Federal Politics – Page 169

The perseverance of Pierre Poilievre.

April 4, 2014 by Peter Lowry

In a caucus of drones, Prime Minister Stephen Harper must have searched hard for one with the traits and training of a pit bull. He found that he had just the one in the person of Member of Parliament Pierre Poilievre. Harper made him a Minister of State less than a year ago to push through the Conservative’s massive and undemocratic elections act. And Poilievre has certainly kept up his end. He has stayed at the helm as the ship carrying the legislation goes down.

Nobody paid much attention to Poilievre before. There was not much to report. His francophone name was a bit misleading as he was born and educated in Calgary. He came east and chose to run in 2004 in the electoral district of Nepean-Carleton in the Ottawa area of Ontario. Nepean-Carleton is a relatively safe Conservative seat.

And one of the early holders of that seat provincially was now federal Foreign Minister John Baird. Poilievre is a close friend of Ottawa’s Bobbsey Twins Baird and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Poilievre and the Prime Minister also shared a mentor in the person of Professor Tom Flanagan at the University of Calgary. Poilievre’s ultra-Conservative credentials are impeccable. And as Canadians can see, he is truly loyal to his leader Stephen Harper.

Poilievre has stayed the course with the huge elections act as it has been shredded by experts in election law. He has been steadfast and stuffily supportive of the bill, as is, from day one. While some Tory insiders are now saying that he might relent on some minor aspects of the bill, he has given no public indication of anything other than staying the course with the existing bill.

While the Conservatives have set time limits on the bill’s various stages to try to force it to be passed before the summer, there is no time for the large numbers of amendments the act really needs. Patchwork repairs are not the answer as there are still too many concerns about the act itself.

If the Conservatives use their majority in the House and Senate to pass the act as it is, they will be opening themselves up to a corrupted election next year that nobody will trust or respect. It would help the Conservatives destroy Canada’s vaunted democracy.

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Pot prices plummet.

April 2, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Who said that nobody benefits from the Conservative’s mismanagement of the country? Look at what they have done with growing marijuana. By trying to regulate the growing of everyone’s favourite toke, the Tories have driven the street price for a nickel bag down to as low as $2 per gram. The Tories might have driven our economy down the crapper but they have at least lowered the price of getting high.

And these big, new commercial grow-ops thought they had struck the mother lode! They were anticipating prices for legally prescribed medical marijuana to get them as much as $13 per gram. In their dreams, maybe! The incompetent Tories have got themselves caught up in legal challenges that could take a long time to unsnarl.

In the meantime any prescription holder or friend of a prescription holder can legally grow a few hundred kilograms of pot for ‘personal consumption.’ And the government’s chosen instruments of marijuana grow-op operators will be choosing between meeting the market or bankruptcy.

Mind you, the more aggressive grow-ops that the government supports can optimize the THC level in their pot to five or six times that of the bush weed that is most often sold by street vendors. At $2 a gram, you might have to toke up more often.

In the meantime, there seems to be a growing list of medical practitioners writing prescriptions for pot. They will first give you a serious lecture on the dangers of smoking and then write you a script that could keep you seriously high. It is probably best you use the pot in brownies. This would be helped if someone does the chemical computations as to how much fibre there is in the pot. The chances are that pot might be bad for your lungs but good for your colon. Anything is better than broccoli.

But if you are worried about the calories consumed with your brownies, you might be better off just sprinkling the cannabis on your Greek salad. Now you can be lean, trim, smoke-free, well regulated and high at the same time.

We also believe that liquor stores are the wrong place to sell pot. Yes, they have the experience in controlling sales to underage users but pot would be sold more properly in Bulk Barn stores. By staying away from fancy packaging and advertised branding, we can help our legitimate medical marijuana users by keeping the price down. And by selling it at Bulk Barn, we would sure take away the product allure.

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Does Harper have to show you how Justin?

April 1, 2014 by Peter Lowry

No Justin, you do not have to listen to some cranky left-wing liberal from the boonies of Ontario. When we first met four years ago, you were as easy to read as an open book. You had a direction and you were on your way. And we wish you well. Do not get us wrong on that. You are going to be the next Prime Minister of Canada. All you have to do is keep your word and be yourself.

There are two current problems with this. The first is keeping your word to the Liberal Party about open nominations and the second is about this book that is supposed to be about you. The first item is serious and the second is silly.

The Liberal Party of Canada hardly needs Prime Minister Harper to show us how to keep our word. While we can think of more than a few reasons why Harper might want to lose Conservative Party executive director Dimitri Soudas, his being fired is Harper’s proof that he is keeping his word about open nominations. It was you Justin who got Harper into this. You promised that the Liberal Party would have open nominations and Harper was just following your lead.

The point is Justin, you are not judge and jury over who can be a Liberal candidate. The purpose of open nominations is that while you get some problems, you also get some winners. You have to let the party solve its own problems. Get out of the nomination process now before it is too late. Fire David MacNaughton in Ontario and press on.

And speaking of presses, we hear you are going to have an autobiography published this fall. Why? Did you get the idea from the Obama campaign for the presidency in the United States? Do you realize that the first three copies of your book sold are going to go to some very good researchers from the Conservative Party? They will tear apart every word in that book to use against you. Unless it is just a coffee table book full of family pictures, it is guaranteed to give you more headaches than votes.

Another Canadian politician who has tried this approach recently is former Member of Parliament Olivia Chow. She is using it for her campaign for Mayor of Toronto. Her book will be on the remainders shelves before the Toronto election. So will yours.

Despite the shallowness of their books, Barack Obama and Olivia Chow had objectives for them. Olivia had a family story of coming to Toronto. Barack had the struggles of an educated black man working in South Chicago where racial tensions can often run higher than in Alabama. Nobody needs to hear how tough it is to be born at 24 Sussex Drive.

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He lies, you know.

March 30, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It was a critical moment. It was not quite an epiphany. It was the realization that the much acclaimed panel on CBC late night news is not as smart as we thought it was. This is the panel with the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert, Post Media’s Andrew Coyne and pollster Bruce Anderson. And if news reader Peter Mansbridge would just shut up and let the panellists talk, many think this would be a consistently excellent bit of television.

But not when the panel buys into the lies of Stephen Harper. These people are supposed to be smarter than that. Can you imagine trying to go to sleep last Thursday night with images of the three pundits bowing low before Emperor Stephen Harper? The three of them actually said they believed Mr. Harper was acting like a world leader and doing some good for the Ukraine.

And if they believe that maybe they would like to go salmon fishing in Mr. Harper’s favourite tar sands tailing ponds in Athabasca. If they honestly believe Harper is a world leader, they should explain to us what Harper and friends were doing in Israel recently.

If they do not realize that Stephen Harper is flagrantly flying where and when he pleases to win votes back in Canada, these pundits have been smoking too many of Justin Trudeau’s favourite after-dinner toke up.

The only thing that we can say in their defence is that foreign excursions have never won a Canadian Prime Minister re-election before. Both Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney made world tours before losing office. Even Lester Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize and could never win a majority government.

These pundits are just promoting another stupid lie on Stephen Harper’s behalf. He hardly needs the help. Stephen Harper is a master at lying. He was spending Canadian taxpayers’ money advertising the success of his job action plan before the provinces agreed or one person was trained. If that is not an expert liar, you must have a new definition of lying.

Harper is the guy who wants the Americans to tell us how to protect the environment. Hell, they have already done enough damage to their own country. We hardly need their help to screw up ours.

Maybe the CBC’s brilliant panel should explain to Canadians what good this new Fair Elections Act is going to do. They had better be quick or too many Canadians are going to get the impression that it is just another way to help elect Conservatives.

But most Canadians have their own answer to the question, “When has Mr. Harper lied to you before?” Ask any veteran.

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Is the White House burning?

March 29, 2014 by Peter Lowry

The last time Canada and the United States went to war on some pretext, our British troops went to Washington and set fire to the White House. That was 200 years ago. The current campaign against the American capitol is being run by the Ottawa office of a communications company called Fleishman-Hilliard. In a time of false austerity in Ottawa, this company has a pot of Canadian gold to win the hearts and minds of U.S. law-makers to the side of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Why Canadian taxpayers are funding this campaign is a question for another time. The Harper Conservatives have been pouring Canadian money into the Keystone XL money pit for quite some time. And everything tells us that the TransCanada Pipelines project will lose. The intense pressure from U.S. environmental lobby groups has been unabated. The attempts by Stephen Harper to cajole, threaten, convince and plead with President Obama have been a wasted effort.

Obama has identified the Canadian Prime Minister for what he is. And Obama does not like what he sees. Harper is a stuffed-shirt, right-wing ideologue and Obama has met and fought with that type of people during all his adult years. He is surrounded by generations of right-wing Republicans and loony-tunes Tea Party activists in his nation’s capitol and he knows how they think, how they react and just how useless they are to humanity.

President Obama must have been appalled at that G7 minus Russia meeting in The Hague recently. Here was the Canadian Prime Minister with his war sabre at the ready leading the charge of the light-minded brigade against Vladimir Putin across the Eurasian Steppe.

It could not have been more pointed in Obama’s speech to the European Community after the meeting in The Hague that he did not agree with the Canadian Prime Minister. During the, as usual, eloquent speech, he talked about America and the EU—he never once mentioned Canada.

Obama could do that because he knows Harper’s Achilles heel. Harper does not have Canadians onside. As much as Harper postures and pretends, he has built an animosity to his energy plan for Canada. Canadians distrust his pipeline plans to the East and West coasts. They are coming to understand his destruction of the manufacturing economy of the eastern half of the country. They are seeing what he is allowing to happen to the environment. Obama knows that Harper is in trouble.

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Crockatt competes for CRAP crown.

March 27, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Calgary Centre Member of Parliament Joan Crockatt has taken an early lead in this year’s CRAP Awards. In an award category usually dominated by party leaders and cabinet ministers, this year’s winner could easily be the Conservative backbencher from Calgary.

Fondly referred to as Crappies, CRAP awards are named for the political penchant for speeches and news releases that are nothing more than Consolidated Reports on Approved Policies (CRAP). These are the pre-approved positions taken by political parties to expedite the production of speeches and news releases. This provides material to fill the gaps between anything that might be meant to be meaningful. All parties participate in this as it facilitates rapid response to requests for speeches and information.

Crockatt’s entry in the March sweepstakes is on behalf of TransCanada Pipelines’ proposed Energy-East pipeline. It came as a news release to blogs identified as discussing pipelines. The distribution list would likely be provided by TransCanada Pipelines. It gives the imprimatur of the Canadian government to the information contained.

And the information contained is CRAP at its best. Despite the obvious error in the first paragraph describing the whining of New Brunswick Mayor Mel Norton, he is actually Mayor of Saint John, New Brunswick. Nowhere in the release did it explain how the proposed West-to-East pipeline to Saint-John could do anything for the economy of the entire province.

A pipeline to the new bitumen loading port that Irving Oil has offered to build at Saint John might contribute a few dollars to the provincial economy but it is certainly no game changer. It is hardly going to bring New Brunswick into the “new” oil and gas economy.

It is the broad range of hyperbole and direct falsehoods that make Crockatt’s release eligible for the top crappie. The release was supposedly based on a hearing by the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources. It is hard to imagine the reaction of opposition members of the committee to such ridiculous statements as she reports in the news release.

Crockatt has set a new standard in news releases that will be hard to match in the months to come. She might have a lock on the best CRAP of the year.

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On a play date with the Hair in Holland.

March 25, 2014 by Peter Lowry

The Hair and friends are not going to let that kid Vladimir play in the G8 sandbox this time. The newly described G7 are meeting in The Hague this week and all the talk is about the member who is not there. It is all about Vladimir the Victor: He corrected history and easily won the Crimean War.

And the emasculated G7 are sitting around asking each other what to do. If they would just let Old Vladimir play, he would certainly be the one to tell them what they can do with themselves.

Now the G7 can understand Neville Chamberlain’s historical return to England from the Munich Conference with his claim of “Peace for our time”!

But the key question all countries should be raising at this point is: What is the objective of this play date? Are the kids really learning to play nice? Why do we pay for this? Is it just a place to posture? Is it necessary to have a place to say this important leader or that important leader is my friend?

The reality is that these meetings are to improve understanding. The ground work has hopefully all been done by underlings. This is a venue to come to conclusions and sign the deals. If you have nothing to decide or sign, is it just a very expensive social event?

Nobody at that social event in The Hague is going to suggest going to war. And that is not just because Putin can fight back. Russia might be the only relatively civilized country in the world that still thinks might is right. The only country capable of decimating the Russian population is the United States of America and President Obama will tell you that he has his own problems.

And for the rest of those kids, France and Germany have historical reality to face in that they know invading Russia is a lost cause before you start. They know that between the size of the Russian army and the cold of the Russian winter, nobody can win. Why waste your time and money?

But the Hair is still posturing. Nobody seems to have the heart to tell him that while they are willing to have their picture taken with him it is the only help they can give him for next year’s election. Canadians already know what a mess the Hair has already made of Canada’s foreign relations and it is going to take years to restore our country to its former good reputation.

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

You can do better Justin.

March 22, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Now the kids are fighting. Ontario Liberal campaign organizer David MacNaughton is rejecting potential candidates. You get the bellicose complaints of Zach Paikin in Hamilton who is obviously trying to make a name for himself (other than his father’s). And you show up in Trinity-Spadina to try to smooth the waters and nobody is happy. You do not get many chances to do this right Justin, so listen up.

As Leader of the Liberal Party, you promised open nominations in the ridings. You have not done much else but, we took you at your word. Now you have gone back on your word. You are letting your appointee David MacNaughton make you look bad. It is not only poor timing but it only portends stupider moves in the future.

We have about 19 months before election day and here you are screwing up early. If you let MacNaughton off the hook this time, what is he going to pull later? We are all for second chances but someone has to assume the mea culpa position and it cannot be the party leader. As Prime Minister Harper has proved many times, the purpose of having underlings is to have someone to blame when things do not work.

Former campaign co-chair Senator David Smith would never let it come to this. The late Senator Keith Davey trained him for years before he finally let David take over the party’s electoral reins. While a new broom is often the answer, Justin, there is also something to be said for experience.

Both Davey and Smith could have told you that the problem could be solved with a few telephone calls. They could work those phones like magicians. And you always wanted to be called because you could offer a solution, not because you were the problem.

A five minute conversation with Christine Innes about Trinity-Spadina and the future is all that was needed. It had to be with someone she trusts. She is a savvy Liberal Party supporter and she knows what she wants. And she does not have to take any crap from MacNaughton. She soldiered against the New Democrat’s Olivia Chow through two elections in tough times. Now the tide is changing and this is when she can win.

MacNaughton has to understand that a political party is not a business operation. Nothing is in private and it takes more than a news release to solve problems. As for young Paikin, you might just give him MacNaughton’s job. That would shut him up fast.

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

There’s a hard-ass on the lily-pad.

March 19, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It would be better to note the resignation of Prime Minister Harper but a change of guard at Finance is a small start. At least we will not have Jim Flaherty croaking from the lily pond any more. Flaherty has been on divergent paths with the big frog Stephen Harper for the past several months and his abrupt resignation was not unexpected.

A cabinet position in government is very much like the frogs in a lily pond. If you croak too loudly, you draw attention from predators. If you are quiet, others jump on your lily-pad and you are in danger of drowning. And if you all croak too loud in unison, you are liable to annoy the neighbouring homeowners and they will end up draining the lily pond.

But how long a hard-ass such as Joe Oliver can sit on the Finance lily-pad, we have no idea? All we know is that he has none of the leprechaun instincts of Jim Flaherty and there is no pot of gold waiting for Oliver. All Joe Oliver has proved in the Environment portfolio is that there are great gaps between him and the truth and his loyalty to the chief frog is unquestioned.

All of this means that you are most unlikely to hear of Joe Oliver fighting with that nice cabinet colleague Jason Kenney from Calgary. Mind you, Joe Oliver might not be a close friend of Mr. Harper’s fishing buddy, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford either but that might not be a problem for long. The one thing for sure is that Oliver is not going to question Stephen Harper’s commitment to income splitting promised for next year’s election.

It would be unfair to say that Joe Oliver has done nothing in his past three years as Natural Resources Minister. He actually believes that Canadians are wonderful hewers of wood. He has made speeches commending Canadians for cutting down trees. It is only when wondering what else he has accomplished for Canadians that you begin to question.

We are all looking forward to learning what Joe Oliver will want to do in his new job. He has done just about nothing in his old job and some of us might not be surprised if he does nothing but what he is told in his new job.

But how a hard-ass like Oliver can sit on a lily pad for long is the real question.

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Whose robocall are you?

March 18, 2014 by Peter Lowry

A small change in a robocall the other day was an announcement of the name of a company responsible for the call and a toll-free number to verify the call. And even if you were able to write down the number and you called it, was it real? The truth is that the call could have been from a legitimate survey company or from any of the political parties. There will be a tremendous growth in those automated calls over the months to come and the numbers you press at your end will be recorded and added to growing political databases.

But similar to the households where a four-year old is allowed to answer the telephone, when you call this household, you get random numbers pressed to hopefully mess up the system. Robotic telephone calls are a disgrace allowed for some reason by Prime Minister Harper’s appointees on the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The calls are intrusive, unappreciated and annoying to most Canadians. And if the callers do not want to spend the time and effort to have a human call, they get the answers they deserve.

Yet, to some extent, they work. The cheapness of robocalls allows real survey companies to greatly extend the number of calls and the size of the respondent pool can hide some of the inaccuracies. By dealing in larger respondent pools and a higher frequency of calls, survey companies can develop trends and patterns that can be mathematically translated into potential vote results.

But it is the political party databases that are of much greater concern today. They not only contain your household’s answers to voting intention but they also note what you said to canvassers, if you had a political sign and if you voted or not in the past couple elections. It can include information that will cause one party to hound you to go to the polls while another will try to misdirect you to the wrong voting place.

It is hardly surprising in the age of social media that so much information about us is so readily available. Maybe it is not the data but how it is used, we should question. If you are a member or contributor to any political party, you are going to be constantly spammed for more contributions. It is a matter of only being able to cut off the spam if you also cut off the party information.

But if you are foolish enough to tell these automated calls how you expect to vote, you get what you deserve. If you have ever wondered why the Green Party and the NDP have such high figures in opinion polls and then lower results in the actual vote, it is smart voters who consider their voting intention confidential. They effectively park their vote with another party until the election.

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