Federal Politics – Page 172

These shoes aren’t made for budgets.

February 8, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty bought new shoes the other day. It is part of the traditional run-up to delivering a federal budget. Somehow, he found one of the last companies in Canada still making shoes. He bought an inexpensive pair of steel-capped safety shoes. He is going to need them for the kind of budget he is about to deliver. It is expected to be a budget that does nobody any good.

This says a lot about the arrogance of Jim Flaherty. It also says a great deal about the “screw you” attitude of the Conservative government. Flaherty has made it very clear that he is going to tighten the strictures on Canadians for another year so that he can be the good guy just before next year’s election. It is a cynical attitude and demonstrates the level of hypocrisy we have sunk to in this country.

It shows you what it costs Canadians to vote for an ideology based political party. We all used to like Conservatives more when they understood that they were elected to serve the needs of the voters, not themselves. Even the most die-hard Conservatives among us are reaching the stage where they are fed up with the government working to its political agenda instead of looking after the store.

Flaherty and his friends have done nothing to stop the loss of jobs to low-wage countries as they try to drive down the expectations of Canadians. The lasts that used to be used to make Canadian shoes are long gone. Did you see the other day where we do not have enough rail cars to ship our bumper grain crop from last year? These are not the concerns of Conservatives.

Flaherty will crow about the number of jobs we gained last month but are they just retail? Are they full time? Are they minimum wage? The truth is that we need to create three to four times that many jobs every month to get the Canadian economy back to where we need it to be.

Jim Flaherty is a fool. He always reminds you of a bloated frog sitting on a lily pad croaking defiantly to the night sky. He does not care about Canadians. He puts some magical point of a balanced budget ahead of our concerns. He denigrates civil servants while denying them the tools to do their jobs. He has Parliament approve their spending and then denies them access to the funds.

Flaherty, in his safety shoes, will call on business to trickle down some wealth to Canadians. We have been trickled on enough, thank you.

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No support here for Royal Victoria Hospital.

February 6, 2014 by Peter Lowry

They must be Babel’s most successful thieves. They are the parking meters and parking lot gate machines at our local hospital. The amount hospital visitors have to pay to park is disgusting. It is nothing more than a tax on our health and love and caring. It is bad medicine. And something needs to be done about it.

And not just in Babel but across Ontario. This observation was stimulated by an excellent column last week in the Toronto Star by veteran reporter/commentator Carol Goar. Carol believes that citizens need to be relieved of high hospital parking fees and we could not agree more.

Carol started by commenting on Finance Minister Jim Flaherty removing the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on hospital parking. She neglects to note that there will be more than a few moons in the sky when any Ontario hospital gives that part of parking fees back to visitors. Flaherty simply increased the amount they are ripping off.

And you can forget Health Minister Deb Matthews stepping in. She turns a blind-eye to the whole business and says she is not involved. If she is not, just who the hell do our hospitals look to for some guidance in their ignorance?

When a Human Rights case was entered against our local Royal Victoria Hospital several years ago because of the discriminatory practices of new doctors in the community, the adjudicator listened only to the hospital’s lawyer. It was this high priced lawyer’s argument that hospitals had no control over the doctors who practiced there. The Ontario Medical Association claimed that it had already told doctors not to discriminate and therefore they did not take any responsibility. And suing individual doctors would have been counterproductive.

Locally it is like that useless Member of Parliament for Babel who has his staff run a charity event every year where the hospital is supposed to get the proceeds. We have yet to see an audit report on those events that would give us an indication if they are worthwhile or not. We know the MP loves them as they get him a lot of free publicity and he gets to play shinny with some former NHL players. Our guess is that these events are so over-politicized that they harm the hospital’s more legitimate fund raising activities. There are probably too many Conservatives on the hospital board to raise any alarms about it.

But frankly, Royal Victoria Hospital is probably just as bad as other hospitals throughout Ontario. They all have a hell of a lot to learn about community relations. It hurts patients when you deny them the visitors and the encouragement to get well that they need. The hospitals are making it outrageously expensive for out-patients and it is the medical staff that gets to deal with the outrage. Maybe the boards will find these hospitals easier to run if nobody wants to go there.

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Tories seek to subvert Elections Canada.

February 5, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Having crossed swords with Elections Canada in the past, it is easy to understand the Conservative disdain for the bureaucrats of Elections Canada. What we should question is the desire of the Harper government to add another layer of bureaucracy to what is already glacier-like policing of elections. Instead of taking four to six years to clean up political corruption, we can now take twice as long.

But before you buy into the Conservatives claiming this proposed elections act to be an improvement that they label as “Fair Elections,” you should ask: Fair for whom?

Taken in context with previous actions of this government, this elections act is just one more step in subverting Elections Canada to a lap dog for an Imperial Prime Minister’s Office. They have to let the little beast yap, but now it will be to no avail. The Tories hope to defang and emasculate Elections Canada by turning policing of elections over to people with little or no understanding of political processes in this country.

A fair and open committee discussion of this act could not only improve the act but save the Conservatives from the obvious accusations of conniving to change elections in their favour. Politicians have to deal with these issues in an atmosphere of collegiality and equality. The number of Members from the Tory caucus should not be the determining factor.

And the only way to deal with robocalls is to ban them. All of them! The Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission should put a stop to any and all recorded telephone calls to subscriber telephones. We pay for those telephones, not those who want to sell us something. The calls are not only intrusive, rude, annoying, demeaning, destructive and cheap but they are often misleading and serve as cover for those who would exploit recipients. They are grossly inaccurate for polls unless dealing in vast numbers. And they are often unanswered by those who can afford call display. The simple answer is that if the call is not worth the time of a human caller, we do not want the call.

The Conservatives are going to spend a great deal of effort trying to cloak this new act in respectability but the facts might differ. Only an equal input from each of the political parties and hearings with their various apparatchiks will give us an insight into vital changes needed in the Election Act.

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Saving the NDP—and the Senate?

February 4, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It took some digesting. Long-time New Democrat Robin Sears tried his hand in the Toronto Star the other day at damning Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau while hoping to rescue NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair. As a long-time Liberal Party apparatchik, we can only admire Sears’ pluck in taking on the task. And as a fellow public relations practitioner, we can only hope he was paid more for the task than the Toronto Star’s usually miserly pittance for such gratuitous op-eds.

What Sears attempted in his opinion piece was to claim that Justin Trudeau should have used party manipulation and process to sell the dumping of the Liberal Senators. He suggests that Justin Trudeau did the act as a stunt. He rudely accuses Trudeau of stuntsmanship on a level with Ted Cruz and Rob Ford.

While it is easy to visualize someone such as Sears’ former leader Ed Broadbent using party manipulation to achieve change, he might not be aware we have moved into a new century. Trudeau was up front and honest with everyone concerned.

Trudeau asked the Senators from the Liberal Caucus for a meeting. He went to that meeting and told the Senators what he intended to do. Did they react in outrage? Did they complain loudly and vociferously? Even after some sober second thought, most of the Liberal Senators accepted the action as reasonable. As many of them point out, this was the original intent of the Senate. Trudeau simply asked them to do their job.

Sears suggests that Justin Trudeau just looks like a student politician desperately trying to ape the adults. He seems to believe that Trudeau is attempting to sidestep any controversy should any Liberal Senator be caught by the Auditor General diddling his or her expense account. Sears can be reassured that the Conservatives, especially Mr. Harper’s more recent appointees, are far more likely to be caught up in any expanded scandal. They seem to have a much larger sense of entitlement.

While Justin Trudeau is reluctant to open the constitutional question at this time, he does acknowledge that Canadians need Senate reform. Sears seems to act like Trudeau is the leader of the opposition. He should worry more about his own leader Tommy Mulcair.

It was very generous of Sears to suggest that the Senate chamber could make an excellent wedding banquet hall. He should realize that there have been far too many bodies buried under that red carpet over the years to ensure wedded bliss.

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Revving up the Keystone pipeline controversy.

February 2, 2014 by Peter Lowry

It is called doublespeak. Bureaucrats use it to leave themselves open to whatever their political bosses prefer to do. They have not said yes and they have not said no. The American State Department issued its Final Environmental Impact Statement on the last day of January and leaves everyone in the same state as they were before it was issued. All the State Department functionaries did was get it out and get it done with as far as they were concerned. Like the Oracle at Delphi though you will learn that their findings are whatever you want them to be.

And in the classic stance of combatants, both sides of the argument about the controversial pipeline claimed victory. All that really happened was that others now get to have their say and, ultimately, President Barack Obama will make up his own mind whenever he gets around to it. His is the only opinion that seems to matter.

But how Mr. Obama is going to sift through all the half-truths, weasel words, obfuscation and out-right lies is the wonder. It is not that he is unused to that type of argument. His gut instinct on some of the concerns might be all that he needs. He has already made it very clear that he is concerned about the environmental impact. And the State Department telling him that something, even as big as the Keystone XL, is not going to drastically affect the pace of Canada’s Athabasca “oil” sands development, does not give him the out you might suppose.

The fact that the writers use the term ‘oil sands’ instead of the term ‘tar sands’ is a half-truth on which the tar sands exploiters are getting a pass. Read the State Department claim again that “no single project—not even TransCanada’s Keystone XL—will drastically affect the pace of Canada’s oilsands development.” Now tell us exactly what it means. The statement is gratuitous—it means nothing, to Americans.

What is important is the process continues. The President has no need to make a decision yet but there will be further pressures later in the year. Frankly, he will probably be too busy until the off-year elections in November as he does not want to face opposition control of both the House and the Senate for the last two years of his term of office. He has more important work to do and why set himself up for trouble with a decision that he does not have to rush?

The big lie is that the bitumen to be shipped on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline links to the Texas Gulf ports is for the refineries located there. The Texas refineries can get bitumen from Utah tar sands—and they do not want it. The Alberta bitumen is for shipment to world markets that do not care about the environmental damage it causes.

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Trashing the tacky of tradition.

February 1, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Speaking of mixed metaphors! Thinking of trashing Conrad Black over his recent bereavement brought to mind both the BBC’s Downton Abbey series and musical Fiddler on the Roof. It really takes both to put Conrad Black in perspective.

Downton Abbey is a period piece despite the fact that it was only 100 years ago. It is a wonderful dissection of the traditions and mores of the period. The noble Earl, his extended family, his retainers and the influences of his time interact in a poignant tale of the richness, refinement and basic cruelty of the times.

You probably have to be more of a mensch to really understand Fiddler on the Roof as it is a more allegorical discourse on the Jewish diaspora. For the rest of us, it is alternately joyous and sad and an enthralling piece of theatre. Based on a story by Sholem Aleichem, it is set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. There is a song on tradition that sets the audience up for the changes in the times.

And this thinking was stimulated by Conrad Black’s troubles. Poor Conrad, the Governor General has dispensed with not only his Order of Canada but his honour of being a Privy Councillor. Since the Order of Canada is a pin you can wear on your lounge suits or a thingy you can wear on a ribbon when dressing for a formal dinner, they will be missed. And since the Queen has not asked for advice from her Privy Council for quite some time, the P.C. after his name might not matter.

But, damn it all, back at Downton Abbey or in Tsarist Russia, it would have mattered. A gentleman wears these honours proudly. And, Conrad needs to understand that when a gentleman dishonours them, he gets more than a white feather. We are also tired of him overstaying his visit to Canada. He renounced his citizenship, after all.

Still, it is too bad that Canadians cannot find some proper way to bestow honours on those Canadians who achieve for us and do our country honour. The Order of Canada is forever blemished by some of the overt hypocrisy of this overly politicized honour.

Mind you, last year’s distribution of the Queen’s Jubilee Medals still ranks as the most politicized disgrace we have ever seen. Trust the Conservatives to come up with something that could be done in such a tacky way.

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Don’t send a cop to do a politician’s job.

January 31, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Julian Fantino is in trouble again. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is so bereft of talent in his Conservative Party ranks in Ottawa that he felt he had to give former Toronto and Ontario top cop Fantino the Veterans’ Affairs portfolio. That choice could haunt Harper long after he is thrown out of office by an angry electorate.

The Conservative Leader thought it might be a safe place to warehouse the retired ex-cop. He had no idea of the trouble that would cause. There is nothing compatible between a cop and the military. They are oil and water. And Fantino might be one of the oiliest.

Fantino is a wanna-be who started as a mall security guy and spent a police career in controversy. Judges seem to have had some stern words with him over the years for his forgetfulness over conditions for wiretapping. He is no stranger to lawsuits. He seems to often take refuge in the stance of a bully. And the gay community is not the only segment of society who might be leery of him.

One of the first things you learn if you ever work with cabinet ministers is that nobody really expects the minister to be expert in the work of their department or ministry. The role of the minister is political. This is the person who has to make nice. And who, in their right mind, would ever expect Julian Fantino to make nice as a politician.

When he ran in that by-election for Vaughan, some of us knew it was trouble right off the bat. We expected Fantino to not just kiss babies but to frisk them for weapons at the same time. We laughingly suggested that when he goes to knock on doors, he would take a SWAT team with him to make sure the homeowners would open the door.

And, to our horror, with his name recognition, he won. Harper gave him a series of low-level jobs. He was only in each of them briefly. Expecting Fantino to be sympathetic with fellow seniors was the saddest role. His nemesis was trying to explain the F-35 fighter aircraft costs. Peter Mackay had already bombed in that job and Fantino looked even more ridiculous.

Veterans’ Affairs is just the latest in the long series of Julian Fantino mishaps. He is a cop for goodness sake. What sympathy or understanding could he bring to any meetings with veterans? Sure, he apologized for that meeting the other day. Maybe those particular vets ambushed him. He walked into it.

But what if he ever has to meet with any vets in the future? Do our vets deserve that?

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Harper has his hair, Trudeau has balls.

January 30, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Canadians now know the definitive difference between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. And it is not just that Trudeau takes action and Harper takes your money. Harper only talks about Senate reform; Trudeau does something about Senate reform. He has kicked the Liberal Senators out of the Liberal Caucus. He did not need the provinces to agree to that. It was not a constitutional reform. It just made sense.

After all, what good are they doing as Liberals? It is not as though the Liberal label was doing them or the Liberal Party any good. They are a motley collection of retired bagmen, former Members of Parliament and party apparatchiks. They can do just as good a job of criticizing Conservative government legislation as independent Senators as they can as Liberals.

Stephen Harper has the questionable record in preaching Senate reform and then for appointing the most senators ever sent to the Senate during one session of Parliament. Nobody else ever wanted that record. Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was so sickened of the hypocrisy of government appointments that he asked incoming Prime Minister John Turner to make some of his appointments for him. (Which Turner did—landing him in the soup when Brian Mulroney attacked him for it in the Leader’s debate during the subsequent election.)

As much as this Senate action will give a boost to Justin Trudeau’s rating with voters, it is no solution to the basic questions about the Senate of Canada. Even if Senate appointments were taken away from the government of the day, there is just no place for an unelected Senate in Canada in the 21^st Century.

An elected Senate would require a constitutional reform and that appears to be something that Justin Trudeau fears. He was old enough in the 1980s to see how his father was being pilloried for pushing Quebec away in repatriating the constitution. He sees it as a question that he best avoid at this time. As much as he might agree with the need for such reform, he wants to put it off.

There have been more than a few policy proposals on constitutional reform that are supposed to be in the works for the upcoming policy conference and it will be interesting to see if any of them see the light of day. These things seem to have a way of getting lost.

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Welcome back, Mr. Harper and the Sweathogs.

January 28, 2014 by Peter Lowry

In the late 1970s American TV sitcom, Welcome back, Kotter, the character played by comedian Gabe Kaplan returned to his old high school to teach a remedial class of misfits. Somehow, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Senate misfits seem to be replaying the series. They are not only almost as funny but the various players in the current show are probably hoping that they can go on to greater roles like the kid who played sweathog Vinnie Barbarino, John Travolta.

Consider Nigel Wright. Is this a bit player? The R.C.M. Police have already made it clear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Chief of Staff broke the law when he gave Senator Mike Duffy a cheque for $90,000. It is hard to suggest many other people in politics who could casually write a cheque of that amount, because his boss, the Prime Minister, told him to solve the problem. Many people think that Nigel Wright should go to jail for that slipup. They are also probably hoping his boss shares his cell.

The one character in the series that never got any respect was the character of the vice-principal and later principal of the school: Mr. Woodman. New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair is perfect for this role. While he makes life difficult for Mr. Harper and his Senate sweathogs, this is a man with greater ambitions. He has used everything short of tears to get Mr. Harper to confess to his failings.

If they remade the popular sitcom today, the writers would be forced to include a stronger presence for a female in the role of a sweathog. Can you think of a better role for Senator Pamela Wallin? The feisty Conservative Senator can hold her own in that gentlemen’s club of retired political bagmen and she does not like being told of what they think she is entitled. Mr. Harper picked her and the Senate got stuck with her and we will be hearing more from her before too long.

And then there has to be a role for Senator Patrick Brazeau. The pugilistic Senator reminds us of the conflicted Juan Epstein character in the TV series who traveled between cultures and seemed to be a loser in all of them. Many think Senator Brazeau fell out of favour with Stephen Harper when he let Justin Trudeau beat the snot out of him in a charity boxing match.

While we can wax nostalgic over the old TV series, the sweathogs of the Canadian Senate are far from finished. We can expect reruns for the next two years at least.

It is like the last few bars of the series theme song: Welcome back, welcome back.

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The might, the right and the fight.

January 27, 2014 by Peter Lowry

Back in the 1800s when Oliver Mowat was Premier of Ontario, he had his best fights not with his provincial opponents but with the federal government. His skill as a politician and his knowledge of how to pick his fights kept him in the premier’s office for 24 years. It is fascinating today to watch Premier Kathleen Wynne attempt to follow his example. Her only mistake to-date was to bring in former Prime Minister Paul Martin as her advisor on the Canada Pension Plan squabble.

The first question is just what expertise does Martin bring to the table? As a former federal finance minister, he might be able to help read Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty for her but he is no expert on the Canada Pension Plan. And he is the last person from whom she should get advice about Stephen Harper.

And if you are going to set up Stephen Harper as the bogeyman in this exercise, you would hardly want to cloud the issue with former federal politicians. When Oliver Mowat took on his old law partner Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, it was mano a mano. They competed as equals. The lesser players have to be brushed aside.

One problem in this might be that Kathleen Wynne does not have any of the credentials of an Oliver Mowat. Mowat was a Reformer. He worked with George Brown and was a founder of the Ontario Liberal Party. While some Liberals today consider him myopic in his fighting for provincial rights, it was the right approach for the times. While conversely Sir John A. Macdonald had a vision for Canada, Oliver Mowat’s concern was Ontario. Both did their respective job.

But what is Wynne doing? It is unclear to voters just what she is proposing to do about pensions. We all know the Canada Pension Plan is inadequate. Unless she is proposing something flexible that can be easily adjusted or automatically responsive to needs, we are just building another problem for the future. That will take imaginative, creative thinking. It will also take a clear understanding of the economic impacts of reforming the system. And despite all Wynne’s bluster, Ontario has a responsibility to share its program with the rest of Canada. We hardly need another of our provincial governments going off on its own toot.

The problem with this provincial-federal dialogue is that the Wynne government is almost as right wing as the federal government. And she is also right about the Canada Pension Plan but the federals have the might—it is theirs to deal with. If you had a choice though, would you want to gain attention by fighting with the feds or fighting with nonentities such as her Conservative or New Democrat opponents?

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