Category: Federal Politics

If Gerald Butts is the key apparatchik behind the rise of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, when he is going to butt in? As the former head of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Butts should know a thing or two about our environment. If he does, why has he not influenced Justin’s stand on Alberta bitumen and the pipelines needed to ship it overseas?

Butts has to know that the Alberta and federal governments are allowing the companies exploiting the Athabasca tar sands to destroy the fragile environment of northern Alberta. They are killing off the wildlife and effectively destroying the lands and traditional livelihoods of our aboriginal peoples.

But Justin Trudeau goes to the United States and tells people there that he wants to see the Keystone XL pipeline completed. He buys into the lie that it will supply the Texas Gulf Coast refineries with Canadian bitumen to turn into synthetic crude oil. He ignores the fact that it is really to put the bitumen onto tankers to send to countries that do not care about the pollution problems.

Luckily, with his family’s British Columbia roots, Justin has been thumbs down on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline. While already preapproved by the National Energy Board, this pipeline is waiting for a time when the Prime Minister’s Office feels Canadians might let it slip by.

The two proposed west to east pipelines are just as serious a problem. The reversal of Enbridge’s line through Toronto to Montreal has already been blessed by the Calgary-based National Energy Board. We still have no idea if that old a pipeline can be considered safe for high temperature bitumen to be forced through under greater pressure. That line could be used to send product to tanker loading ports in Saint John, New Brunswick or in Maine.

For TransCanada’s proposed Canada East pipeline, the Irving boys have offered to build a new oil loading dock in Saint John for bitumen. They seem to have no interest in changes to their refinery to pollute more with bitumen.

If Gerald Butts has not had a serious talk with his boss Justin Trudeau about, it is about time he did. If this bitumen gets out of hand and countries around the world start refining it, we will have more than our wildlife to save.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Sometimes it is hard to determine if Toronto Star Quebec political analyst Chantal Hébert is serious or just firing for effect. Taking a meaningless poll of Quebec federal political leanings as gospel is like those who assured us that the Parti Québécois was going to win the last provincial election. Quebec voters are the most volatile in Canada and the challenge to Chantal is to keep up with the constant shift. What she would be best not to do is show her pessimism.

Chantal tells us that currently CROP, the Montreal polling firm, is suggesting that their figures show a substantial support federally for Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats. And that surprises who? After the huge swing back to the provincial Liberals in the recent election, you could expect a period of regrouping federally. Nobody has anything guaranteed as we head for a 2015 federal election. Count on many more changes in direction for Quebec in the intervening time.

What we know for sure is that Quebec has written off Prime Minister Harper and his Conservatives. Harper, in turn, has written off Quebec and that opens the door to a range of options. The only objective the Conservatives might still have in Quebec is to leave (figuratively) scorched earth for Trudeau and his Liberals. If Harper can figure a way to help the New Democrats, the Bloc, the Greens or anyone else to slice and dice the Liberals, he will do it.

We certainly agree that the New Democrats could end up with more seats in Quebec than they held after the 2006 federal election. That could be four or five seats. It will be nowhere near the figures from 2011 when the federal Liberals crashed. Sure, a few of the newer New Democrats have turned out to be fair to middling retail politicians but that can hardly be said for all of them. Mulcair’s caucus losses in Quebec next year will be staggering.

Whether anyone can resurrect the Bloc Québécoise in time for the 2015 election is highly problematical. That cowboy has not ridden his horse over the pass yet.

But there are no free ridings for Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals. After the mess Trudeau’s organizer David MacNaughton has made in Ontario, we can only hope Justin has made better choices of lieutenants in Quebec. Quebec expects there will be appointed candidates and everything will be as before. Justin has to surprise people in Quebec. He has to be daring and he has to offer a new democracy. Will he do it? Is Chantal pessimistic about that too?

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Liberals are waiting for Leader Justin Trudeau to act and every day he dithers is another day when the party is losing sight of the objective. You can hardly expect everyone to be coming to the aid of the party when Justin lies to it. When he was chosen leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, he made the promise of no interference in riding nominations. He has not kept his word.

The breaking point was Trinity-Spadina riding in Toronto. Trudeau appointee David MacNaughton said that former candidate Christine McInnes could not run there in the upcoming by-election. That is not David MacNaughton’s decision to make. He was interfering in a Liberal Party internal matter. We stopped appointing dictators in the party quite some time ago.

But Justin Trudeau backed his underling. He supported MacNaughton’s stupid order. There has been discussion of supposed bullying of party supporters and about where certain star candidates might run in the 2015 election but these discussions are irrelevant. They are not matters demanding the attention of the party leader. These might be matters of importance to someone who wishes to micro-manage his political party but Justin Trudeau is supposed to be smarter than that.

As things stand now, Trudeau has taken time off his busy schedule to be seen promoting Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan as a prospective candidate in Trinity-Spadina. Usually party leaders have the good grace to wait until a candidate has won the nomination to congratulate him on being the party’s candidate.

What is happening now is that the muttering around the party is growing. There is little sympathy for David MacNaughton’s role with the party and he will find less and less support for his advice. It could destroy his effectiveness in preparation and execution of the party strategy next year.

This disruption in Trinity-Spadina also bodes ominously for the by-election. While the new Member of Parliament will sit for less than a year before the 2015 general election, it is in the centre of Toronto where the Liberals absolutely have to win every seat. To give New Democrat candidate Joe Cressy a free pass to parliament puts him in a position to be a spoiler next year. The party will blame MacNaughton and their leader.

Justin Trudeau can ill afford an ineffective Ontario campaign organization. Ontario is the backbone of the Liberal Party. Every win in Ontario is a step to winning the election.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Some Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearings remind us of acts from Shakespeare’s MacBeth. You can count on the weird sisters—commonly referred to as witches—to be there. You know them as Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus. And the CRTC is their cauldron of witches’ brew. It used to be that the CRTC was the master and the witches were the supplicants. Mr. Harper’s appointments have changed that. The witches now seem to be stage managing those plays.

That was why it was so funny the other day to read in the newspaper how the new Rogers Chief Executive Officer Guy Laurence, former head of Vodafone in England, is going to change things by being nice to customers. That will be a novelty. The witches have been in a race for the bottom in customer relations across Canada for years.

What is even funnier is that this silly Brit is telling us he is going to spruce up Hockey Night in Canada. And the best of bloody luck to him! First of all, Harper cuts CBC budgets some more and then Rogers mugs the peoples’ network to steal Hockey Night.

Laurence also wishfully told Rogers’ shareholders last week that after examining Rogers’ Canadian assets for the past three months, he has all the answers.

Frankly we always admired the late Ted Rogers. Ted’s genius in creating the Rogers phenomenon is a classic story of smart marketing. It was just Ted’s customer relations that was clueless. For years the company has been functioning behind a wall of what must be minimum wage call centres. It has no feel for the reality of the marketplace or its customers’ concerns.

When moving a few years ago, we called Rogers’ call centre and asked the price of a specific television-Internet package. The answer came back promptly that the cost would be $190 plus taxes per month. When we got over our sticker price shock we asked why. The answer we found later was that, where we were moving, Rogers had a lock on the cable access—nobody else was allowed to touch it. And then we found that Bell was offering Fibe television in the building and if we wanted to be guinea pigs for this new ultra high frequency digital subscriber line service, we could get it for half Rogers’ price. We came home to Bell. (To our regret of course but that is another story.)

We do hope that when Mr. Laurence attended the right schools in England that he paid full attention to Shakespeare’s tales of MacBeth. They might be salutary.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Herb Gray was smart, funny, wise, impish, a mentor and a friend. And it was a friendship that lasted over 50 years. We met over copy he had sent to the then party publication Liberal Action in the early 1960s. He had just been elected to parliament in Windsor West and he quickly established himself as one of the leading left-wing thinkers in the party. He was our maven.

Herb set some amazing records in Ottawa. He served continuously in Parliament for more than 39 years. He was in parliament during the time of eight different prime ministers. He served in many cabinet portfolios. He served as Leader of the Opposition. He was Deputy Prime Minister. He was respected on all sides of the House.

He must have been on his honeymoon when he brought Sharon to a party meeting at Trent University in 1967. She charmed us all.

Herb served his Canada. He earned his honours. His was a good life.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

Comments can be sent to  [email protected]

We thought the aircraft deal was dead. After months free of hype for the purchase of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning (II), we thought the civil servants, the military and the Harper government had finally put finis on buying that aircraft. Maybe that was only until they are sending some of our few F-18 Hornets in harms way to help Ukraine.

If those aging Hornets start shooting at someone who can shoot back, we are going to be in immediate need of some new aircraft. It turns out that in Ottawa the wheels are greased for the return of the totally inadequate Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning. The government appears to be delaying the announcement of the return as they debate how to handle the new price tag of US$92 million per aircraft instead of the original US$50 million

But the reason you sometimes hear the F-35 called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is because the entire plan is to keep the United States in control. The plan is to have all American allies not only pay dues to be members of the American Flying Club but to keep on paying throughout the life cycle of the aircraft. And Stephen Harper and his friends so dearly want to be members of the American’s club.

It matters little that the F-35 is the wrong type of aircraft for Canada’s needs. Membership in the club is more important. This is also despite the Americans refusing to release the software needed to repair the aircraft. The Americans want to keep control by keeping the software from their allies. And, in case our software experts crack the code, we will find that the software we get is not the same nor as complete as the Americans use in their own aircraft—so much for working together.

If we really want an American aircraft, we should only consider buying the F-22 Raptor. This aircraft is much faster and is a twin engine aircraft with the range to cover our north. The F-35 cannot cross our Arctic without being refuelled. And nobody has come up with stealth aircraft for refuelling.

Mind you, the Americans are refusing to sell any F-22 Raptors to their allies. For some reason, they want to keep this really stealthy and sophisticated aircraft to themselves. For treatment such as this Canada cancelled the Avro C-105 Arrow!

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Toronto Star writer Thomas Walkom has been an icon for progressives in Canada for many years. If there is a left-of-centre stance possible on an issue, Tom will most often take it. Readers expect it of him. Those readers must have felt let down when they read his take on Bill C-23—the one the Tories call a fair Elections Act. Tom does not think passing the bill will be the end of civilization as we know it.

Tom points out that last time some election changes were rammed through the House over opposition objections, it was the Liberals doing the ramming. The objections at that time were mostly over banning third party advertising. Mind you the Supreme Court agreed to the ban and judging by the third-party TV commercials voters saw in the last provincial election in Ontario, we should also ban them provincially.

But the current election bill has far more serious problems. This bill blatantly serves Conservative fund-raising activities and discourages the votes of many who might be expected to vote against them. The bill denies the Chief Electoral Officer responsibility for promoting voting and also denies this independent authority the powers to enforce the rules. So far, the government has found no non-partisan authority that will agree to what they are proposing.

But Walkom seems to think that the 61 per cent turn-out of voters in the last election is a more serious problem. He wants more people to vote when it is obvious that many are not interested. Why he wants people to vote if they do not care makes very little sense.

For too long we have been saying it does not matter how you vote, just vote. All that time, we should have been saying, ‘stop, think and then vote.’ Maybe that is what is wrong in this country; we might just have too many voters who do not know what they are doing.

The truth is that what is turning off the voters is politicians who fail to engage them in the political process. Our political parties are not going to the schools to tell students about their parties and the fun of getting involved. We are letting universities and community colleges bar political activity on campus. Parties send out crap and call it political literature. They run dunces for office who only do what their parties tell them to do.

And then there is the news media. This is the greatest barrier of all to citizens getting involved in the political process. The media ignore the nebbishes who are chosen by their party leaders to run for office. They ignore the lack of democracy in the parties. Hell, when it comes to the political process in this country, the news media have not got a clue.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

They call our Canadian voting system First-Past-the-Post. Some people use more scatological terms for it. Others just castigate the system when it does not work the way they want. It frustrates them. Their problem is that they cannot come up with a better system of voting.

Many of the people who get cranky about our vote method tell us that proportional voting is what makes sense to them. In proportional voting you only vote for a party. That way, every party that can gain more than three or four per cent of the vote, gets to appoint one or more members to the parliament, legislature or council. That way you end up with each party having seats closely proportional to their vote. What you really end up with most of the time is a government of minorities that you never voted for and that has to do a lot of back-room negotiating with other parties to put together a government.

In the beginning, First-Past-the-Post voting enabled citizens to select an individual who they felt best reflected their interests to represent them. What has gone wrong with this system is that the development of political parties gave us the choice of also voting for a party. If we wanted to vote for a particular party, we had no choice but to vote for that party’s candidate. This approach can appeal to lazy people who are too self-centred to be bothered to find out anything about what is happening in the world around them. It also tends to seriously lower the quality of people elected to public office. If some of the Members of Parliament we have been electing recently were paid what they were worth, they would be lucky to be paid minimum wage.

The other basic problem with First-Past-the-Post is that when you have three or more candidates, you can have the situation where an individual wins with less that a majority of the vote. Some people feel cheated when someone of whom they do not approve wins with less than 50 per cent of the vote. The simple answer to this is to have a run-off election. You drop off the bottom feeders and choose between the leaders in another election. It is not a perfect solution but it works for many.

But please do not suggest a preferential balloting system. Marking a ballot for your first, second and maybe third choice takes the balloting process out of the hands of the electorate and into a backroom where the voters cannot follow the process. Any system that loses the confidence of the voters and fails to meet standards of transparency and openness fails the voter and quickly loses support. If you do not want to pay for a run-off election, please settle for what you get the first time.

One of these days, we will update the Democracy Papers that discuss world-wide voting systems. It is interesting to see that for many years now there has been a steady stream of researchers accessing those files on this web site. We welcome any questions, arguments or suggestions on the subject.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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