Federal Politics – Page 168

“If they just want to play politics.”

April 19, 2014 by Peter Lowry

In an ill-conceived television commercial introduced Friday, Ontario’s Premier Wynne accuses her political detractors of playing politics. The commercial makes it look as though she is striding after a moving camera, trying to keep up with the teleprompter. It is an overall badly written and badly produced effort. It is also bad politics.

The use of the words ‘playing politics’ denigrates politics. Politics is not a game. Politics makes the rules for our society. It enables us to live together in peace. It enables us to work together to build infrastructure and a better life, protect our environment, nurture our children, be considerate of our aged, bring succour to our injured and ill and aid those less fortunate than ourselves.

And yet these people who pose in the political scene have the temerity to put down those whom they claim are ‘playing politics.’ Maybe they should start by questioning how they are serving the voters in the way they ‘play’ this political game.

Take those who promote ‘small government’ and ‘lower taxes.’ They cheat our children of opportunity. They minimize health care. They disrespect our environment. They abuse us of the money we give them to maintain and build our social structures. They set priorities that are contrary to our needs and wants.

And you wonder what kind of leadership your society is receiving when backroom deals are made between parties to stave off an election. An election should mean a cleansing of the political turmoil. It is needed. It is cathartic. It should never be delayed for political purposes and advantage.

Political parties are there to serve us. We do not blindly serve them. When we in our electoral district choose a representative, they are chosen to serve us. If they only serve their political party, they are betraying us. They are the go-between, the ambassador, the representative. To choose them just for their ideology is a betrayal of the role. To choose them for their leader is giving them only half the job. To not have them represent us is a waste of the cost of sending them to where the decisions are made.

People wonder at the widening gulf between the politicians and the voters. Is it a surprise when politicians put cant ahead of reason? Is it a surprise that the voters feel discomfited by the constant attack ads? Yes, we need more voters to pay attention to the political scene. We also need more politicians to pay attention to the voters.

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Wrong again, Justin Trudeau.

April 18, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Even in Julius Caesar’s day, the Rubicon was a very shallow river. Caesar’s legion waded across. Justin Trudeau dives in and ends up looking silly.

When writing about the metaphorical Rubicon that young Trudeau faced in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina riding, we were talking about his relationship with the Liberal Party. Instead of listening to the party, he is getting things screwed up even worse.

Instead of meeting with Christine Innes to resolve the questions about her candidacy, he gets pictures in the newspapers inviting Toronto Councillor Adam Vaughan to run for the Liberals in that riding. This is not solving the problem. This is making matters worse.

First of all, Adam Vaughan has a long way to go to establish some bona fides as a liberal. While the Liberal Party is a very welcoming and broad-based party, Mr. Vaughan has been keeping some very bad company for a long time. And there was not much love for his father as a liberal during Colin Vaughan’s years in Toronto television news.

There is no need to rehash the Trinity-Spadina situation but for Adam Vaughan to agree to not compete with MP Chrystia Freeland for the new riding of University-Rosedale next year is idiocy. That is a party decision and for Justin Trudeau to interfere in that party decision makes a liar out of him. Chrystia Freeland can stand on her own two feet. No candidate who needs to be coddled by the party leader is worth electing.

Four years ago, long before he became leader, Trudeau was hearing about the need for democracy in the party and he made it very clear throughout his campaign for the leadership that he wanted an open and democratic party. He is now making a mockery of his own promises.

What Trudeau has to understand is that you can hardly run a democracy with totalitarian tactics. Canadians are becoming more and more detached from politics because they do not see politics serving them. They can no longer relate through their local member of parliament to what is happening in Canada and around the world. This person fails to represent them because he or she represents their party and its leader instead of the voter.

So smarten up Justin. There are few chances to doing the job right.

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Conservatives confuse justice and retribution.

April 17, 2014 by Peter Lowry

You can see the desperation of the Conservative government in the bills it is trying to pass while still in office. You can see it in the names of their bills. The name of the bill has little to do with the content. It is intended to confuse—to give one message to supporters and another message to the masses. While the Fair Elections Act is a desperate attempt to subvert elections to conservative advantage, the Victims Bill of Rights shows the conservative desire to put retribution ahead of justice.

And the main problem is that conservatives do not really understand the difference. There is this naïve, almost childlike desire for retribution at the core of their approach. “I am going to get even with you,” the child says.

But getting even is not something you can easily write into law. An eye for an eye, or the ancient law of talion, that seeks equal retaliation for an injury, fails to allow for redemption of the doer. It ignores contrition. It says there is no hope for reform. It says humans exist in an animalistic environment, living by instinct and incapable of learning. It is an attitude that lacks hope for the human condition.

The difference in thinking is that where a conservative wants to build prisons; a liberal wants to build society. A liberal wants a cognitive system of justice and courts that can seek to heal as well as adjudicate. Conservatives try to force the judiciary into rubber-stamping fixed penalties where liberals seek to encourage creative solutions to human controversy.

And bear in mind, the Supreme Court—that is now dominated by Conservative appointees—recently told the government that the miss-named Truth in Sentencing Act that was passed in 2009 needs fixing. The justices said the act needed to be less stringent in giving sentencing credits to people held for months in jail before a trial. Added to the recent rejection of the Prime Minister’s appointment of Justice Marc Nadon, Mr. Harper and his conservatives are not batting a 1000 at the Supreme Court. Nor are they getting much of an approval rating from all Canadians.

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Justin Trudeau is at his Rubicon.

April 16, 2014 by Peter Lowry

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with a single legion, he and his soldiers became outlaws under Roman law of the time. It was the Roman mob that saved him from arrest on his arrival in Rome. He was still their hero. In that sense Justin Trudeau is still the hero to the Liberal Party but he is doing himself irreparable harm with many activists by the stand he has taken on the nomination in Toronto’s Trinity-Spadina. He has broken his word.

Regrettably Christine Innes, former Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina, has had to launch a $1.5 million lawsuit just to get Trudeau’s attention. All Justin has to do is sit down and talk with Christine and we expect that the whole thing can be smoothed over. If he is not willing to do that, he will be picking up pieces of a broken Liberal Party between now and the election call next year.

Justin and his team could find that they are in trouble in up to a third of the potentially new Liberal ridings in Ontario and British Columbia. He will lose impetus in Quebec and east and wonder why.

It was because Julius Caesar knew and understood the Roman mob that he did bring his soldiers across the Rubicon. Ontario campaign functionary David MacNaughton seems to have no understanding of the attitudes of the average riding association membership in the province. The Liberals who have fought for the past 20 years to restore democracy to the Liberal Party are not going to let this stupidity in Trinity-Spadina go by.

This situation is a serious affront to people who believe in a strong and democratic Liberal Party. As has been said too often in the past, a leader can only lead where the party wants to go.

As things stand at the moment, the Liberals have probably given Trinity-Spadina to the New Democrats by default. Christine Innes is a bruised candidate who did nothing wrong. If we are going to blame Innes for her husband’s past shenanigans, the party will lose support from legions of women activists. Hell, if Trudeau and team want to pillory Christine Innes’ husband Tony Ianno, we might bring the rotten tomatoes.

But that is not the point. The party leadership has to stay out of candidate selection. Open party selection means that the Liberal Party will get some very good candidates and the odd not so good candidate. That is what happens in a democratic system. And democracy is worth it.

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The boredom of bitumen.

April 14, 2014 by Peter Lowry

The wife does not want to read another commentary on tar sands bitumen. She thinks that some people who worry about bitumen should get a life. You have to admit that it does give one pause when writing yet another commentary on bitumen, its producers, its pipeline devotees and its favourite government.

But it is necessary. Hearing of the Pembina Institute’s analysis of where we humans stand in the battle against global warming is both disquieting and concerning. Frankly, folks, we are losing the bloody battle. We are not only going to lose coastlines down the road but we are going to lose the ability to feed the world’s billions of people. And in case you are wondering why the world’s climate has become so unstable, why not ask the people who are releasing tonnes of carbon into our atmosphere every day.

Who are the idiots who are paying outrageous prices today for gasoline for big gas guzzling vans? Who thinks fracking (hydraulic fracturing of the subterranean structure of our earth) is a smart way to find more polluting oil? Or should we just pollute even more by exploiting tar sands? And why are we shipping millions of barrels of bitumen and fracked oil around North America in unsafe oil tank cars? Do the railroads really have to have their share of road kill?

But was that not a wonderful message the citizens of Kitimat, B.C. sent to the federal government and to Enbridge Pipelines the other day? It can be summed up as ‘take your pipeline and shove it!’ They do not want the pipeline, the oil tankers, the pollution, the bribes and an abused planet. Bless them.

And pipeline people lie you know. We keep reading this hogwash about the Texas Gulf refineries. TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline is supposed to send bitumen to these refineries. The truth is that those refineries can get all the American bitumen they want from much closer than Alberta. The TransCanada pipeline plan is to ship bitumen through those Texas Gulf oil ports to countries that do not care about the high pollution of refining it.

And then there is Canada’s Conservative government. These are the brain-dead ones who are waiting for the tar sands exploiters to tell them what the pollution standards should be in the Athabasca region of Alberta. In the meantime, the tars sands tailing ponds throughout the area are polluting the soil and the rivers and taking away the livelihood of the aboriginal peoples.

At least we Canadians can do something about government. Just you wait Mr. Harper, just you wait!

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Goddamn the CPR; God save the CBC.

April 13, 2014 by Peter Lowry

One of our favourite Canadian journalists, Allan Fotheringham, wrote years ago about a Saskatchewan farmer who had everything go wrong who ends up blaming all his problems on the CPR. That is understandable. The Canadian Pacific Railroad has been a major factor in the economy of our west since Confederation.

But other than that cornball W.O. Mitchell series, Jake and the Kid on radio and television, what has the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ever done to the west? Certainly Corner Gas and Little Mosque on the Prairies were not that bad? Even Rex Murphy on Cross Canada Checkup listens to the west occasionally. It must be the consistency of ignorant ideologues that turns Conservatives against a government owned broadcasting enterprise. They just do not like the CBC.

The Harper government has been causing the CBC the death of a thousand cuts since squeaking into power in 2006. They also had some help from their free-enterprise friends. Mind you with friends such as Bell Canada, Shaw, Rogers and Péladeau, Harper is travelling with his own improvised explosive devices. These people only hate each other more than they hate the CBC. First CTV outrageously took the Olympics away from the CBC after many years of excellent pioneering work. Then Rogers screwed the CBC out of its iconic Hockey Night in Canada. These people are neither decent nor are they worthy of trust.

And what the stupid Conservatives do not realize is that they are compromising the trust that Canadians need to have in broadcasters. Canadians need fair and unbiased reporting of their world. The CBC and Radio Canada set that standard and the rest of Canada’s broadcast Quislings have been letting us down.

Watching CTV or Global news over recent years has become an increasingly boring repetition of very little news interlaced with extensive self promotion for the networks. It is not only boring and bad television but it is turning Canadians away from the news of their own country.

And it is the same as the reason the railways are more eager to ship tar sands bitumen to our seaports than grain—it simply pays better. And who caused that? All the Conservatives have proved in office is that they do not know how to run railways or broadcast networks.

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Shoring up the declining empire.

April 11, 2014 by Peter Lowry

If you are destined to become a saviour of the British royalty, you start young. It was eight-month old Prince George who flew in to wow the colonials in New Zealand the other day. Somehow his mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, carried him down the steps of the aircraft without tripping. (She also made it down without the strong wind blowing her skirt over her head.) At least young George was rescued shortly afterwards for a diaper change and naptime.

But they were there to quiet the natives. Not the Maori natives who are actually quite loyal to the monarchy but the colonials in both New Zealand and Australia who are tiring of the monarchy. The word is that down under they heartily dislike the Prince of Wales and his consort. It would have been counterproductive to send those two.

But it is the duty of the younger royals these days to shore up the crumbling empire. Young Harry is the aging playboy, sowing his oats throughout the civilized and uncivilized world. Catherine and Billy still need to do some breeding of pretenders to the throne to make sure of continuity into the future.

Even the old Queen is doing her bit and ventured to Rome to take communion with the Pope. (That is a joke, folks. If she did that, there would be rioting in the streets back home in Old Blighty.) The Queen and the Pope actually met as equals and exchanged gifts of peace and friendship.

Meanwhile, back in Canada, Prime Minister Harper keeps assuring Her majesty of his country’s undying loyalty to the Crown. Whether that loyalty will survive next year’s federal election remains to be seen.

But it is not just the questions about the Monarchy that worry many Canadians. The Senate of Canada remains the elephant in the room whenever anything touches on the Canadian Constitution. While Canadian politicians remain in dread of anything that might reopen the Constitution, there is no question but they want the Senate questions resolved as eagerly as the next citizen. Canada is long past the time that it can have an appointed chamber of its parliament.

The British Royalty is going to get caught in the crossfire. It will be collateral damage. It will probably be regulated to something in Canada’s past as we move on to a more positive future. It is time we were rid of the foolishness of the monarchy.

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Reading the entrails of the Quebec election.

April 10, 2014 by Peter Lowry

When you kill the beast, rip out its guts and use them to foretell the future, all you really need to do next is have a long, cleansing shower. And that shower is what all the pundits need after Monday’s provincial election in Quebec. The election was a watershed. It told of change. It forecasts a very different future.

The most interesting forecasts were for next year’s federal election. All federal parties took the outcome as a good omen. The drop of the Parti Québécois to just a quartile of the vote was welcome news to all. It left the former Bloc Québécois in limbo. The Bloc lacks the effective base to return to its former point of leverage in Ottawa. It puts the Quebec Orange Wave from 2011 under the microscope and you can expect most of its members will be found wanting.

Barring one of those saviours who tend to crop up occasionally in Quebec, the 2015 election will be a direct contest between Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. With this provincial election producing renewal and change, next year offers little opportunity for Mulcair and his troops in Quebec.

In fact, this might be one of those rare Canadian general elections where the political messages are the same in both languages and from coast to coast. And it is also the first general election to reflect the strongly Western shift of Canada’s voters. Stephen Harper might as well concentrate on Ontario and west. That is where he has to mine his Conservative votes and mine them he will.

If Harper can leave the rest of the country split between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party, he can get that second majority he wants. As his grip is weakened on his own party, he has to spread divisiveness in ridings he cannot win. He has little to win but much to lose in Quebec.

The reason we wanted Justin Trudeau to do something during the Quebec election was to give him an impetus into next year. Quebec Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard said it very well during the campaign that bilingualism is the key to Quebec’s future. We all held our breath at the time as we were not sure of the political feedback. The naysayers lost.

It is Trudeau who can exemplify that future to all Canadians. His pride in his Quebec roots is self-evident. His outlook as a Canadian encompasses everyone’s hopes. He is not his father. He is a leader in his own right.

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Thomas Mulcair has been found lacking.

April 8, 2014 by Peter Lowry

In a recent commentary about women and politics, we left out Catherine Pinhas, New Democratic Leader Thomas Mulcair’s wife for the past 47 years. The reason she was not mentioned is that she is not political. She takes him away from the political world and is not your typical mistress of Stornoway, the Official Opposition Leader’s residence in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park area. Being apolitical, she can be both a help and a hindrance to her husband.

Mind you, being apolitical is not necessarily as much of a negative influence as it was with Maryon Pearson when her husband was Opposition Leader and then Prime Minister. The usually reserved Mrs. Pearson made it very clear to media and the PM’s political aides that she considered his running the country to be something of a bother to her.

Catherine Pinhas would be much more of a refuge for Thomas Mulcair and both claim her support of his political activities to be a positive bond. The only negative would be her maintaining her French citizenship. Nobody has really dug into what it means to have a citizen of a foreign country as wife of the Opposition Leader or as wife of a potential Prime Minister. As Mulcair holds dual citizenship with Canada and France, there could be many questions asked of his possible conflicts as well.

Those of us who have followed the actions of Mulcair in the Leader of the Opposition role probably consider chances of him becoming Prime Minister as quite remote. Most political analysts see him and the New Democrats reverting to third party status after the next election. In the meantime, he can enjoy Stornoway.

You would have to be something of a parliamentary channel devotee on television to appreciate Mulcair’s excellent role prosecuting Prime Minister Harper’s more grievous errors and choices as Prime Minister. The opposition leader has been in full flight on the Senate scandal and more recently on the quite inappropriately named Fair Elections Act. While Mulcair has been doing this vital job, Justin Trudeau has been out across the country laying the groundwork for the next election. It is the election that both Harper and Mulcair will lose.

And Thomas Mulcair knows it. It is not just the polls. Polls change but people do not change their basic nature. You could see it in Mulcair’s attack the other day on Trudeau. You could see his frustration in accusing Trudeau of knowing nothing about the middle class. You could see it in his saying that he was the only federal party leader who could vote in the Quebec provincial election. It was petty. It was futile. He said that he voted Liberal.

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The pheromones of political power.

April 6, 2014 by Peter Lowry

You can listen to the man but study the wife. Too many people think of politics as a man’s game but the real answers are from their women. Laureen Harper tells you more about Prime Minister Harper than he will tell you. Sophie Grégoire tells you a lot about her husband Justin Trudeau. These women are also politicians. Not all political wives are political but you better know about them before you write them off.

A political apparatchik can work for the husband but it is the wife who has the last word when he goes to bed at night. She is the confidante and she holds his ego. And what you find as you watch over the years, the female is the tougher in the game of politics.

Two interesting examples of women in politics who are currently in the news are Conservative Eve Adams MP for Brampton South-Mississauga and Liberal Christine Innes. Eve Adams is the fiancé of Conservative Party apparatchik Dimitri Soudas. Christine Innes was the candidate twice in Trinity-Spadina for the Liberals and is married to the former MP Tony Ianno. Both of these women are fighting mad and their respective leaders need to watch out.

People write off Eve Adams at their own risk. Sudbury-born of Hungarian immigrant parents, she has the sense of entitlement and privilege of a true Conservative. When she picked Dimitri Soudas for her favours, she was picking high on the Conservative tree. They have made a major investment in that new riding out of Oakville and she is digging in her heals to fight for it. While Harper fired Soudas for his supposed mismanagement of the situation, he does not have the goods on Adams to just brush her off. He needs the party to solve his problem

And the party will. This woman’s sense of entitlement has annoyed more than a few Conservatives. Nor is there a high regard for Dimitri Soudas among the rank and file of the party. Harper just has to let things run their course. She will be defeated.

Not so with Christine Innes. The Liberal battle in Trinity-Spadina is a whole different kettle of fish. Sure a lot of the problems have to do with people wanting to get even with Innes’ husband Tony Ianno but she has strong support in her own right. And she did nothing wrong. That riding is hers to win.

Justin Trudeau has to back off. If he does not, he has made a lie of his promise to have open nominations. He also has to leave the problems to the party. And he has to act fast. He cannot let this problem fester while Harper holds the strings on the by-election for that riding. It is simply not worth it.

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