trudeau the Lesser (the Curmudgeon’s term for our Dauphin) over Israeli discrimination. And if people do not recognize the blind, stupid discrimination in some of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions, they are just not paying attention. Getting even with Hamas by killing Palestinian civilians might feel good at the time but it is very bad for long-term relations.

You are a wise person Curmudgeon and you know that you just get people mad if you call the Israeli Prime Minister a fascist. That does not win friends and influence people. It is neither diplomatic nor productive.

At the same time, it is incorrect to suggest that the Israelis are racist. There might be some understandable but unwarranted tribalism but geneticists have concluded that the intermarriage of the Diaspora has eliminated most uniquely racial characteristics of the world population defined as Jewish. It is just that the various tribes wishing to live in the Levant need to learn to live together in peace.

You are of course forgiven for referring to your Liberal friends as “you Liberal bastards.” As Pierre Trudeau noted in reference to a scatological comment by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. “I have been called worse things by better people.”

Half of the Liberals in Babel already hate this writer but the sage among us must speak out for reason. At least we care about liberalism and where the Liberal Party is headed. And somebody has to tell Justin when he is screwing up.

And to be totally honest: is there anyone else you could vote for?

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

How often have we seen a single issue become the real turning point in an election? It hardly matters how tired and out-of-touch the party in power might be, you still need that one idea that makes the turn-over happen. Nobody wins if all you say is that it is time for change. The change must be evident. It must be real. It must have relevance.

You can imagine how at this time Justin Trudeau and his brain trust are examining the potential obstacles and opportunities in the coming election. He has to define where he and the Liberal Party stand. And one of the potential hot buttons is the EnergyEast pipeline of TransCanada Pipelines. This one issue could be as key to winning in Quebec as the blocking of the Northern Gateway and the expanded Kinder Morgan pipelines is to winning in British Columbia.

But it could also be Justin Trudeau’s Waterloo. He cannot vacillate on issues related to the tar sands. As a party the Liberal Party has to say “No” to the large scale exploitation of the Athabasca and Cold Lake tar sands. The public has to be told of the threat that tar sands oil is to our planet. They have to learn that converting tar sands bitumen to refined oil products creates three times the pollution of regular crude oil. This goes far beyond the destruction of the environment in Northern Alberta. Canadians cannot allow that pipeline to pump the poison that will destroy our planet across the country for foreign markets just for paycheques in Alberta.

EnergyEast pipeline through Quebec is not only being pushed by the Conservatives and encouraged by the New Democrats but it is supported by one of the most desperate and expensive public relations programs ever undertaken in Canada. And if Justin Trudeau buys into it, he will lose the election. Because of the routing of EnergyEast in Ontario, it lacks the weight of exposure and concern it is generating in Quebec. Quebec will vote for the party that exposes the sham of EnergyEast and says “No.”

At this point many Quebecers are telling the pollsters that they are parking their votes with the New Democrats. They will not stay there. The pro-pipeline stance of the New Democrats is the Trojan horse that will spell destruction of the party. That leaves a policy path for the Liberal Party as wide as the St. Lawrence River.

If the Liberal Party does not come out against EnergyEast, Quebec voters will have no choice but to resurrect the Bloc Québécois. There is only one refinery in Quebec that is willing to spread the pollution of refining Alberta tar sands bitumen. The owners of that refinery operate out of Calgary.

But it is no secret that the ultimate destination of EnergyEast will be the new loading docks for ocean-going tankers in Saint John, New Brunswick. All Quebec will ever get out of that pipeline is the very real risk of serious pollution from pipeline spills.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

A casual observation made in a commentary the other day about the difficulties of having Americans as neighbours and friends evoked some questions. It comes down to the fact that Canadians have little choice. You might think we Canadians get kicked around now but just think of what it would be like if Americans actively disliked us?

You could never drive to Florida in the winter again. Imagine every state along the way getting a piece of you. From new state taxes just for us to special speed traps, you would be too poor to stay long in Florida if you even got there. You would yearn for those good old days when the Americans only patronized you. Even your American relatives would not let you visit them unless you flew—God forbid you should park a car with Canadian plates in their driveway.

What you have to remember is that almost half of the population in that country are born-again, gun-loving, Tea Party Republicans who despise any foreign, colored, impoverished or possibly sexual deviant person who does not look or talk like them.

There are also Democrats in the U.S.A. who look and talk like Republicans just to confuse matters. There are also quite a few Latinos and blacks whose ancestors came to America long before many of the red-neck Republicans’ ancestors. There are also some native American Indian survivors. Which makes the point that in a land of more than 300 motley millions, they probably would not all dislike Canadians at the same time.

In fact, the principal American, President Obama is not as annoyed with Canadians as he is tired of the constant pressure from Prime Minister Harper and his friends to put through the Keystone XL pipeline. He knows that there are lots of us Canadians who are saying, “Good on you Mr. Obama, screw TransCanada Pipelines.”

Maybe one of these days Prime Minister Harper is going to realize that he cannot have both a customs plaza at Canada’s new bridge to Detroit and Keystone XL too. It is a safe bet that Mr. Obama would go along with the bridge plaza for $250 million if Mr. Harper would just shut up about Keystone. He has enough right-wing conservatives nagging at him in Congress.

But Obama has that warm feeling that comes from knowing that he will probably outlast that hard-ass Harper. His term of office is not up until 2016. Mr. Harper’s term of office is likely to end next year. And Canadians will be their old lovable selves again.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Was there a sign at the Brisbane Airport last week barring diplomacy or diplomats entry to Australia? The way Vladimir Putin was treated at the G20 conference there was a disgrace. He is the leader of the Russian people and as their representative he deserves to be treated with courtesy. How would Canadians feel if the world leaders treated the Canadian Prime Minister so discourteously? And where does the Hair get off, thinking he can kick the school yard bully when he is down?

The world has over many centuries developed a code of diplomacy. It is designed to help prevent your emissaries being needlessly butchered before they have delivered their message of peace and friendship. And there are even diplomatic ways of informing the overly aggressive leader that his intentions in a neighbouring state are not reciprocated. Sure diplomatic sanctions might seem slow and less effective than a well-aimed kick but that kick can earn its own consequences.

The Hair needs to learn diplomacy. And he has to stop playing to numbskulls back in Canada who think Canadians can make enemies of the Russians. Sure the Americans will protect us from the wrath of the Russian bear but what price will the Americans exact for the aid? Being friends with the Americans is hard enough already.

The Hair has to stop making enemies for Canada. He is busy alienating much of the Muslim world. He has annoyed many at the United Nations. His government’s mistreatment of refugees is spreading alarm. The Americans are tired of him pandering to them while pushing pipelines for his highly polluting tar sands bitumen. And they hardly want his bitumen polluting south of the border.

It is not as though the Hair does not have a Minister of Foreign Affairs—such as he is. John Baird might be something other than competent but the Hair picked him and he might as well use him.

And there would be something poetic about John Baird getting in Mr. Putin’s face. This would be particularly if Mr. Baird explained to Mr. Putin that we are less discriminatory. Canadians are more tolerant of gentlemen who prefer other gentlemen for company.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It is a tough job. When you have to have two speeches ready, you are likely to have to use the losing one. Writers hate them and politicians hate them. Your first one tells all about how you knew you were going to win. Your second one admits the loss but finds good signs in what happened. And if you cannot find something to crow about in the outcome, you are not much of a politician.

The Whitby-Oshawa by-election yesterday was one of those times. We knew that the Liberal’s biggest problem in winning was getting out the troops to in turn get out the vote. The result was better than we thought it would be. That speaks volumes.

It says that Liberal candidate Celina Caesar-Chavannes can win the riding next year—the ghost of Jim Flaherty was entitled to one more kick at the cat.

It spells serious trouble for Prime Minister Harper’s Conservatives next year. It confirms the probability of the federal Liberals taking more than 70 ridings in Ontario.

It tells us that New Democratic Leader Thomas Mulcair is in more trouble than we expected. Whitby-Oshawa used to be an area of strong union strength. New Democrat Trish McAuliffe, who came second in 2011, could not even garner 10 per cent of the vote this time. This is trouble with a capitol “T” for Mulcair.

But we best not lose sight of the messages it sends to the Liberals. It shows us that Justin Trudeau is not invincible. He is not “le Dauphin” who can just wave some magic wand and produce victories. He has to prove that he can be democratic. He has to prove that he will listen to the Liberal grass roots. He and his tight little team need to smarten up.

Canadians do not need to hear that the future is Liberal. They need to hear what that Liberal future holds. We need to start talking clearly about policies and plans. We have much to rebuild in Canada. People need to hear the Liberal priorities.

In both speeches prepared for last night, we would be seriously remiss not to recognize the great work of the Whitby-Oshawa Liberals and their superb candidate. They all worked hard. They knew how tough it would be from the beginning and they all did their part and they did it well. Congratulations.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Canadians now have an “Open Portal” to an “Open Government’ according to the “doublethink” of Treasury Board President Tony Clement. You get the impression that the Parry Sound-Muskoka Conservative Member of Parliament took his script directly from George Orwell’s 1949 book Nineteen eighty-four. Even a Toronto Star editorial writer referred to the proposal as Orwellian.

It is only when you try the Open Portal site on the Internet that you realize how far from the truth that Mr. Clement has wandered. For anyone experienced in working with computer databases, this site is archaic, out of touch with reality and will satisfy nobodies’ queries. And being directed to download pdf documents related to test queries without knowing their size or content structure can be a terrible waste of time. This portal ignores the present and is confused by the past.

But if you think the “Open Portal” is a joke, Tony Clement’s “Open Government” promises are just plain silly. There would have to be tens of thousands of person years spent on programmers and system designers to start to address what he is proposing. As most of the better systems people have learned: Treasury Board hates fulltime staff but encourages contract employees. The good ones are moving to the contract side these days as the benefits might stink but you can triple your income.

But that is nothing new for our Tony. For the past three years, Clement has been a man on a mission. He was tasked by Stephen Harper to gut the federal government, clean out its brain pan, pull its teeth and make lamb fries of its gonads. In the process during that period, he has reduced the full-time public service by some 25,000 personnel.

It is almost pathetic that Clement would promise easier access on the internet to Canada’s scientific information after his wholesale removal of many government scientists and the effective gagging of the remainder.

It was about 30 years ago that the federal government first set up computerized access to government requests for proposal. That was pre-Internet and it worked. It should work as well today!

And if anyone can decipher what is really happening in government spending, many Members of Parliament and people at the Parliamentary Budget Office would more than appreciate your help.

If you have read Nineteen eighty-four, you know that the only objective of Big Brother and his party was to seek power for its own sake.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It was obvious that nothing good would come of the Hair rushing back to Ottawa from Beijing to be at the National War Memorial Ceremony last Tuesday. Hobnobbing with a princess was hardly worth the trip. And it was not as though he said or did anything more than lay a wreath. It was what American President Obama was doing after the Hair left Beijing that made the difference.

And it certainly speaks badly of the Canadian intelligence gathering capabilities. Why did the Hair not know that President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China were going to sign an historic carbon emission agreement after the Hair left early from the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference?

It certainly looks as though Alberta’s Keystone XL pipeline will be an early casualty in saving the planet. With the pipeline cancellation, President Obama could save the world from the equivalent of 27,500,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. It might seem like a small step forward but as they say, every journey starts with a single step.

But far more seriously, this agreement could spell the end of Chinese interest in Canada’s highly polluting tar sands bitumen. While the Chinese are taking longer to achieve their emission goals than the Americans, they need to address their serious air pollution problems in their cities as fast as possible. It means ending dependence on coal and oil-fired electrical generation and switching to natural gas and nuclear energy. It might provide Canada with a larger market for our liquefied natural gas but we would be competing with Russian gas pipelines directly into the industrial heart of China.

What is particularly interesting in this situation is that the Hair is now faced with living up to his promise to follow the American lead in controlling carbon emissions. How he is going to curtail the carbon emissions of Canada’s largest pollution problem—the oil and gas sector—remains to be seen? There is no other sector that can possibly contribute as much in emission savings.

And if the Hair keeps waiting for that sector to come up with its own suggestions on how it can curtail its pollution problems, he will hardly be prime minister that long.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

While a mortally wounded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation defiantly fights back against the Harper government, the last of the supposedly independent news shows seems to have sold out. That last news show to capitulate was Tom Clark’s West Block Sunday morning show on Global Television. It looks as though Tom has lost his independence.

Since Ivan Fecan put CTV firmly in the hands of Bell Canada in 2011, CTV news has been a lapdog for the Harper Conservatives. If you have ever wondered why the kids in the Prime Minister’s Office can be so arrogant, it is because they have a lot to be arrogant about. Having the dominant Canadian television networks in both official languages at your beck and call is no small accomplishment.

But we had hopes for Shaw. Even though Global’s Toronto’ evening news was too long, too repetitious, too self-serving, it was still not as bad as the CTV sham. It was actually appreciated for its attempts to maintain balance in its politics. CTV in English and TVA in French on the other side of the coin appear to buy into the Conservative government’s propaganda—which is hardly subtle.

While many considered Tom Clark’s precipitous leaving of CTV over Lisa LaFlamme being chosen late news host replacing Lloyd Robertson as something of a prima-donna act, we were pleased when he joined Global. Nobody ever expected Tom to show his true political colours but we always believed he was fair.

A good example of this fairness was when he used to have Assistant Professor Ian Lee of Carleton University and Senator George Baker on his West Block show. Those two had some excellent discussions. There was never any question where each stood. Ian Lee gave the Conservative view and George Baker spoke for the Liberals. Two weeks ago Ian Lee was back on the show alone telling us how wonderful it was to have income sharing for wealthy parents. There was nobody there to point out the foolishness of Lee’s argument.

What really told us that Tom’s show was a sell out was when he had Alberta Premier Jim Prentice last Sunday to explain what a great job Alberta was doing in slowing global warming. That was not the Tom Clark we used to respect hosting that farce.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

This is inhuman. The Hair has rushed the hairdresser to Beijing and back so that he can be at the Cenotaph in Ottawa today. Is the hairdresser getting hardship pay for this? She also needs to do an extra special job on the Hair’s make-up to hide his age lines and the bags under his eyes.

But, we have to face facts. It is getting harder and harder to make the Hair look good. He is packing on quite a gut with all the state dinners he attends. He has been developing serious worry lines about next year’s election.

The Hair is back in Ottawa briefly because the television networks are promising him millions of Canadian viewers for the National War Memorial program today. He wants to look his best. There is even a Royal in attendance to add something. The size of the audience is because of the killing of Corporal Nathan Cirillo at the Confederation Square cenotaph less than two weeks ago. Canadians are understandably upset about this event and the previous killing of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. Does anyone understand how much the Hair shares the blame?

It does not even seem proper that the Hair should be at the memorial service in Ottawa. He could have stayed in Beijing for the beginning of the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference. Monuments such as the National War Memorial are to honour our dead in war not the people who sent them in harms’ way. This event is not about the Hair.

The Hair seems more interested in making war. The war memorial is about those people who make peace.

The Hair could have stayed in Beijing and done some serious talking about the Canadian missionaries who have been arrested and held in prison without any charges other than for serving coffee with cream, sugar and Christ. He said he brought it up with the Chinese officials but he does not let it interfere with the trade deals and new financial arrangements he brags about. The Chinese leaders must marvel at the Hair’s hypocrisy.

And you really have to wonder at this whirlwind flying to and from Beijing so that he can get back to look important at the APEC meeting that is going on in Beijing without him. He will then be going on to the G-20 meeting that will follow in Australia.

But who among us thinks of the poor hairdresser? She is becoming a million-mile flier. If she was also a pilot, she could really earn her keep.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

The word out of the Pentagon is that the stupid Canadians actually want to buy four Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning fighters. And when the Americans stop laughing, they will probably be happy to fill the order. While our new government next year would certainly want to cancel such a silly order, the cancellation charges would provide serious help to the Americans with their national debt.

But what the hell would we do with four aircraft? And remember these are stealth attack fighters. We could not find a country small enough to attack that all we needed was four fighters to control the skies. And only Stephen Harper is of the opinion that we would only go to war along with our friends the Americans. What is our percentage in that?

What a four-aircraft order really means is that we are committing to another 60 or so if and when they are ever really stealthy or live up to their other promised performance capabilities. It is the Harper government’s way of suckering the voters before next year’s elections. Every Conservative candidate in next year’s election is going to need a very thick book of how to present all the lies this government is creating for itself.

Do the politicians realize that training, maintenance and ground support equipment for just four aircraft could more than double the cost of the aircraft?

But the first question when it comes to the Lockheed Martin fighter is why does Canada need stealth aircraft to patrol its own borders? And then, we might ask, why does Canada need a single-engine plane that cannot traverse our northern coastline without in-flight refuelling? And why would we endanger our pilots in a single engine plane that has so far to go between our military airports?

The fact is the American fighter is being promoted by the Americans so that America’s allies will have fewer problems going to war as just additional squadrons of American attack aircraft. They want us to join their American Flying Club. It has nothing to do with their allies’ aircraft requirements.

And here we foolishly thought the deal was dead. After months free of sales pitches and BS for the purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning (II), we thought the Harper government had finally read the writing in our snows.

But now we need to find a use for these four orphan aircraft. We can hardly bronze them. They can be used to scare hell out of the cows grazing around our military air fields. They might be a big hit at air shows.

Or maybe, we can bring back the Avro CF-105 Arrow. Now that was an aircraft Canadians cared about!

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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