Category: Federal Politics

Canada’s prime minister a.k.a. the Hair does not have a large number of friends. And that short list obviously does not include Canadian author and journalist Michael Harris. We hear that Harris’ newly published list of the Hair’s shortcomings is a rather lengthy book. Called Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada’s Radical Makeover, Harris seems to have done the political job for the Hair’s political detractors. After all, we bloggers were never going to get the job done without some expert help.

The Hair’s attempts at controlling and demeaning parliament are said to be well documented and his smearing of Canada’s international reputation covered in some detail. Released at the same time as Justin Trudeau’s book, Harris’ book might help to relegate Trudeau’s book to the puff piece that it is.

The advantage that Harris had in his endeavour was the ability to spend the time needed to interview those whose lives have been directly affected by the Hair and those who knew him on his way to creating his imperial style of the role of prime minister. People such as mentor former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning and one-time sycophant former Conservative MP Helena Guergis are just side-swipes in the Hair’s blind drive to absolute power.

While it is reported that much of what Harris has to say about the Hair is anecdotal, it might be presumptuous to compare it to Peter Newman’s 1963 Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years wherein Newman assessed the weaknesses of then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. As the Hair would tell you, John Diefenbaker had human failings. The Hair does not believe he does.

Since there is a great deal more reading still to do before analysing Harris’ entire book, we can only suggest that it is good that it is now available to us. It could be as simple as picking a page at random as food for thought in the current day’s commentary on the Hair. Thank you, Michael Harris.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Nobody expects that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s puff piece that has just been published is actually written by him. It comes as a shock though when he describes the process as more like a choral arrangement. It sounds like a process that takes out any spontaneity, edge or passion from what is being published. It sounds like a waste of time. We should not be too eager to read the literary reviews. Forget the Geller Prize.

What Trudeau believes is that the book is an opportunity for Canadians to see the differences between his Liberal approach and the present Conservative government’s plans. The only problem with that is that we have little to go on today to really understand where Trudeau and his choir want to take us. Liberal platitudes are readily available but a concrete Liberal future has yet to be articulated.

And we have every reason to be concerned about the Liberal vision of this country. Trudeau cannot continue to curry favour in Alberta by supporting pipelines unless there is clear understanding that there has to be limits to tar sands pollution. Canadians have every right to expect the Liberals to have a plan ready to provide such things as a national drug program and better coordination of Medicare delivery. No doubt we will be trapped into some of the Conservative tax cuts but reality is that Canadians have the right to expect a strong and effective national government and that costs money. That means some truths must be told.

The family tidbits have to be there to promote the book as a biography but that is necessarily thin. Pierre Trudeau was an austere and distant person but at the same time a loving father. Nor are his mother’s issues hidden and Justin deals with them. If you are looking for intimacy though, you best look elsewhere.

The story this writer would like to read is the first campaign for Justin’s riding of Papineau in 2008. That was his real baptism into politics and we wonder about the influences and experiences that took him to Ottawa and eventually to the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. We expect that period is glossed over.

But there will be a market for the book. It will be required reading for the minions in the Prime Minister’s Office. Know your enemy will be their excuse. They are already convinced they know everything else.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Canada’s prime minister must be quite happy these days. There is actually a world-wide glut of oil driving down the price of crude oil. The Hair has taken us to the promised land of the oil economy and Canadians are reaping the rewards. They are also watching stock markets plummet and their eyes are rising skyward and they are saying, ‘Please, this is just a market correction, we hope.’

Who knew—other than the Hair—that fracking and tar sands would save the day for Canada’s economy? It was a brave move to dismiss the manufacturing sector in Ontario and Quebec as inconsequential. At a time when the Canadian dollar is in free fall, we have little left in the way of manufactured goods to offer our American friends. Despite the Hair’s efforts, little has come of the free trade agreements he keeps ballyhooing. Not that we have much other than bitumen and pork to offer.

Just consider the prescience of the Hair. How could he have been more helpful to the tar sands economy? He has allowed the industry years of dithering over what if any environmental standards they would consider. Despite the promises, we have watched for those years as the Alberta landscape vanishes under the black cloud of carbon emissions from the heating and polluting of fresh water to drive the bitumen out of the pristine wilderness. We have watched open pit mining devastate the landscape.

We are also seeing old pipelines rededicated to the push to take bitumen to the seaports to share its pollution with the world. And when a tar sands booster talks about our going from sea to sea to sea, that third sea is the Texas Gulf ports where the Keystone XL pipeline is headed—if President Obama agrees.

We have watched as the Hair has gutted the federal government of scientists who would dare question his direction. His minions have stripped statistics Canada of the ability to analyse the Hair’s influence on the economy. In all, his government has dumped some 20,000 civil servants who might have made a difference. The Hair has stripped the federal government down to the lean and mean with the emphasis on mean. What successor, if any, would dare to take back his tax-cut incentives to vote Conservative?

What we are dealing with here is the legacy of the Hair. He might be proud of that legacy. We have all paid for it.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Step right up folks. The Conservative Party is ready to buy your vote. If you do not worm your way to the head of the line, you might miss out. After all a lot of Canadians have suffered so that the greedy can get their snout in the trough. It is time for the payoff.

There is no pretence here. Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it very clear the other day that there will be a stream of goodies available for Conservative Party supporters over the next year. He will be announcing many of them at carefully staged and managed events across Canada. (God forbid that budget items become lost in the shuffle of a busy budget day in Ottawa.)

But even if you miss the first big announcement of your payoff, never fear, there will be lots more occasions to hear how beneficial it can be to be Tory.

There are some lesser luminaries in the cabinet than the Prime Minister who also get to announce these bribes. Maybe the Prime Minister was a bit leery of the Employment Insurance cuts for small business. Most experts have already written that idea off as a straight payment into the business owners’ pockets. It certainly did next to nothing for job creation. It made Finance Minister Joe Oliver look silly but that seems to be his permanent expression.

It will be interesting to see who does the big announcement for income sharing. The efficacy of this idea was even denied by the late Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. After leaving office, he made it very clear that he thought income sharing for friends of the Conservative Party was a really stupid idea. He said the money was going to all the wrong people—particularly those who did not need the money.

Another expected and most unnecessary move will be the doubling of the annual contribution to tax free savings accounts. That will be most appreciated by people who need more places to put money that they do not need. It needed about 10,000 federal civil servants to lose their jobs to pay for that goodie!

But get in line folks. You will get your turn. And if you have some really good idea that will help you, be sure to mention it to your favourite Tory bagman when you make your next donation. You have to be realistic you know. The real benefits to the rich will only kick in when and if you can get those Conservatives re-elected.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Here we are losing one of the few intelligent and thinking parliamentarians left in Ottawa and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau wants nebbishes to replace him. Trudeau is too wet behind the ears to understand that we have to have mavericks in caucus to keep Liberals honest with themselves and their constituents. Irwin Cotler helped keep Liberals honest.

And the Liberal caucus will miss Irwin Cotler after he steps down as a Member of Parliament for Mount Royal next year.

What Justin Trudeau knows is that he cannot tell Irwin Cotler what to think. He has his own ideas. He has principles. And he stands on his principles.

And we need more of that type of candidate next year. As it stands, Trudeau is telling candidates what to think and weeding out the thinkers through the party’s candidate selection process. And he insists on keeping the right to not allow a candidate by not signing the official nomination.

It might seem like a novel idea to Mr. Trudeau but Members of Parliament are supposed to represent their constituents first and their party second. We already know that Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks that is the wrong approach but look at the quality of what is behind him in Ottawa. And then you might check out some of the accidental MPs appointed by the New Democrats who are backing Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair.

The Liberal Party’s Green Light selection process is still the major barrier to allowing party members in the riding the right to select their candidate without interference. The process takes too long, is too onerous and is too invasive. It fails to serve the ridings.

As the song says, ‘Please come back Mr. Cotler.’

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It takes a while to get your mind around it. It seems the government party can use copyright material as they wish but the news media are not allowed to censor. That seems to be the gist of what federal Heritage Minister Shelly Glover said the other day. Since the Conservatives routinely steal from the media and the media are always censoring material, people want to know what the argument is really about.

The sticking point seems to be that the news media are in high dudgeon over the Conservative attack ads using news clips from the television networks. For example, last week Justin Trudeau ended a serious discussion on a television interview with a weak and slightly off-colour jest about the size of Canada’s F-18s. By itself, it was a silly comment; in context it was quite understandable. Trudeau was simply making fun of Mr. Harper’s sabre rattling. And if Harper wants to use that in an attack ad, he does so at his own risk.

What has been obvious for some time is that the Conservatives have been shooting blanks at Justin Trudeau. He is certainly not Teflon but the Tory attack ads are too much, too soon and too unbelievable. When the Tories learn something about subtlety and how certain voters react to different stimuli, they might be able to get back to attack ads. Until then, they should concentrate on fixing what they are doing wrong. There is lots of that.

And besides, political parties are not defeated by attack ads. They never have been. While some attack ads inadvertently pick up the reason a party will lose in the long run, it is usually after the fact and the public are already moving in that direction anyway. At best, attack ads are supportive.

But the current confrontation between the media and the Tories is a specious argument. It comes as just another shovel full of dirt for the Conservative grave. It makes the point once again about the arrogance of this government. Even if the argument is taken to the Supreme Court, the Tories will have lost the election long before the Court can rule.

And as for the news media, their argument is just as confused as the government’s. How can you complain about something you have already aired being aired again? What they really want is credit for the original clip. That we can all agree on. Henceforth, stupid politician, if it is copyrighted material, you will give proper credit to the cameraman who recorded the clip, the crew and the media enterprise they work for. If you do not, it is known as plagiarism and more simply: stealing.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

The European Union has changed its mind and is allowing bitumen to be imported to European Union countries. Canada’s Suncor has recently announced that it has sent its first every tanker load of what it calls ‘heavy crude oil’ from Alberta by rail and then by tanker from Sorel-Tracy in Quebec. The shipment is going to an unnamed European country on the Mediterranean Sea.

They are not talking about crude oil. When these oil people talk about ‘heavy’ crude, they are really talking about bitumen from the tar sands. This can come from the Orinoco region of Venezuela or from the Athabasca region of Canada. The European Union used to call it ‘dirty’ oil.

The EU called it dirty because the extraction of bitumen from tar sands requires large quantities of water and energy. To then convert bitumen to synthetic crude oil requires even more quantities of energy and causes considerable greenhouse gas emissions. To add further insult to the environment, the refining process creates large quantities of slag called petroleum coke that is mainly carbon with high levels of sulphur and heavy metals. The reputation for being dirty is not a casual description.

But the situation in Ukraine has changed the EU thinking on bitumen. Where previously Russia supplied energy to Europe, the conflict in Ukraine sits across the pipelines. Some of the tit-for-tat retaliations in this situation have left Europe concerned about energy needs. The most obvious source is the West. North and South America have a cheap and dirty substitute to sell. And bitumen is cheap—if you do not care about the pollution.

In the meantime, Russia is making friends with neighbours such as China and India. They are very large and ready markets for Russian energy products and the pipelines are already in the works.

An open EU market for bitumen will use all the capacity of the reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 through Toronto and TransCanada’s Energy East proposal. The expansion and higher capacity of these lines never were for Canadian refineries, they were needed to ship bitumen to world markets. If the Keystone XL pipeline south to the Texas ports is rejected by the Obama administration, you can expect more pipelines to be required to Canada’s East coast.

The Harper Conservatives wanted the proposed EU trade deal to buy more European cheeses. They also have a lot of Alberta bitumen to sell to the Europeans. And if we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere, we will also be able to sell tourists on sailing adventures on an ice-free Arctic Ocean—year round.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

The Hair is strapping on his six-shooter, saying goodbye to the missus and heading to meet the bad guys on the noon train. He did not wait for the House of Commons vote that might have enabled him to deputize a Mulcair or a Trudeau for some moral support. The Hair is going it alone. In one of the most ill-conceived military exercises ever attempted, the Hair is going to war with brigands.

We call them brigands for lack of a better term. If they were sailors, they would be pirates. They know no allegiance. They pose as zealots when they are an abomination.

But who are they? The few pictures they release of themselves show them to be highly trained, disciplined gunmen. Rumours say they were trained in Jordan. Why Jordan? Rumours say they were funded from Saudi Arabia. How can they capture tanks and field artillery and suddenly know how to use them? And how do they get their ammunition?

This group called an Islamic State are neither true believers nor a state. They now support themselves by selling stolen oil through Turkey and on the ransoms of careless westerners—the ones they do not decapitate. They are thieves and murderers. They desecrate mosques. They murder men, sell women into slavery and indoctrinate children. They are also highly knowledgeable of Internet social media. They know how to garner publicity in the west and threaten open societies. Yet it is unsafe for any journalists to see what is behind their bluster.

The Hair thinks these brigands are a rabble—a problem to be handled and forgotten. He fails to question their objectives. He uses their atrocities for the same propaganda objective as theirs—to draw in the infidel for another foolish crusade. It makes the Hair a fool. He has been duped and believed the propaganda of people who can disappear into the countryside.

If the Hair really wanted to accomplish something in the Middle East, Canadian Jets would target Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Take out that bastard and the battle for Syria would be easier to support.

But the Hair and his western allies will never win unless they figure out who they are supporting on the ground. Air superiority is a waste of time if you do not understand the ground game that you are playing.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

How do you go to war with stateless brigands? How do you bomb the locations of thieves who move about usurping the homes and authority of people weakened with years of oppression and destructive war? How do you bring ill-trained soldiers into an effective force to fight these brigands when all the conscripts know is the fear of totalitarian regimes? How do you wage war against people taught to welcome martyrdom?

But, Prime Minister Harper—being smarter than other Canadians—is leading us to war with thieves. He wants to fight people who call themselves an Islamist state and are neither true believers nor a state. He thinks an F-18 pilot flying at over 200 kilometres per hour can distinguish between a friendly or unfriendly Bedouin herding his goats.

Harper wants to be there with the big kids, kicking sand in the face of those who want to make jihad. Barack Obama of the U.S.A. and David Cameron of Great Britain are already on board. These comic crusaders think they can bomb the jihadists back to the Stone Age. The only problem is that these masked gunmen already live in the Stone Age.

And who buys the oil they steal? And who sells these criminals the weapons of war they use on defenceless populations?

You would think that over a couple thousand years we had learned our lesson about Middle East crusades. No westerner ever wins. Nobody won any of the Iraq wars. We are always welcome back to visit with the poppy growers of Afghanistan. If we want to fight more Taliban, Pakistan will produce more for us. We made a legend of Osama bin Laden. His replacements are plentiful and grow from the fields where the west has sown the dragon’s teeth.

Before Mr. Harper makes any more stupid pledges of another crusade, he needs to tell Canadians what we achieved in the first Gulf War? He needs to tell Canadians what good Canadians brought to Afghanistan—and why we left Canadian blood behind?

Air superiority matters only when there is a cohesive force on the ground to mark the target and sort out the good from the bad after the air strike. That works. That makes sense. To use air strikes alone against these brigands who call themselves ISIS without a trained force of Arabic-speakers on the ground to finish the job is sad and stupid, and a waste of time and money.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

In Orwell’s novel 1984, Big Brother’s regime uses never ending far away wars to control the population. He makes war a critical component in sustaining the totalitarian regime. War is to blame for the regime’s economic failures, the shortages, and the beggaring of the proletariat. Big Brother has victories. The people suffer the losses.

But there is a caution that needs be noted for those seeking to create their ideal totalitarian regime in Canada. The one component that Orwell added to the mix in his mythical Oceania was total control of communications. This is where Mr. Harper and his lackeys in the Prime Minister’s Office have failed so miserably. Their nemesis the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation still runs exposés on their chicanery. And, for that matter, Mr. Harper can never really trust his friends at CTV, Shaw or TVA.

Canada is in an awkward position in going to war. It might have been alright with Canada’s Muslim community to go after a particularly despicable dictator such as Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and to try to police the poppy growers in Afghanistan but boots on the ground elsewhere in the Middle East can only assure Canadians of a large number of casualties and growing dissent at home.

And as much as the Tories might reap votes from the Ukrainian Diaspora, nobody in Canada wants to go to war with Russia over who owns the Eurasian Steppe—or the North Pole for that matter.

Harper needs to face the fact that while Canada has always done its job at war, it is hardly a sabre-rattling nation. We are multicultural, tolerant and peaceful. We prefer to be peacekeepers and referees. The Americans are the gunslingers. They have their National Rifle Association that thinks the only way to keep the peace is carry a bigger gun. They seem to relish the role of being the world’s policemen—until they realize what it costs.

Nobody in the Middle East has paid much attention to Harper or Baird sabre-rattling on behalf of Israel. They know they are only playing to the Jewish vote back home. Most Canadians are only embarrassed by Baird.

If we had never seen the downfall of the World Trade Towers to al-Qaeda, it would be hard to believe all the spin-offs from those terrorist roots. We keep hearing of new jihadists who seek to wreck havoc on the fat capitalists of North America. Maybe we have earned these new bogeymen but we cannot cower in our fortress in fear of them.

The people being overrun by brigands such as ISIS need humanitarian aid from countries such as Canada. It really is up to the Arab countries to put a stop to these international brigands who are taking advantage of the civil wars and disruption in the Middle East—it only encourages more totalitarian regimes.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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