Category: Federal Politics

Is Marc Garneau leadership Plan B?

by Peter Lowry

It seemed redundant when MP Marc Garneau announced his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party yesterday. It felt like the return of Michael Ignatieff. It also told Canadians there are now misgivings about crowning young Trudeau. Well, nobody ever told you that all Liberals in Canada are of a like mind.

You hardly need to be savant to know that young Trudeau’s campaign is already running on empty. It lacks careful planning and a strong, experienced organization and the people writing for him are putting him into an awkward box. He is being cast on the extreme right of the party, he is pandering to the West and he caused a train wreck with his support for the Chinese buying Nexen. His leadership campaign is a Quebec-centric and amateur effort. It lacks a balanced understanding of Canada.

And it is not as though we have a lot of choice here. MP Joyce Murray from Vancouver Quadra is definitely a breath of fresh air but she has a long and difficult climb to get herself into a position where the Conservatives will bother to attack her. Martha Hall Findlay shot herself in the head when she posed as a westerner and advocate from the Fraser Institute. Professor Deborah Coyne also has lots of promise but she should have been our candidate in Durham but seems to prefer to be a critic on the sidelines.

We will have to wait until next year when the candidates have paid their $75,000 entrance fees to know who is really in the race. At that stage, we will know if there is going to be a choice.

It looks as though those of us who care should all have a serious talk with MP Dominic LeBlanc from New Brunswick. While he bowed out to his friend Justin Trudeau, he is free of young Trudeau’s baggage and he seems to have more political savvy. As the son of the late and much respected Roméo LeBlanc, you would expect him to have a strong sense of duty and it is obvious that he has a better understanding of our great country.

The Liberal Party is at a crossroads and half-assed campaigns for the leadership are not the answer. We need serious thinking about the nature and future of the Liberal Party and Canada. Canadians owe nothing to the Liberal Party but the party owes very much to Canadians. We bloody well better recognize our responsibility,

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Joyce Murray: Our kind of Liberal.

by Peter Lowry

A thousand welcomes to B.C. MP Joyce Murray. She has declared herself in on the Liberal Party leadership race. She will be a breath of fresh air in a leadership campaign that has been running straight downhill. Joyce is the first left of centre Liberal in the race. She is a proud environmentalist and a person who understands cooperation.

Joyce was first elected in 2008 in Vancouver Quadra. Most people, who have seen it, agree that it is the most beautiful electoral district in Canada. It deserves to have a representative such as Joyce Murray.

Joyce opened her leadership campaign by taking a step towards cooperation with the New Democrats and Greens to dump the Tories in the next election. She believes this strategy can best be carried out at the electoral district level and she would give the authority to the local association executives to carry out the negotiations. While she is cautious about formal collaboration, she sees the local cooperation as a good start.

At the same time, she wants to change how Canadians vote. She believes that our electoral system is not very representative. While disagreeing with her on the purported weaknesses of the first-past-the-post system, she welcomes open discussion and that is what is needed.

She has taken positive steps to end discussion of a tar-sands pipeline across northern British Columbia by bringing forward an act banning oil tankers from that area of British Columbia’s environmentally sensitive coastline.

There will be many opportunities for Joyce to lay out her thoughts on leadership for the Liberal Party and for Canada before the convention and voting next April. Her advocacy of legalizing marijuana and her belief in some kind of carbon tax will be controversial but her advocacy of reform is pure liberalism.

She refused to say anything against opponents in the leadership race because she says that she will not help the Conservatives with their next set of attack ads.

Joyce Murray is proud to be a westerner and she brings much to the Liberal Party and to the current leadership campaign.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

 

Dumping Durham.

by Peter Lowry

By-elections are an opportunity for protest. While governments try to call them for the most opportune times, they know that it is the voter, inclined to vote against the government, who is most motivated to go to the polls. It means it is an opportunity for opposition campaign managers to look good.

That being said, the three by-elections this week were not the best opportunities for the opposition. Victoria in B.C. was an NDP riding before and the only strong competition was from the Green Party because of Green Leader Elizabeth May representing a B.C. riding. The discredited right-wing B.C. provincial Liberals were of absolutely no help to the federal Liberals.

Calgary Centre was more fun because a strong Liberal candidate was threatening a lamentable Conservative throughout the campaign. The Conservative made rooky mistakes of arrogance and extremism but still won in the end. Having another rabid Wildrose Conservative in his caucus is not going to bother Stephen Harper too much. He seems to have learned the secret of keeping them muzzled, most of the time.

But as bad as the Conservative was in her home turf of Calgary, it was hard to match the Liberal blunders in Ontario’s Durham. To be fair, Durham has never been a hotbed of liberalism. While there have been Liberal MPs there in the past, the riding dynamics have changed as the area became a bedroom for the Greater Toronto Area.

The Liberal campaign broke with every sensible approach known by putting up election signs without the candidate’s name to cash in on Remembrance Day. The move became a target for the opposition and the campaign went downhill from there. Instead of fighting a by-election on the arrogance of the Harper Conservatives, the argument was over the stupidity of the Liberal campaign.

What the Liberals did not need was to come third in Durham. The federal party had an obligation to send in help with clear directions to make the campaign a genuine protest against the Harper Conservatives. They also needed to make better use of the current popularity of MP Justin Trudeau.

The party needs to chalk it up as another lesson learned. One of these days, hopefully, we will look like we know what we should be doing.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Tory senators do something right for MS.

by Peter Lowry

If this blog format allowed for a bigger headline, it would be bigger. Just because the writer of this blog is a known liberal does not mean he does not recognize people doing the right thing. And the Liberal senators who complained about the killing of Senate Bill S-204 should clam up. They do not know what they are talking about.

The politicizing of the Zamboni treatment for multiple sclerosis for the past three years has been a disgrace for both sides of the House and Senate. It is the increasing evidence that chronic cerebral venous insufficiency (CCVSI) has nothing to do with the incidence of MS is what convinced the Tory Senators to kill the bill. The Liberal senators were just not paying attention.

It all started with an over-blown CTV television report of discovery of a possible cure for MS being tried in Buffalo, New York. It was based on treatment developed by Dr. Paolo Zamboni of Ferrara, Italy. Dr. Zamboni, a vascular surgeon, had postulated that it was the impaired drainage of blood from the brain because of restricted flow through the neck veins that caused a build-up of iron in the patient’s brain. He reasoned that if he could improve blood flow from the brain, the symptoms of multiple sclerosis might be relieved.

The practice of CTV news to promote its other programs by running clips from them as news helped sensationalize the story. When it then ran on CTV’s W5 program, it had large numbers of MS patients watching to see this miracle they were being promised. There was soon a major controversy over Zamboni’s supposed cure and the MS Society of Canada was accused of suppressing the treatment.

Members of Parliament such as Barrie MP Patrick Brown used the Zamboni theory unmercifully to promote themselves. They promoted the people trying to get the Zamboni treatment immediately—and themselves, as people working to help the sick.

What they really did was cause fewer funds to go to the MS Society to pay for its legitimate research while forcing the society to redirect funds to properly test the Zamboni theories.

People heard little from these CCVSI advocates of those who died or were in worse shape after getting stents put in their veins by off-shore “clinics.” This bill working its way through the Senate was to authorize a national strategy to deal with the therapy and for a national registry of MS patients.

But, thankfully, it was stopped in the Senate. By this time, the overwhelming conclusion of the official studies is that people with MS have the same veins in their necks as people without MS. Dr. Zamboni does not have the answer. The search for the cure for multiple sclerosis continues.

(Note:  The author of this article is a past president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada and served on the management committee and as chair of public education for the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies.)

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

It’s not Justin’s father’s CRAP.

by Peter Lowry

It seems Justin Trudeau missed a few lessons at his father’s knee. He must have been in the bathroom when Pierre Trudeau explained to his sons the reasons for a National Energy Policy. He also must have missed the lecture on why Canada had a Foreign Investment Review Agency. The young Trudeau was probably teaching school when the Conservatives quietly erased the National Energy Policy from the national memory and when diligent foreign investment review became a thing of the past. The younger Trudeau’s recent example of Consolidated Reports on Approved Policy (CRAP) in the National Post this week was not only stupid but an insult to his father’s memory.

Who would have believed that at a time when even Stephen Harper was reconsidering the wisdom of approving China’s national oil company CNOOC’s acquisition of Calgary-based Nexen, young Trudeau would ride up on his white horse, both pistols at the ready, and say the CNOOC-Nexen deal is good for Canada. And he goes on from there to prove that he has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

Young Trudeau says that the CNOOC-Nexen deal will create middle-class Canadian jobs. Oh? How does this happen when you allow a foreign government to dictate the decisions of a multi-billion dollar international oil company? More important, he tells us, this will enable us to “broaden and deepen our relationship with the world’s second largest economy:” China. We already have one of those deep and broad relationships with the world’s largest economy: the United States of America. Maybe we should learn how to handle that relationship before we take on one that speaks Chinese.

Young Trudeau thinks we can sell the Chinese on our expertise in building cities. While I also love Toronto, he has obviously not tried to drive anywhere there recently.

Can you imagine young Trudeau telling us that Canada’s Conservatives are missing the boat with China because of the Harper government’s erratic approach and secretive behaviour? He just proved how little he knows about the erratic and secretive approach of the people in Bejing.

What Trudeau’s CRAP boils down to is blatant encouragement for Calgary Centre voters to vote Liberal next Monday. The naïveté of this attempt is laughable. Even if the western voters did elect a Liberal in that by-election, it would be because of the ongoing fight between the Wildrose Conservatives and the provincial Conservatives. There is no credit there for young Trudeau’s campaign.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Who said Harper is an economist?

by Peter Lowry

When Canada’s premiers meet later this week to discuss Canada’s economic problems, they can do it without Stephen Harper. The Prime Minister rejected their invitation. He is letting Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney fill in for him. After all, Harper flies around the world giving economic advice, why should he waste his wisdom on Canada?

And besides, Stephen Harper might have trained as an economist but he has never shown any desire to practice that obscure science. From the time when he travelled west to join with Preston Manning’s Reform Party, Stephen Harper has remained aloof from sharing any expertise on economic matters. Even after leaving Manning to become head of the National Citizen’s Coalition, he has dealt in demagoguery and economics be damned.

What Canadians need to recognize is that all that expensive taxpayer-funded government advertising for an Economic Action Plan has absolutely nothing to do with economics. It is a name for a lame government program that squeezes money out of municipal taxpayers for infrastructure renewal programs. It has left gullible municipal councils across Canada locked into heavy debt with only the local taxpayers to pay off the long-term costs. And if the Bank of Canada ever turns loose the interest rate screws, there will be more than a few bankrupt municipalities wondering what happened.

It appears recently that both Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper need to get their act together on the financial direction of the Canadian government. It seems their plan to rid Canadians of the deficit of some $26 billion before the next election is not going to work. Hell, it never had a chance. Canada is far too vulnerable to American and world economic problems and ridding Canadians of the deficit by firing thousands of federal civil servants is about as stupid a solution as we can imagine.

What really bugs us on a daily basis is Harper’s friend Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario who also wants to wrestle the provincial deficit to the mat. He is doing it by stabbing his former friends, the teachers in the back. He thinks he can pass legislation making them work for less. Maybe somebody told him that would not work and he decided to quit in a fit of pique. At least something good came out of the mess.

But that leaves us with a premiers’ meeting in Halifax later this week with a lame-duck guy from Ontario, an already discredited PQ Premier from Quebec, people nobody knows in the East and pugnacious premiers from the West who have their own battles.

There might be some posturing in Halifax but overall, the meeting is a waste of time. We could easily end up with a couple vitriolic elections in Ontario and Quebec next year but they will hardly be a substitute for the voters getting their teeth into Harper and his crew. We have to blame somebody.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

What surprises Stephen Harper?

by Peter Lowry

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported the other day that Prime Minister Harper was surprised by the strong “protectionist discourse” coming from the United States. This was probably not as surprising to his business audience who had gathered to listen to him at a meeting of the Canadian American Business Council in Ottawa. Mr. Harper told his audience that he and other right-wing Canadians consider protectionist feelings in Canada to be “virtually non-existent.”

While he considers those who opposed the free trade arrangement of the Mulroney government in 1987 to be proved wrong, there are still many who would disagree with that assessment. What we argued for at the time was for “fair trade” and we have lived with less than that for a quarter century.

There is a virtual wall of Buy America policies at the state and municipal level in the United States that precludes Canadian products or services from being allowed to compete and no federal laws seem to matter. And then when you can export to south of the border, the American border crossing will tie you up for days to try to prevent your successful completion of contracts.

And yet, Stephen Harper is surprised at American protectionism! He does not appear aware that Americans were never really interested in free trade. They were interested in Canadian oil and other resources. They were mildly interested in the Canadian market—because it was handy and seemed much like their own.

But if the Americans gave a damn about free trade, they would have done a lot of things very different. For example, they would have resolved the soft-wood lumber business in a few weeks instead of being dragged into litigation to put an end to the problem after years of wrangling. The State of Michigan would have put an end to the foot-dragging about a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor. This is the major artery for trade between the two countries and the Americans treated the obstinacy of the bridge owner as a joke.  As it is, Canada will pay for the new bridge itself—until the Americans figure out what Canada will make in tolls, and demand a share.

The Prime Minister reiterated his claim that “Canada’s most important relationship remained the one with the United States.” The only problem is it makes Canadians feel like the least attractive of the many relationships in the world leader’s harem.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Are we talking affinity voting?

by Peter Lowry

Listening to various speakers to the Ontario Redistribution Commission, you find that people seem to want affinity voting without really saying what they want. It was becoming more obvious the other day when people were asking for an electoral district on the Toronto waterfront made up of just condominiums. They (incorrectly) see that as a natural affinity grouping.

We also heard the same idea in Babel when the local Liberals were trying to convince the commission that the city should remain a purely urban riding. It served the Conservative purpose to see the city split across two rural electoral districts but the Liberals were concerned that it would not leave enough urban base. Supposedly the current tendency of  Ontario farmers to vote Conservative had not occurred to the commissioners.

But maybe we need to take a hard look at affinity voting. This is an idea that comes up occasionally in science fiction and political science conferences. It is the idea of having like-minded people choose their elected representatives. For example all accountants can elect someone who understands accountants and can represent them. With today’s computer technologies, there would be no problem in arranging that kind of voting structure. All it would require would be enough people choosing a grouping to establish an affinity group.

It is simple. Say, for example, the average number of voters required for each Member of Parliament is 150,000. The first 150,000 people able to claim to be a housewife would make up an affinity voting group of housewives. Another couple groups that would be easy to pull together are the auto workers. Teachers would have more than just a few affinity groups. The possibilities are almost endless. You could have a grouping of hookers, librarians and sex surrogates that would be great fun to represent in parliament.

Under this plan,Prince Edward Island could keep its four Members of Parliament by signing up Anne of Green Gables fans across Canada to be part of their four affinity groups. In the same way, francophones across Canada could help keep their language in play by joining Quebec affinity groups. The possibilities are fascinating.

The problem we would have is the stragglers, the lighthouse keepers and the person with a unique profession. There are also those who just do not want to fit in. There would have to be a deadline. Once the deadline has passed, an electoral commission would be required to put all the stragglers into groups that had not met the minimum to be an official affinity group. In the end, everyone would have a vote and if Eastern Orthodox Priests get lumped in with flop house managers, it is their own fault for not making their own deal on time. The electoral commission will ensure that we are all in an affinity group for election day with as close as possible to the average number of voters. It would be great fun.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Say it isn’t so Martha.

by Peter Lowry

You have to admit that Martha Hall Findlay can add a little something to the federal Liberal leadership contest. The former MP for Willowdale has been outed as a candidate by her purported campaign guru, Stephen Carter. He says that she will make it official today. Since prairie political strategist Carter is also believed to be working for Alberta’s Premier Alison Redford and British Columbia Premier Christie Clark, it is likely that he is only doing a part-time job for Martha.

While we have to admit that her intelligence and earthy sexuality make her an interesting participant in the leadership race, we are not about to bet heavily on her winning. She will probably prove herself too far to the right for Liberals east of Winnipeg and playing up to the Western vote, is slim pickings.

The paper she wrote a while ago dissing supply management might have pleased Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and the Fraser Institute but it went over like a lead balloon in Ontario and Quebec. While those who think about the issue see lots of room for improvement in how we manage farm commodities, the facts are that Canada has had an enviable stability of supply over the years. When Harper’s government set about dismissing the Wheat Board recently, they found that the farmers themselves were going to fight for it. In politics, being right, does not make things right!

In Martha’s manifesto for the leadership that she published in Options Politiques last March, she put her credo in the headline: Not left, not right, but forward. That is the standard formula for right wing Liberals who have lost sight of the reform nature of the Liberal Party. You can hardly claim to be middle of the road when you cannot even find the road.

Martha complains that less than 20 per cent of Canadian voters voted Liberal in the last federal election. She also complains that less than 0.2 per cent of Canadians are members of the Liberal Party. It makes you wonder what she has done to improve those figures. Having been handed the Willowdale riding in 2008 without having to bother with a nomination convention, she then lost it in 2011. It was one of the safest Liberal ridings in Canada and she blew it!

What people such as Martha do not understand about the Liberal Party is that it is not like an army of militia that goes away until you have a war to fight. It is an active force that needs to be involved in the process of policy development, the choosing of candidates and the ongoing communications of a vibrant and meaningful party. Leadership has to capture that.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

The Liberal mystique of Windsor.

by Peter Lowry

Windsor, Ontario is something of a shrine to the Liberal Party both provincially and federally. The entire area of South Western Ontario is a cornucopia of Liberal Party icons, former cabinet ministers and party thinkers. It was the farmers of this part of Ontario, known as Clear Grits, who joined with George Brown’s Toronto Reformers and created the Liberal Party of Ontario and the Liberal Party of Canada in 1857.

Windsor itself was the chosen home of Paul Martin Senior (not to be confused with Junior) who made a name for himself as a left-wing Liberal when campaigning three times for the party leadership. After Mackenzie King stepped down in 1948, Martin lost to Louis St. Laurent and then to Lester B. Pearson, after St. Laurent stepped down in 1958, and then to Pierre Trudeau after Pearson stepped down in 1968. He served in all their cabinets and, for the times, was very much the conscience of the Liberal Party. Medicare today, is part of his legacy.

Continuing in Martin’s tradition was our late friend law professor Mark MacQuigan who  moved to Windsor from Toronto to contest the new Windsor-Walkerville  riding in 1968. He held the riding for the next 16 years. It was Mark who created the party policy that forces the party leader to submit to a leadership review after every election. He believed strongly in a democratic and responsible Liberal Party.

Another area minister was Eugene Whelan, who served in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet as Minister of Agriculture. He was very much a farmer but he actually helped transition Canadian farming into the computer era. Eugene was always willing to work with people and for them and left an indelible mark on the agriculture portfolio.

The one person you can never forget from Windsor is the much admired Herb Gray. A jack of all trades in parliament, Herb was not only the first Jewish cabinet member but he holds the record as the longest serving parliamentarian in Canadian history. He also has a devilish sense of humour that he delights in inflicting it on those of us who know and admire him. He is the dean of the left wing of the Liberal Party. The party is feting Herb next week in Ottawa and the federal leadership contenders will be there in hopes that some of his intelligence and knowledge of politics will rub off on them.

We could mention provincial politicos but none of them are left wing and none of them are particularly important. We were pleased to hear though that the locals in Windsor have started calling Provincial Treasurer Dwight Duncan ‘Slight’ Duncan. It seems his crash diet is working and he is reported to have lost as much as 50 pounds. We also hear that he intends to back Sandra Pupatello in the provincial leadership and then quit politics for a while. He might be just slightly ahead of the voters making that decision for him.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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