Category: Federal Politics

There was a very telling news clip on the television news the other day of Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair asking a question of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Both speakers had their wall of supporters behind them. Parliament appeared full for Question Period. It was the usual sham.

If there is no vote scheduled after Question Period, MPs quickly wander off to their offices and other pursuits. Only those with House duty remain. We did not see him and it was unlikely that the Leader of the Liberal Party Justin Trudeau was even in Ottawa. Justin is letting Tommy have his day. It will not do Tommy any good anyway.

While Tommy Mulcair has taken to Question Period like a duck to water, it is a useless exercise. Somebody has to do it but as Justin Trudeau’s predecessor, Bob Rae can tell you, it does the person hectoring the Prime Minister no good at the polls.

Just watching Tommy the other day, you felt sorry for him. Here he was in his prosecutorial manner demanding that the Prime Minister give a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer as to the arrangements for paying back Senator Duffy’s imaginative living expenses. The Prime Minister casually dismissed Tommy’s question. Why would he do that? He lies because he can. There is no rule saying he has to answer.

But Tommy must be annoying the Prime Minister. The Speaker of the House has actually admonished Tommy not to bring politics into the House. While that might seem like an odd request, the Honourable Members are expected to leave politics aside in the House and stick to government business. Tommy gave a spirited defence by pointing out that the activities of the Prime Minister’s Office are very much the business of the House.

The reality that Tommy does not seem to understand is that his strengths as a prosecutor are quite irrelevant to his wanting to be Prime Minister or even to winning a second term as Leader of the Opposition. While Tommy thinks he is doing his job in the House, Justin Trudeau is out winning the next election.

Tommy is that stuffy little man who argues with Mr. Harper. Justin Trudeau is that nice guy out there meeting and convincing Canada’s electors that he will make a great Prime Minister two years from now.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Surely many Canadians are aware of the Prime Minister repeatedly saying that in any business, people who are reputed to have falsified expense reports would have been fired. We should not rush to agree with him. Mr. Harper is comparing Canada’s Senate to a business and he knows that the Senate of Canada is not a business. And it should not be confused with a business.

The Senate was a critical component in the agreement to create this nation. When the Fathers of Confederation envisioned Canada’s Parliament, their role model was the Houses of Parliament of Great Britain. The only problem is that Canada lacked the traditional nobility with which to populate a House of Lords. This was solved with the appointment of esteemed property owners who could provide experience and a house of sober second thought. It was, in effect, a sea anchor capable of keeping the rash, more volatile Commons from running onto the shoals of impetuously passed bills.

And for 146 years, Canada has more or less survived this archaic concept of governance. And most arguments about the Senate have been polite academic dialogues based on more modern ideas of what is the democratic solution. At least until, Stephen Harper came along.

Stephen Harper has made it clear for years that he does not approve of Canada’s Senate. While he would like to see it elected like the American Senate, he would keep it as long as he could control it.

His on-going problem has been controlling it. He thought he had solved that problem by appointing more senators than any previous Prime Minister in Canada’s history. His only problem is that, in the process, he seems to have scraped the bottom of some unusual barrels. And who would have forecast problems with his two favourite prima donnas from CTV News. Here he was getting both cheerleaders for his party and their votes in the Senate.

Stephen Harper had no idea of the level of entitlement that these and others in the Senate felt they had coming to them. After all, Harper is the Prime Minister who routinely flies around the world in his personal A310 Airbus with his personal hairdresser. What does he know from entitlement?

Next week, Canadians will see government lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court of Canada to abolish the Canadian Senate. It could be an interesting but fruitless argument. Any smart Supreme Court justice is going to point to the Canadian Constitution and say, “Fix that first.”

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

When U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term ‘bully pulpit,’ he was talking about the White House. He said that it was a pulpit to which people have to listen. Lacking an institution such as the White House, Canadian politicians have to work to chase their pulpits and a bully pulpit is a rare occurrence.

But there was no question that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s address to the Conservative Halloween convention last night was a bully pulpit. He had thousands of loyal followers in the hall to cheer him on. He had a national audience on the news channels. It was his time. And he blew it.

It was about 45 minutes of badly written, self-congratulatory, ideological, repetitious sound bites. It was visually boring with static cameras. The giant flag, the ethnic mix in the human wall and even the simple ‘Canada’ on the podium grated from too much exposure. The presentation lacked life, charm, eloquence, reason or a future.

There was no future offered. The speech would have made more sense as a swan song. The only promise in the entire time was legislation to forbid deficits—which would be meaningless. He promised it before but it was assumed that he realized that it would be a waste of time. Such legislation is easily thrown out when necessary.

The use of French to bring up each new subject became an irritant and was annoyingly condescending. He once completed the translation before the simultaneous translator had completed it.

Ostensibly a celebration of two years of majority government, it was interesting to be reminded that Senators Duffy and Wallin acted as masters of ceremony plenipotentiary at the last gathering of the Conservative Party two years ago. O’ how times change! The only reference to those Senators was a segue from praise for the Federal Accountability Act—that got him one of the few genuine standing ovations of the speech.

The well-positioned cheerleaders in the audience failed in their first three attempts to get people standing and cheering. After the loyal Conservatives in the audience got the idea, you wished that they would sit down and stay down.

Mr. Harper made much of his 86 promises to his party. Since he included the proposed European free trade as one of the 86 promises, it obviously did not mean completed.

The only personal note he included in the speech was to tell the faithful in the audience that he does not like Ottawa. He spent time in his talk to denounce the Ottawa elites. He does not want to be one of them. Now, if the voters will just accommodate him!

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

It is Halloween and the Conservative Party of Canada is gathering in its spiritual home of Calgary to pay obeisance to its liege lord and to drink of the wine of power. The keynote speech will now be Friday evening. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will take the floor sometime after five pm MDT. It will be his role to continue the tradition of the plains Indians to count coup against the Conservatives’ enemies.

Harper will put the troubles of the last two weeks behind him. He is there to revel in his victory in the possibility of European free trade. And besides, Senators Brazeau, Duffy and Wallin are not really expected to attend the convention.

The speech will be a fulsome report on the excellence of his stewardship of the Canadian economy. He will probably forget to mention the hit Hamilton just took as the once proud Stelco Hilton Works closes its blast furnace forever. Mr. Harper does not interfere with business decisions or even their promises, he will tell you.

But he still has his work cut out for him in helping TransCanada Pipelines get the Keystone XL pipeline through the American Midwest to the Texas Gulf coast. He will, hopefully, not take credit for the Enbridge Line 9B pipeline solution to moving Alberta tar sands product through Toronto before the National Energy Board announces it. And if those solutions do not come about, there are still the pipelines across the Rockies and another eastern pipeline to promote.

Some of the wheat farmers in his audience will be of mixed emotions when he takes the credit for killing the Canada Wheat Board. The farmers know that the Wheat Board will be sorely missed.

The cheers will be genuine when he tells the gun enthusiasts in the crowd that he got rid of the gun registry. Maybe they can go out and celebrate later by shooting somebody.

But Stephen Harper should not be smiling when he tells his audience how he has wrestled the lavish spending in Ottawa to the ground. If he thinks he can end the deficit by not spending monies that Parliament had approved to be spent, it is a far more serious lie to Canadians than the cover up in his office on his favourite Senators’ expenses.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Calgary, at this time of year, already tastes of winter. And as the Conservative Party gathers for its Halloween convention, there is a bite in the air. The real question of the convention is not whether the Prime Minister can handle the chill but what the convention foretells for his future.

Oh, he will be cheered in the hallways. There will be the appropriate ovations to his speech. He is still Prime Minister of Canada for goodness sake!

But the signs will be clear behind the scenes. What are the party apparatchiks quietly saying to each other? Are they lining up their choices for Harper’s replacement? Who are the people being listened to more for their speaking style than the speech content? Which ministers are making the more obvious moves?

What is a hopeful such as James Moore from Port Moody, B.C. quietly saying in the hallways and more eloquently in his hospitality suite? He has to work this convention for all it is worth—and without pissing off the boss. He knows that Harper might be on his knees but there is no way he is out for the count.

Will the Bobbsey Twins (Calgary’s Hon. Jason Kenney and Ottawa’s Hon. John Baird) flip a coin to see which one will go for the brass ring or will both just continue to sniff the air? Both want to be the heir but they need some encouragement.

And to the rank and file in Calgary, there is concern but not a sense of impending doom. Because, let us face facts, the rank and file of the Conservative Party are not that observant. They carry their ideology like a proud pennant. They are more worried about Liberal Justin Trudeau than they let on.

Their quibble, if any, with their leader is not that he has not done them proud but they know in their hearts that he could have done much more. If you scratch the itch of one of these party adherents, you will find that they want to bring back hanging. They want the baby killer abortionists castrated. They do not like having immigrants. They do not like paying taxes either.

If Stephen Harper were an honourable person, he would use the opportunity of this convention to resign as Conservative leader and ask the party to call for a leadership convention. His only problem is that he might not be that honourable.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

One of the fun aspects of politics is watching the dance of a politician trying desperately to stay on both sides of an issue. It would have been especially interesting yesterday to watch Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau try to balance himself on the Keystone XL pipeline in front of an environmental lobby group in Washington. You have to give him marks. He almost pulled it off.

When you consider that Trudeau was talking to a meeting of the Center for American Progress which opposes the Keystone XL pipeline, his was a brave stand. He told the audience that he supports the pipeline because he believes it is an important energy infrastructure piece for both countries. What was wrong with that was that he demonstrated a lack of understanding of the objectives of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Whether Trudeau understands the role of the pipeline or not needs to be clarified with him. If he is just supporting it to win a few votes in Alberta, it is a waste of time. The problem is that Keystone XL has no bearing on the energy infrastructure of America. The intent of the pipeline is to put Alberta tar sands bitumen on board tankers off the coast of Texas and ship it to countries that do not care as much about pollution.

Trudeau is right that pipelines can be made even safer and need not threaten the environment. Alberta bitumen is a drastic threat to the environment though when you convert it to synthetic oil. The refining process puts a very serious amount of carbon directly into the air and creates vast piles of what is known as carbon coke—which, while it can be burned as a fuel, adds even more carbon to the air. If Trudeau is not aware, someone needs to catch him up on the physics involved in tar sands bitumen.

But Trudeau can learn. Prime Minister Stephen Harper just demonstrates his hypocrisy by reassuring people that the pollution problem will be solved. Thomas Mulcair of the New Democrats leaves himself even further up a tree on the issue. Mulcair has told the Americans that he is against Keystone XL but is in favour of East-West pipelines in Canada. Since these pipelines also have the same purpose of shipping the bitumen to countries that do not care as much about pollution, Mulcair’s position is more hypocritical than Harper’s.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

If you have been wondering what Prime Minister Harper is planning for the Conservative Party’s Halloween Convention in Calgary, here is a suggestion. The keynote address is currently scheduled for five pm, Calgary time, on the Saturday. In the East, that means we will miss some of Hockey Night in Canada to watch him. It might just be worth it. One of the more interesting options is Stephen Harper announcing his resignation as Prime Minister.

What are Stephen Harper’s choices? He is now the Richard Nixon of Canadian politics. He is accused of being one of the Plumbers in the Canadian Watergate. It is not the act of perverting the purpose and membership of the Senate of Canada that he stands accused of but the cover-up, the lies, the stonewalling.

This is not to suggest that he might not try to continue with his claims of innocence. He is good at that. He usually just ignores the questions. In his mind, he is innocent. His concern at this stage is for his legacy. He will protect his legacy at any cost. If he destroys the Conservative Party in the process, so be it.

Sure there will be a lot of cheering Conservatives spending Halloween in Calgary but this Senate thing could cost him a majority government. The Tories will be lucky not to lose seats in Alberta.

Harper can hardly keep throwing his key people under the bus and expect to have lots of friends left. Sometimes you have to take the blame. You have to respect Toronto Mayor Rob Ford more. Look how he sticks with his friends—even the convicted criminals.

It certainly looks like Senator Mike Duffy has made his bones. In one inelegant speech to his fellow Senators, Duffy has destroyed a Prime Minister. He called the man for lying. Whether you believe Duffy or not, the Conservatives have lost the next federal election. There are simply too many Canadians who heard about what Duffy told the Senate. He was credible, believable and the entire scenario snapped together like a set of Legos.

The problem with the Calgary speech is that it will not just be the resignation. There is still some bragging to be done. There are years of stewardship of his party to talk about. There are his supposed accomplishments as Prime Minister. There is also a potential free trade with the European Union to crow over.

Whoever wants the Prime Minister job—and there are more than just James Moore and the Bobbsey Twins (John Baird and Jason Kenney)—might have a leadership convention next May or June. And until then, Harper will continue to micromanage everything.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Is the door to the Airbus A310 wide enough? Is it high enough? Did that inflated head of perfect hair find an easier way to get on the airplane for the trip back to Canada from Brussels? You could see the glee and the pride when he said at the announcement that it “is not just a good deal, it is an excellent deal.” Only time will determine the truth of that statement but you could see that he was treating it as his legacy.

The media are calling this the Hair’s signature move as Prime Minister. It seems to lack the flair of Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the novelty of Brian Mulroney’s attempt at a free trade deal with the United States but in the long term these trading arrangements are starting to fall in place around the world. As the kids say, you have to be there or be square. Trade is the way.

What is embarrassing is that the flood of hype is coming not from the joint announcement in Brussels, nor from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development but from the Prime Minister’s Office. Everything has the Hair’s DNA on it.

What Canadians are not getting is facts. There are none. Nobody can forecast the number of jobs this deal might or might not create. Nobody can forecast the net worth of the deal. Sure, billions can be bandied but that possibility is years from now and more can go wrong than right in those years.

We can alarm the cheese processors and scare the makers of Eau de Welland Canal but the smart ones will see opportunity. It will also demand that they keep improving the quality of their product. They could even reach a point where they can compete.

And if you are worried about Canadians losing on this deal, you might be needlessly pessimistic. We have already had the guts ripped out of our manufacturing by the Americans and their right to work states. There is little more that the Europeans can do to us in that regard.

What we can expect now is for the Hair to start to measure what is left for him to accomplish. The bravado that he has used to-date with Justin Trudeau is just that. The few Canadians who saw Trudeau’s speech on Friday in response to the Throne Speech will agree that the Hair cannot meet the Liberal challenger head to head. What are the Hair’s options now?

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

The Enbridge pipeline people have an unfortunate acronym for their public awareness program: PAP. The only problem is that pap is defined in our dictionary as the soft or semi-liquid food for infants or invalids. The word is further defined as undemanding reading matter.  And that has been what Enbridge has been feeding the National Energy Board and Canadian public in trying to get its pipeline changes approved.

The three board members at the hearings in Toronto this week showed remarkable stamina and determination to get through many hours of harassment, hustle and hype. Their minds must have been mush by the end of Friday’s more boisterous session. That was when the Board decided that there was no point to Enbridge continuing the charade on Saturday. By cancelling, the Saturday session and delaying Enbridge’s answer to some later date, they can go home.

Listening to Enbridge answering all the queries, complaints, fears and environmental concerns would not really produce anything new. Despite their condition, the board members hardly deserved more pap.

And what is the point if Enbridge just continues to muddy the water instead of dealing openly and honestly with public concerns?

One example is that if bitumen has the wrong connotation for what you want to send through the pipeline, you coin a word such as ‘dilbit.’ It certainly sounds friendlier and less threatening but if it is just a contraction for diluted bitumen. Why not call it what it really is?

Maybe the National Energy Board should ask the Quebec refineries if they want bitumen to refine, Enbridge keeps inferring that this is the case but no Quebec refineries are presently able to produce synthetic oil from bitumen. And with the horrendous pollution problems such refining entails, why would they want to? The truth is that the bitumen is to be piped on from Montreal to seaports at Saint John, New Brunswick and Portland, Maine where tankers can be loaded for foreign markets.

And, frankly, why should we care about Enbridge’s response times and ability to cut off the flow and to clean up spills. One pipeline rupture in an urban environment can be enough. It will be too late to say ‘sorry.’

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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