Category: Federal Politics

Can you imagine? At a time when a young man’s fancy is to indulge in a summer hockey camp, our Babel MP has spent the past week talking about prostitution. Not that he has necessarily found it a learning experience. He is likely to be as ignorant on the subject at the end of the week as he was at the start.

And would you believe that Babel’s MP is being paid extra by the taxpayers to study his government’s bill on prostitution? He could learn more on a Friday night in July walking down Dunlop Street in his home town. The truth is, he is not on the Justice Committee to examine the Justice Minister’s bill on prostitution. He and his Conservative colleagues on the committee are there to block any change or improvement in the bill.

And they will block changes. Despite a rising chorus of objections to the bill, it will pass committee without any interference or correction. It will then be quickly approved by the Conservative dominated Commons in the fall as well as the government dominated Senate and become law. It will last until legal objections send the bill as enacted to the Supreme Court. You might expect that the Supreme Court will then, once again, throw it out as useless.

What the Conservative bill is in reality is a disgrace. It just moves the action on Dunlop Street and other strolls across Canada further up the alleys in the dark. It increases the criminal element’s involvement in the sex trade. It makes it even more unsafe for the prostitute and the customer. It makes people out as criminals when they are just seeking a very human need.

The bill demonstrates more than ever the disgusting ignorance of this Conservative government. For the Minister of Justice to tell the committee that his bill is going to eliminate prostitution is not only a stupid statement but shows the real intent is to drive prostitution out of public sight. It just makes the sex trade uglier and more criminal than it need be.

And yet the Babel MP and his Conservative colleagues sat this week and ignored experts on the sex trade. They were not there to listen. In a failed government of failed ideology, they were there to ignore reality, again.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Did you see the news clips of the prime minister the other day? They had him dressed in casual clothes to check out the flood problems out west. And with an open jacket, he was letting his growing corporation hang out. It shows the soft life he has been living. The guy has been growing a gut!

It is a shame the Hair is aging badly. It is not as though he has the angst of an American president. Obama, for example, entered the office with his curly black hair looking good and it has turned grey in office. Even George W. Bush turned grey and he never seemed to worry about any of his many missteps. Our Prime Minister went into office with greying hair that just keeps getting greyer—except for the darker front section that most people believe is a hair piece. His hair is greying faster than his hair piece.

Maybe, he just does not care any more. He knows he is in trouble with next year’s election. He knows the trouble he will be in if he fails to call that election as his own law provides. And there is less noise today from people who were predicting he might call an election early to catch his opponents off guard. What would that loss cost his legacy?

But what is happening is that the knowing pundits are starting to ask when he will resign and call for a leadership convention. He could wait until as late as November and call for a leadership convention of his party by next spring. That would give the new leader six months or so to put a new spin on things. It would be like when Jean Chrétien got people laughing over Prime Minister Kim Campbell’s summer job.

We have discussed the problem of a successor for the Hair a few times and the cabinet continues to prove as inept as ever. The favoured Jason Kenney (Employment and Social Development) and his Boy Wonder Chris Alexander (Citizenship and Immigration) are busy blotting their copy books over the treatment of foreign workers and refugee claimants. Justice Minister Peter Mackay, another supposed aspirant for the PM’s job who once ruled the military, cannot even comprehend how to fix prostitution. And do not even ask about our dear Foreign Minister John Baird.

You really have to believe that the Hair is in despair. He is going to seed fast. He has no solution to the present problem. He has no magic wand to wave to someone to succeed him. Who would have thought that Stephen Harper would be challenged in going lonely back to the West.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair comes across as another character created by famed Brit mystery writer Agatha Christie. Like Christie’s prolific series of books from 1920 to 1975 featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the politician is from another time, another era. It might explain why Mulcair is out of step with Canadians. He does not connect.

Despite the painstaking and persistent grilling he has given the Conservative government in the House of Commons, Mulcair’s excellent performance has been little noted. To Canadians, he is just a stuffy little man in his three-piece suit. Taking off his tie makes little difference.

Mulcair is a lawyer and he comes across as a lawyer. He is the subject of lawyer jokes. His words are measured, his smile forced and his scruffy beard is unappealing.

Mulcair seems to fit with only a small part of the population even in Quebec where politicians are measured on their loyalty to that province. He is almost too francophone with his dual citizenship in France and Canada. His ties to France would never be accepted in a prime minister by most Canadians. It is easy to understand why there are no rules forbidding the dual citizenship in parliament but obviously nobody ever thought of having a prime minister with split loyalties.

Maybe it is the perpetual underdog attitude of New Democrats that his dual citizenship was never an issue when he was chosen leader. They should have considered the attitude of Canadians when former Prime Minister R. B. Bennett went to England and a peerage after being ousted by the voters in 1935.

But that is the least of Mulcair’s problems. Caught between Harper and Trudeau, he is between the proverbial rock and hard place. As the Ontario Liberals have just proved in the 2014 provincial election, there is no room for New Democrats if the Liberals lead with their left. Trudeau has already started pushing into New Democrat territory and the New Democrat leader is unable to counter the push. For Mulcair to move to the right as Andrea Horwath tried in Ontario would be a fool’s game.

The coming federal election will be a mystery that Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen and Perry Mason would all fail at solving. It is not just that politics is a very different genre. Along with Mulcair, they are all from a different time.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

We all struggle with metaphors to explain politics but the recent Toronto Star effort by Susan Delacourt of the paper’s Ottawa Bureau missed by a mile. She should leave business analogies to Star Business writer David Olive. To try to explain the recent federal by-elections in business terms seems to be a stretch too far.

Politics fails us when it is addressed as a business. The public are not consumers of politics as much as they are the owners. They have proprietary rights. Believe it or not, candidates for election are actually applying to them for the job. Involving the public in politics is always a serious challenge. And when you do involve them, watch out.

But nobody needs to get excited about by-elections. What would be the point? They are focussed in the individual electoral district. They are rarely serious. All you usually win is bragging rights. And braggadocio does not take you very far in politics.

Take the recent four by-elections:

Did anyone, for one minute, think that the voting in two Alberta ridings would produce any surprise results? Prime Minister Harper could have just appointed the two new MPs and few in the electoral districts would have noticed. Alberta is problematically predictable. There is no business case here. So there was a low turnout. Who cares?

Everything was also normal in Toronto’s Scarborough-Agincourt and the Liberal candidate rode the well greased skids into parliament. The only thing of interest was the Conservative Party’s testing their attack advertising on Justin Trudeau. Teflon Trudeau helped increase the Liberal vote percentage in an already Liberal dominated riding.

The only interesting race of the four was in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina. By-elections are a time when you can make your mistakes and Justin Trudeau certainly did lots of that. And despite his doing everything wrong, his candidate still won. The only rebuke in the vote result was of the previous New Democrat MP who left the voters for a run at city hall.

But at the same time, Trudeau broke his word to his party and interfered in the nomination process. He picked a candidate with better New Democrat credentials than Liberal. He did not listen to the party. He acted autocratic and ignorant.

If Trinity-Spadina was a test market, all it proved was that the leader can be wrong and win. He would be well advised not to be so pig-headed next year. General elections are serious affairs.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

While it might seem a churlish comment to some, there is regrettably no honour for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in the win in the Trinity-Spadina by-election. Running up to the vote on June 30, the Liberal Party ran television ads in which Justin talked about a ‘new way to do politics.’ Yet what we saw was the same old top-down, autocratic leadership that real liberals have been fighting against for the last 25 years.

Screw you Justin! You neither seem to listen nor learn. You talk in platitudes and bromides. You neither understand nor register your hypocrisy. With the walk-away win in Trinity-Spadina, you proved that any big yellow dog could have won the riding for the Liberal Party. Your choice was meaningless. Your political acumen was appalling.

The simple truth in that downtown Toronto riding was that the few people who got to the polls wanted to give the finger to Mr. Harper’s Conservatives. They gave it to them for their meanness and their bigotry. They could not trust the New Democrats to do the job for them. The provincial debacle of Andrea Horwath was too fresh and that man Mulcair from Ottawa was from another generation. What choice did they really have?

Winning by default is never as good as winning by design Mr. Trudeau. You were so busy screwing with that claque around you that you had no idea how badly you were doing for the party. This is not the path of the righteous. You played the fool.

Did you think you can get a pass on pipelines because of pandering to the west? You even confused your personally selected candidate with that hypocrisy. Your opponents did not know just how vulnerable you are on the subject. And do not think you can run between the raindrops. The angst continues to chafe.

What cost is there to this victory in Toronto? Is a lawsuit from a disgruntled candidate worth it? Is the growing distrust of your selected team to be your nemesis?

Do not kid yourself Justin into believing that real liberals do not think. You can hardly command respect by commanding people how to think. Liberals are hardly ideologues. You cannot model yourself after Stephen Harper.

Better you come to understanding the free spirit of your father and the reforms he brought about for the betterment of future generations of Canadians. For any ‘new way to do politics’ has to involve the old way: it still requires freedom.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Happy Canada Day. Canada is 147 years young and we still need to grow, develop, mature and grasp the reins of nationhood. There is so much to admire in Canada. There are Canada’s peoples, its beauty and its natural wonders. There is also its future. We need to share our ideas of what this country should be. We can only hope that it is not the country that the Conservative government in Ottawa is trying to shape.

In a pre-emptive pique, the Harper Conservatives are criminalizing our country. Canadians were puzzled at first because this government wanted to build prisons at a time when crime was decreasing. We now know the occupants of those prisons are us. Big Brother lives.

The prisons are for liberals—condemned as libertines. The prisons are for the whores and pimps and johns who besmirch the construct of conservative sensibilities. They are for the environmentalists who flail so valiantly against exploitation by uncaring capitalism. They are for the hyphenated Canadians who flaunt their former nationalism. They are for those who espouse regicide and disavow the monarchy. They are for those who defy the hypocrisy of dogmatic churches and temples and stifling sacraments. They are for those who hope to shine the light of Diogenes in the dark halls of Parliament. They are for those who seek blessed relief in a rapidly less caring society.

Yet you cannot bury your nose in your Blackberry or iPhone and not see the land and its peoples. You cannot cocoon in your entertainment centre and let the storms of a raped and angry environment rage outside. The judges of the Supreme Court must not be the only people who know what is fair. We must challenge the news media and let them know they are not here to be just another opiate of our times but to report them.

On this Canada Day, we all need to say loud and clear that we will choose our lives, what our country will be and our future. Nobody can deny us our values. The best protection of our rights is our effort to protect the rights of others. And why should we not be a country of extended rights instead of repressions. Canada can and must continue to represent freedom to the rest of the world.

For freedom is not a right for government to give but ours for taking. Our land is for our non-destructive enjoyment and, in our good tenancy, to reap its offerings. The same as our waters will share their bounty if we do not despoil them. For our Canada is only ours in trust for the generations to come.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Georgiy Mamedov, the dean of the diplomatic corps in Ottawa is returning to Moscow. After 11 years in Canada, the Russian Ambassador seems to have become less and less diplomatic. He is calling a spade a spade and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird a sham. On Tom Clark’s West Block on Global Television last week, he appeared to be quite happy to leave Ottawa and the Harper government behind.

Mamedov made no effort to hide his contempt for the posturing of the Harper Conservatives. He makes it very clear that under a person such as John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs are being mismanaged. He claims that he would be called in to be lectured on what the Russian government was doing wrong in the eyes of the Canadian government. “And that was it. It was just posturing,” the Russian claimed. He explained that normally when there was a serious problem between countries and how they perceived things, it could be discussed. He found that Canada’s foreign affairs minister was not interested in further discussion.

In various media interviews in the past couple weeks, Mamedov has made it very clear that the Harper government strategy in foreign affairs reminded him of how the former Communist Central Committee in Moscow used to handle foreign affairs. Posturing is not productive, the diplomat claims.

While the Putin regime in Russia is proving to be difficult in relation to the situation with Ukraine, Canada seems to be the only country that is not willing to discuss the issues. France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States are undertaking continual talks with the Russians in hopes of keeping the situation from getting out of hand.

Mind you countries such as France and Germany are reliant on the natural gas piped across Ukraine from Russia and they have a lot more at stake than the votes of Canadian-Ukrainians. Pandering for votes at home is not the usual way to fashion foreign affairs but then then Harper and the Conservatives have little subtlety. Mamedov is concerned that the Canadian stance is helping to escalate the problems instead of easing them.

The height of this Conservative foolishness was the very expensive trip to for the Hair and a couple hundred ‘friends’ to Israel earlier this year. What the Hair and his holidayers lacked in tact, they made up for in chutzpah.

Of course, Mamedov would be too diplomatic to mention that. It will just be another great story to entertain his friends with over vodka after retirement in his dacha outside of Moscow.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

No, Babel-on-the-Bay has no morning line or prediction for the current by-elections in Toronto and Alberta. Readers have been asking for a forecast of what will happen in the four federal by-elections called for June 30. What they need to understand is that all by-elections are local. They are decided on the ground in the specific ridings. You have to be there to understand what is happening.

And even if you are there, you can make mistakes. Given what we know from outside the ridings, you might place a bet on the Conservatives keeping their two Alberta seats. The two Toronto ridings are expected to go Liberal but you might want to hold out for some odds in Trinity-Spadina. That riding is under a bit of a cloud. And we hear that the New Democrats are not giving it up without a hell of a fight. It is entirely an exercise in identifying and getting out your vote in the middle of a four-day summer weekend in downtown Toronto.

It is the type of situation where the late Clarence Peterson excelled. Yes, he was the father of a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, two former Ontario MPPs and one of them served as Premier of Ontario. Yet C.M. Peterson had his early political training with M.J. Coldwell and Tommy Douglas in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner of the New Democratic Party. That was before he decided to raise his family in London, Ontario. It is hard to find New democrats in that town.

But the senior Peterson gave us all lessons in identifying and getting out the vote during a by-election in Toronto’s Weston, Mount Dennis area early in the 1980s. He handed out the canvassing kits and debriefed the canvassers. He knew where every vote was and how to get it to the polls. It was a pleasure to work with him. We have also always admired the political work ethic of Clarence’s oldest son and Jim Peterson certainly came by his canvassing skill and drive honestly.

Having once worked on an election in the Trinity-Spadina area, we can report that it is a very complex task to connect with all the ethnic groupings in that riding. Running between meetings with Portuguese-speaking ethnic Chinese from Macoa, to a gay community group, to the Ukrainian-Canadian community, is only a small part of the challenge. The major concern is that the New Democrats are pulling all stops to hold on to the seat of Jack Layton’s widow, Olivia Chow, in the House of Commons. And they have a candidate in place who knows exactly what he is doing and where the priorities lie.

At the same time, Justin Trudeau wrongly rejected an established Liberal candidate who really knows the riding. You would think, he had more important things to do.

So, if you want to call that one, go ahead. Those of us with the experience will wait and watch. We can only hope that we are pleasantly surprised.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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