Category: Federal Politics

Say what you like about Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver but he is certainly proving that he is not the brightest bulb to ever hold that portfolio in Ottawa. In fact, Oliver might just embarrass the Harper government right out of office next year. It was his opening salvo in goodies for next year’s election that showed Canadians that he has no idea of how to motivate business with taxation for job creation. He does not understand that there is a serious difference between a gift and an incentive.

And this is all about a matter of 28 cents. That is the amount that Oliver intends to cut from Employment Insurance premiums per $100 in insurable earnings for employees of small business. And this is only for in the fiscal years of 2015 and 2016. Oliver thinks it will save small business about $250 million per year for each of those years.

What would have made better sense would have been a much larger cut in premiums for all additional employees added over the next two years. That is job creation. That is how government should use business tax incentives. What Oliver is offering is just a present to people who want to take more money out of their business.

But what do you expect from a bunch of ideologues. They only offer gifts. Using an incentive to motivate their business friends to do something for the economy is a completely foreign idea. To them, business is good old Sam or Harry who runs a business and gives them money to support their re-election. This party wants to do something for their friends. They would never think of restricting these gratuitous gifts to those who did something for Canadians.

What is going to happen though is that the recipients of this gift from the Conservatives are going to do the mathematics themselves. With only about 40 per cent of employees eligible for Employment Insurance and this saving of $190 per eligible employee, it will mean a maximum of $2200 to any one business. If the Conservatives want to pay a bribe for this writer’s vote, they should be warned. It will cost much more than $2200,

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It was like a proud father announcing triplets. It was the wife, who is nowhere to be seen who did the heavy lifting, but here is the Hair, chest busting the buttons on his perfect suit, making the announcement. Yes, Canadians have found one of the famed Franklin ships that disappeared in Canada’s frigid Arctic waters over 150 years ago. In failing to find the fabled North West Passage Franklin went down in British sea annals like Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. ‘Jolly good show old chap. Tough luck, it killed you.’

While we deride the Hair for his late summer sojourns in the Arctic, there really is more reality than three electoral seats to be won. Canada has a responsibility for the protection and preservation of that part of the world. The melting ice under global warming is changing the Arctic and there is far more than just polar bears that are endangered.

One of the picture opportunities for the photographers and camera crews of the Hair’s expedition this year was the pseudo launching of a small submersible used to explore the sea bed. It was one of those devices with its high resolution cameras that showed us the remains of what must be one of Franklin’s ships. The joke on the scientists was that the ship was found much further south than where the scientists thought they should search. In fact it was much closer to where the Hair held his photo op.

It is sad though that the Hair has enabled the continued search for the Franklin ships while tightening the purse strings on Parks Canada that has been the government’s agency for the search. It took the combination of a public-private funding to keep the search going. It is only by accident that the Hair was able to make the announcement of the find a year before what might be his last election as Prime Minister.

It really was important that the world news media could acknowledge that the find was a Canadian accomplishment. They have had very little positive to report from Canada in recent years. The Hair should have been passing out cigars.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Keeping Canadians in a constant state of embarrassment, Foreign Minister John Baird continues to rack up frequent flier miles and drag Canada’s reputation deeper into disarray. What is diplomatic about baiting the Russian bear? Why does he have to take opposition politicians into harms way in Northern Iraq? Is he really persona non grata for insulting the United Nations in New York?

John Baird is an unusual gentleman. From his quite ordinary beginnings in Nepean, which was then a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario and graduating from Queen’s University down the road in Kingston, he embarked on a career in politics. He became an acolyte of Ontario’s Michael Harris and served in the Harris cabinet. When Harris was defeated, Baird did not like the opposition role and switched to the federal scene. His timing was right to be there for a job in the new Harper Cabinet. The one thing John Baird lacks in his latest job is any training, knowledge or experience in world politics.

In his role as Foreign Affairs Minister, you would expect him to take the lead from his department experts. It seems that he is not interested in what they have to say. The one group he does heed is the Prime Minister’s Office, the ubiquitous PMO. Experts in foreign affairs are ignored. He is the only cabinet member to have both right-wing conservative women’s groups and gay activists mad at him at the same time. The women are still angry about him supporting same-sex marriage. The gay activists are annoyed about him not complaining to the Russians about Putin’s anti-gay laws.

But John Baird seems to like calling out others. He is an equal opportunity insulter. He appears to welcome any opportunity to insult any country that criticizes Israel. He seems to want to face off with the Russians anywhere but across the Arctic Circle. He has set a whole new standard in foreign affairs for Canada. Just do not call it diplomacy.

Mr. Baird and his fellow cabinet member Jason Kenney are often referred to as the Bobbsey twins because of their similarities. Both are portly middle-aged bachelors who seem to be devoting their lives to the far right of the political spectrum. They are zealots and ideologues in their respective quests for political advantage. They relish their roles at the right hand of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

There is meanness and hypocrisy in their political styles that our country would be better off without.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

How do you do a trumpet fanfare in a headline? The Hair going to war again certainly deserves a fanfare. The poor schmuck was had. He was alternately included and ignored by the big boys and girls at the NATO meeting in Wales last week. It was Brit David Cameron, France’s François Hollande and Yankee Barack Obama who made the decisions and waved the flags. They hardly want to go to war with Vladimir Putin so they are going to beat up on the ISIS jihadist fanatics in Iraq and Syria instead.

The way that the Hair and his silly Foreign Minister were mouthing off recently about the Ukraine situation was worrying enough for Canadians, let alone our allies. It is one thing to pander for the votes of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage and an entirely different thing to go to war with Russia. Canadians will be far happier to see their troops just shooting up Arab jihadists.

But the Hair is still getting his shorts in a knot. He was slashing the Canadian military budgets to the bone in the next year to allow room for pre-election tax cuts. And here are friend Obama and other NATO heavyweights demanding he pony up more military support in the billions. They have had enough mouth and now they want money.

The best the Hair could come up with was Canada’s over-rated and over-used Joint Task Force Two (JTF2). These guys, with their purported finally-honed killing skills, are to be used as logistics support for the Kurds in Northern Iraq. JTF2 are to be deployed in Kurdistan for 30 days and then their position will be re-evaluated. They might pick up some basic Kurdish language skills in that time. As the Kurds are the only Arab troops in the Middle East to have won some battles with ISIS, this might be the best billet.

But with friends such as Cameron, Hollande and Obama, the Hair needs to re-evaluate his role on the world stage. He and his hairdresser can wing where they want but they can hardly buy friends with continual promises of non-existent financial support. Like in any Ponzi scheme, eventually somebody wants to see some cash.

Maybe the key NATO allies have finally got a clear reading on the Hair. They are treating him as a lame duck. Their people in Ottawa have a fairly accurate read on where the Hair is going after any federal election in 2015 and it will not be as prime minister.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Pay attention politically smart Canadians. The activists in Hong Kong are showing you up. And what makes you think Canada is more democratic than Hong Kong? All the activists in Hong Kong want is open nominations. When was the last time Canadians were allowed open nominations?

Here in Babel the Conservative’s central committee in Ottawa has just announced our Conservative candidate for the election next year in the new Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte electoral district. In Hong Kong such an announcement would be greeted with protests, rallies and sit-ins. In Babel, nobody particularly cared. The local Conservatives are hardly used to having a contested nomination and a vote.

The only vote likely around here will be the public vote in next year’s election. Justin Trudeau and his minions have yet to tell us who our Liberal candidate will be. They are still mulling it over at party headquarters. This was the guy who promised us open nominations when we elected him leader of the Liberal Party. Trudeau is coming for a party fund raising barbeque at Horseshoe Resort on September 18. Maybe he will announce our candidate to the Liberals with a spare $150 to contribute to the party.

We will assume in Hong Kong that when the Communist Party’s Central Committee chooses a candidate, it is someone who thinks the way the Central Committee does. Young Trudeau has done that one better. He tells potential candidates who might not approve of abortion that they need not apply to be a Liberal candidate. As leader, Trudeau will tell them how to think. At least Stephen Harper tells his Conservative lackeys that they can think whatever they want but they will just do as they are told.

The people in Hong Kong who are fighting for democracy are putting their lives on the line. In Canada few are so willing to fight for democracy. They take our democracy for granted without realizing how it has been eroded.

The most interesting of the pro-democracy groups among Hong Kong’s population of more than seven million is Occupy Central with Love and Peace. This group is threatening the Hong Kong government with a mass sit-in of more than 10,000 participants in Hong Kong’s business district. Shutting down the financial heart of the city-state for long will have repercussions from Beijing that few will want to contemplate.

Maybe we can find some brave pro-democracy Liberals who will want to picket young Trudeau’s barbeque at Horseshoe Resort. There have to be more than a few Liberals who still believe in party democracy and the importance of party leaders keeping their word.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It is important to listen when the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert discusses what is happening politically in Quebec. You sometimes get the impression that she is so caught up with the nuances of the Quebec angst that she fails to open her mind to possible results. Take the demise of the Bloc Québécois for example. The writer frets over who will inherit the votes if there is no acceptable separatist option available.

Has Ms. Hébert considered that the first option this small group of malcontents might contemplate is to vote for the Conservatives? They would achieve as much as voting for this heavy-handed new Bloc leader Mario Beaulieu while giving the one-finger Canadian salute to the rest of the country. There is no question but much of the rest of our country is getting fed up with Conservative ideology. It might be embarrassing if the Bloc voters accidently elected a Conservative but since they will not be part of the new government, little harm will be done.

The obvious option is to do more of the same as Bloc voters did in 2011. They could let the Jack Layton legacy live on. Mind you, the New Democrats do need to replace some of their accidental MPs with ones who at least know where the New Democrats stand—or at least supposed to stand when they are not simply trying to win election. Frankly, many Canadians would really like to know where the New Democrats are standing these days.

There is also the option of voting Liberal. Since many of the wandering voters captured by the New Democrats in 2011 were actually unhappy Liberals, this would be a natural. We already know that even Thomas Mulcair’s electoral district will be in jeopardy next year. There will be little of the Greater Montreal region that will not go rouge.

And before you scoff at the thought of Quebeckers flocking to vote for young Trudeau and his team, you should check around. You can start by ignoring the pollsters. People are lying to them in greater numbers all the time. The pollsters have absolutely no idea what is happening. What is really funny is that Justin Trudeau could himself be surprised at the vote in Quebec that is moving toward him.

Trudeau actually has a civil servant running his campaign in Quebec who contributes little in the way of understanding of the voters. The voters will, of course, decide. They just might not have very much choice.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It is one of those silly ideas that surface every once in a while. Someone notices how low the turnout of voters is at elections. They get all concerned and say, “We must get more people to vote.” Why?

Some even suggest that there should be fines for people who do not make it to the polls. Do you really want people to go and take their pique out on the politicians? ‘Leave sleeping dogs lie’ is more than just an aphorism. It is good advice. It can save people from being bitten.

There is the story from many years ago when a speaker on politics gave a spirited defence for having stupid members of parliament. His argument was that stupid Canadians also deserve representation in parliament. Please be assured that there is no lack of stupid members of our parliament. In fact, lately, there has been something of a surfeit.

And when you compare figures between Canada and the United States, Canadians are hardly as reluctant to vote as Americans. Judging by what you hear from American politicians these days, that is hardly surprising. The quality of American politics has gone a long way down hill from the hopes of the nation’s founding fathers.

The facts are that it is the inability of our politicians to inspire and motivate that is really abysmal in both countries. You see the worst of this in municipal politics. Here in Babel, the civil servants who run the municipal elections could not handle the crowds if more than 50 per cent of the voters bothered to vote. Mind you the biggest problem in municipal elections is for the citizen to a) find out what ward they are in, b) what positions and people they might like to vote for or against, c) at what times and d) where can they vote?

Everyone is waiting to see if the new Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau can motivate more of our youth to vote in next year’s federal election. Even then, the key question is whether the candidates that he allows to run as Liberals can motivate enough workers to get people out to vote for the Liberals and their leader.

Mind you maybe the Conservative Party has some new tricks up their sleeves on vote suppression. It was actually the 2008 federal election when total voter turnout was less than 60 per cent. The turnout during the Robocall incidents in the 2011 federal election saw an increase in voting to just over 62 per cent. That is a far cry from the over 80 per cent figures we got in federal elections in the 1900s.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Will Justin Trudeau make a great prime minister? Not likely. Is he better than the alternatives? You bet. There is something of a debate in the household these days about a forthcoming event for Mr. Trudeau in September. We might just use the $300 it would cost for two of us to attend to stock up on Kraft Dinner. There is a long cold winter coming.

You would think at her age, the wife would hardly be gaga about Justin’s good looks. She liked the father too. While Pierre Trudeau was hardly as good looking, he was certainly a lot smarter. Last time we saw Justin, the wife was telling him about her collection of Trudeau family Christmas cards that chronicled Justin and his brothers’ youth. He only looked slightly pained at the recounting.

But this country has really had it with Mr. Harper and the Hair. This guy would be much happier as the dictator of some banana republic somewhere. He reminds us of the late Idi Amin Dada from Uganda. The two of them are so impressed with their importance they lose sight of the objectives of leadership. The journey itself becomes the objective.

Mr. Harper is only happy when he is flying to some world capital with his hairdresser where people will treat him as though he is important. You get the impression that the recent problems of Alison Redford as Premier of Alberta were just as a scapegoat for Alberta’s frustration with Canada’s high flying Prime Minister. You really wonder when the son of the guy who created the National Energy Program starts to look good to voters in Alberta.

The one thing you can count on is that New Democrat Thomas Mulcair has a much further journey in the land of William Aberhart than young Trudeau. They will have to provide the NDP leader with a 20-gallon hat in Calgary that can sit on his shoulders. It would be the only way to hide the fact that he is a stiff necked easterner. Mulcair’s finicky manner and prosecutorial style just do not sit on a western saddle.

Across Canada, we now know that people want their country back. They want the respect of the world community for Canada’s fairness and willingness to keep the peace. They want a balanced approach to our economy that creates jobs for all. They want more federal concern for education and health care and our environment. They want a shared vision for this great country.

If Justin Trudeau can motivate our youth, charm our women and offer the caring kind of government this country needs, he has sure got our vote. It is just a shame that we are supposed to wait until late next year?

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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