Category: Federal Politics

Gunning for Gate-keepers.

by Peter Lowry

We seem to be caught in the middle. As of this weekend, we found that both extreme right-wing MP Pierre Poilievre and left-wing guru Linda McQuaig are attacking Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem. Having been, for many years, a strong supporter of Linda McQuaig, I am still trying to buy into her condemnation of the bank’s recent adjustments in the Bank of Canada borrowing rate.

Linda accuses the central bank of playing fast and loose with the economic security of Canadians. It is her contention that the bank is recklessly taking us in the direction of recession.

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Linda is exaggerating a bit. There is also a strong suspicion on my part that Tiff Macklem is well aware of the dangers in his actions. He is trying to walk the line between easing the inflationary pressures and precipitating a recession. With the United States already technically in recession, can Canada be far behind? It is when you recall that Macklem told us that some raising of interest rates might be necessary and why it might be necessary. He then told us that it was necessary and when he would raise rates. He did what he said he would do and basically it was the small nudge that some sectors of our economy really needed.

And it is only when you consider Pierre Poilievre’s criticisms of Macklem that you realize that the conservative leadership candidate is using specious arguments to defame the governor. He appears to think that Macklem wants to have his own cryptocurrency. As it was explained to him, as though he was a slow child, the bank will consider an official cryptocurrency, if and when the government requests it.

The problem is that as a far-right dilettante, Poilievre needs to get his own act together and learn something about economics. What many of the rest of us know today is that the Bank of Canada does not just print money or cause inflation. Inflation is caused by the ability to create need, the availability and cost of what we want to purchase and by greed and by war and that asshole in the Kremlin who thinks he is some kind of Tsar. And Mr. Poilievre does not seem to understand why right-wing Reaganomics and Thatcherism never worked.

Mr. Poilievre only proves that what we do not understand, we distrust.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Harper’s Heir.

by Peter Lowry

This might not surprise many. You did know, didn’t you that that MP Pierre Poilievre is Stephen Harper’s choice? Poilievre has amused Harper since he sat at Harper’s cabinet table. He will do far more for the far right than Harper had in mind. Now we all know he is betting on Poilievre in this year’s conservative leadership race.

It all ties back to the last four years of Harper’s prime minister’s office. It was when Harper finally had the chance to show how right-wing he really is. It was when he did the most damage to our country. It was why the advent of “sunny days” in 2015 was a brighter day for Canadians. There was hope. Yet, there was rain on some of those sunny days. And then there was a pandemic to smash those hopes.  Trudeau promised too much. It took us all time to realize that the young Trudeau was but an actor and he wanted the world for a stage.

And if you thought a weak democratic party in the United States suffered under the divisiveness of Donald Trump, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Pierre Poilievre’s strategy against Canada could drive a knife down the middle of this country. Poilievre doesn’t want to rule from Ottawa, he wants to destroy Ottawa.

I think it came a surprise to Donald Trump that he could not rule from the White House as autocratically as he desired. In Canada, Poilievre would not have the same constraints. In Canada, with a majority government, he could disband the RCMP and turn the Canada Pension Plan and the federal tax base over to the provinces.

And did you think that suggestion by Poilievre the other day about the Toronto Island Airport taking jets was a casual ‘maybe?’ If Poilievre was PM, the province and the city would either agree to jets or the airport would be closed to all traffic.

And in the same manner as conservative premier Ford ignores climate change in Ontario, the Canada weather office would toe a new line or look for new jobs.

And you could kiss the Bank of Canada good-bye. The attitude would be that climate change does not exist and neither does inflation. Good luck working for bitcoin.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre Prefers.

by Peter Lowry

Why doesn’t Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre want a third debate among the remaining conservative leadership hopefuls? With two-thirds of party members preferring a third debate, you would think the obvious front runner might oblige.

But the answer is “No.” Poilievre gave the party leadership committee a scathing answer. He not only said no, he enlarged on his answer by calling the first debate an embarrassment for the party and saying both French and English events got in the way of selling temporary memberships in the party.

You would think that now the selling is done and with maybe 100,000 temporary memberships sold by Patrick Brown open for change, a third debate would not be such a bad idea. With a total of over 600,000 people available to vote, there would be no harm in enticing a few more into your camp.

But it sure is tough to try to shake the over-confidence of Mr. Poilievre.

This is a guy who wants his ‘convoy’ converts to conservatism to know how obnoxious he can be. He is promising them ‘free-dumb’ to block entry points to Canada and to party around the clock in the nation’s capital.

But the supporters that we really feel sorry for are the young people who like the idea of someone controversial in the conservative leadership.

But like the Republican Party in the United States will be a long time ridding that party of the image of Donald Trump, the Canadian conservatives will spend quite a while getting rid of the odour of Pierre Poilievre.

Poilievre has the problem that he shoots from the hip. The other day, for example, he said that he would have jet aircraft flying out of Billy Bishop Airport on the Toronto Islands. That will cost his conservative candidate a hell of a lot of votes from the masses of condos facing the islands in downtown Toronto. The noise level of turbo-prop aircraft landing and taking off from Billy Bishop can be handled. Jet aircraft, that close to downtown, would not produce happy voters. The promise is like his idiotic promise to support cryptocurrencies against the advice of the Bank of Canada. Poilievre is a high-risk possibility for Canadian conservatives.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Is it Good for You Too?

by Peter Lowry

It seems like a good time to review the request of Rogers Communications to be allowed to buy Shaw Communications. It is not as though we really get a vote on this. Our ‘betters’ in Ottawa are going to decide for us. Isn’t it always the way in Canada?

What the question of the day boils down to is whether you would prefer to be screwed by three companies or by four? For some time now we have had Shaw and Telus based in the west and Bell and Rogers based in the east. Along with Quebecor’s Videotron in Quebec, there are a bunch of what I think of as sucker fish. These are companies that buy the base service from one of the big three and resell it to consumers. In analysis, I seem to find that most of these sucker fish get your business by making an attractive offer but eventually get their rates about as high as their supplier.

The Grandpère of all these base operators is Bell Canada. The company that Canadians love to hate, Bell’s business is based on millions of kilometres of installed copper wire that is gradually being converted to fibre optic cable. Bell was the original contractor to build the Canadian Internet connections across Canada and to the world-wide web.

Rogers Communications was an early player in the game and became noticed in the 1960s. From roots in radio, Ted Rogers gradually moved his company through cable television to cell telephones to publishing and to television production, leaning heavily on sports and ownership of sports teams and facilities. When he died in 2008, Ted was the fourth richest man in Canada with a net worth of about $7 billion.

And his son took over the whole shebang.

Coincidently, a gentleman named James Robert Shaw built a somewhat similar cable, broadcasting and telecommunications empire, based in Calgary, Alberta. When JR died in 2020, the broadcasting part of that empire, was spun off as Corus Entertainment and the telecommunications end of things was put up for sale.

Enter the Rogers scion with an offer of $26 billion for the Shaw assets. That should create the largest telecommunications company in Canada.

Ottawa has yet to rule on this proposal. If the government approves of it, it will just prove that the Trudeau government is not on our side.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The ‘Deplorables’ are in play.

by Peter Lowry

Nobody ever said that Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre was not a man on a mission. He will do anything to move himself along on the road to the prime minister’s office. Like Donald Trump in 2016, Poilievre is taking help anywhere he can get it. He is making headway with what Hillary Clinton referred to as ‘The Deplorables.’

In case you did not know who the deplorables were, you only need to check the photos of the event at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The deplorables were visiting. They had been invited by outgoing president Donald Trump to prevent his vice-president, Mike Pence, from certifying the election of democratic candidate Biden.

They were like the people who visited Ottawa this February with similar intentions to make their wishes superior to the will of the voters. These people make motor cycle gangs such as the Hells Angels look like choir boys.

The fact that this ‘convoy’ was warmly greeted and feted by MP Pierre Poilievre was like a stick in the eye to order and good government in Ottawa. The fact that so many of these yahoos who disrupted life in Ottawa back in February and their friends are now temporary members of the Conservative Party of Canada is a matter of some hilarity for those of us who know our Canadian political parties.

Mr. Poilievre claims he has found some 300,000 of this type of Canadians to support his candidacy. Since they have also paid $15 each for the right to vote in the leadership election, no doubt the conservatives appreciate the $4.5 million dollar donation to a party these yahoos neither understand nor would want to support.

And, frankly, they paid the money in response to false pretences. Poilievre promised them freedom. He promised them no more lockdowns. He promised them no more compulsory vaccinations. He promised them bitcoin instead of loonies. He promised them a freedom that does not exist in civilized societies.

The sad part of this are the young people who think it is fun way to give the middle finger salute to Canada’s politicians. We all know that we can do better. Supporting a sleazy demagogue such as Poilievre is not the way to do it.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Upgrades are Unsettling.

by Peter Lowry

A beleaguered Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has demanded that Rogers Communications explain to the commission what caused the catastrophic failure in their network last week. Frankly, the failure was not to blame on Rogers as much as it can be blamed on the CRTC. The CRTC did not do its job. There is really a simple explanation for the entire fiasco.

The facts were as Rogers stated on the day it happened. They were upgrading their system. Networks are constantly being upgraded. Without extensive redundancy in your network, an upgrade puts it at risk. The technical experts cannot tell, as precisely as they would like, just where the system might fail because of the strain on older equipment that an upgrade can cause. And bear in mind that such a complex network, serving so many clients, is not run by human technicians. It is run by computers. You also have to use computers to find the trouble and to reroute around the trouble.

The easiest way to visualize the Internet is to think of huge pipes running everywhere and in every direction that are filled with little packages of information. Policing these pipes are computers called hubs everywhere there are more pipes connected. The hubs read the address on each package and send it off via an open route in the closest direction to where it is going. When the packages get to their destination they are re-assembled into sound, voice, picture, text or whatever and delivered to your computer or device.

As you can imagine, the amount of data running through these pipes grows at an explosive rate. New pipes are being added but the system is also using higher and higher speeds to do the job. When you hear talk about fifth generation Internet, it is needed to meet the even higher speeds required for today’s demand for service. It means new equipment and new software to mange the equipment. And mistakes can be made.

You would expect the chair and commissioners of the CRTC to at least understand that simple explanation. When 10 million Canadians are cut off from their service because the CRTC had not demanded that Rogers and the other telecoms provide adequate back-up to their service, heads should roll.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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How’s Your Rogers Deal?

by Peter Lowry

Mother always taught us kids not to gloat when one of our little playmates got in trouble. It is hard not to gloat though when a company such as Rogers proves you where right. The company’s overreach is a classic and the timing for a failure could not have been better. Watching the smugness of the Rogers scion and the Shaw people at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearings at the beginning of the government’s review of the Rogers’ acquisition of Shaw, was almost more than the stomach could survive.

I will never forget the time the wife and I were moving from our condominium to our present apartment. Before moving I called Rogers to give the company a move date and to check on costs of transferring our service. I just about fell out of my chair when I was told that the combined Internet, television and telephone service would cost over $190 a month. That was almost double what we had been paying for Rogers service at the condominium.

I could not believe the arrogance in the answer, when I asked “Why?” He explained that Rogers controlled the key to the communications closet in the building. Since he obviously did not know that Bell Fibe was about to be introduced in the area, I, reluctantly, gave our business to Bell.

It probably made sense, that when the late Ted Rogers built his empire, he had complete control. He was daring, he pioneered, he was an entrepreneur and he was adept at working with people. He took great risks and earned the rewards.

But the son is not the father. For Ted’s son to have the degree of control of the company his father built seems to me to have been a mistake. It is a complicated company with millions of people dependent on the services it provides. And it is part of a triumvirate of companies—Rogers, Bell and Telus—that virtually control telecommunications in Canada.

It shows that the CRTC is woefully incompetent and in trouble. It is no longer serving its purpose. It took politician, François-Philippe Champagne, minister of science and industry to take the telecommunications companies to the woodshed for their lack of back-up and connectivity. Whether it will help, we shall see.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Is It the Canada We Want?

by Peter Lowry

It’s an annual event. The provincial and territorial leaders gather to dine and feast on the supposed failures of the federal government. It is a blame game and it proves nothing and solves nothing. They all know there is only one taxpayer and every level of government wants a bigger piece of that pie.

But they all play the game anyway. It is like playing pickle ball under 13 different sets of rules. It all depends on which province is placing their claim. Even this year’s host, the retiring B.C. premier John Horgan, is arguing with federal affairs minister Dominic LeBlanc over who pays what to whom. Nobody seems to realize that it matters little to the taxpayer whether the feds pay 22 or 33 per cent of the cost of Medicare in the provinces. It is the quality of that health care that matters.

And there is little sympathy for Ontario’s premier Ford. That incompetent ass has driven the Ontario healthcare into the ground throughout the pandemic. Nobody was surprised when his minister of health, Christine Elliott, quit rather then run again for that thankless job. In his nickel and dime election campaign, Ford threw pennies to the masses and luckily had no real opposition.

And now Ford is blaming the feds that Ontario has non-functioning emergency departments throughout the province, long waiting lists for emergency operations, and the hospitals themselves on life-support. Despite the healthcare needs, Ford is also asking the federal government to give his government control of immigration in Ontario. They do such a good job on everything else.

Federal conservative leadership contender, Jean Charest, dropped into the Calgary Stampede the other day and told Calgarians that he was the conservative leadership contender that can give them what they want. He promised freedom from carbon taxes, more pipelines and more freedom for the provinces to do their own thing. He told his audience in Calgary that he knew how to do that because he is from Quebec.

And the good news in all of this is that the provincial and territorial leaders all think they have conquered the pandemic. They are meeting in person in B.C.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Comes the Dark Rider.

by Peter Lowry

They had Pierre Poilievre on horseback for the Calgary Stampede the other day. He was home. And he is promising Canada a dark era to come of a polarization of politics in this country. If you think Donald Trump issued in a dark era for the United States, you haven’t seen nothing yet.

The difference between Trump and Poilievre is that the Canadian knows politics. He knows where the levers of power exist in this country. All his adult life has been spent involved in politics. And if he ever gets into power, he will change this country forever.

What Stephen Harper started when he won a majority government in 2011, Poilievre wants to carry forward. He is not only a logical extension of a right-wing Stephen Harper but Calgary is his home base.

Poilievre is deep into what we kids used to call disestablishmentarianism. Yes, it is a real word and goes back a couple centuries in the United Kingdom to when different groups were attempting to put an end to state support for the Anglican Church. We used to apply the word to any shibboleth of society that we felt was outmoded and unnecessary. There can be little doubt that the MP from Carleton electoral district wants to disestablish the Bank of Canada and his support for Bitcoin can only be referred to as disestablishmentarianism.

The thought of Canada’s chartered banks being turned loose, to figuratively rape and pillage, at will, across Canada, is also somewhat disquieting.

But as much as the disquieting thought of the Bank of Canada being disestablished is concerning, Mr. Poilievre’s good friends in the February convoy to Ottawa are of greater concern. These are some of the people he has moved into signing up as temporary conservatives. He is counting on them to vote for him when they get their ballots for the leadership.

And if Justin Trudeau doesn’t smarten up and start winning friends in Canada and influencing voters, we could have a bigger disaster than Trump here in Canada.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Opinions, We Have a Few.

by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star is overdoing this opinion business. There was an opinion piece by a new democrat the other day that confused how we vote with gerrymandering. I can assure you that they are very different subjects. And it is too bad that the new owners of the Star are saving money on editors. The opinion piece should have been spiked. (That is newspaper lingo for killing the article.)

Like most NDP adherents, this writer has a blind belief that proportional representation will be the salvation of our democracy. He tells us that the persistent inequities he sees in first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting are fueling enormous frustration. This is despite the fact that the voters in Ontario opted to reject a form of proportional voting in a 2007 referendum by about two to one.

Typical of most people who support proportional representation, the writer seems to have failed to think it through. He compares the reintroduction of wolves into the ecosystem in America’s Yellowstone Park in 1995 to changing to proportional voting.

And that is about as bad as it gets.

We really need more sensible discussion about voting systems by people who know what they are talking about.

And don’t get me going about preferential voting. This is where people are expected to know enough about all the candidates to list their preference by numbering them. If you want to know how silly that idea can become, look at what has happened to the winners of the last two federal conservative leaders in Canada. That is preferential voting at its worst.

I always like to remind people that I am not opposed to reform. I would particularly like to see Canada switching to run-off elections where we can go back to the polls to and vote for one of the top two candidates, if nobody has won a majority of the votes.

But what we should never give up is having our own local member of parliament.

That is the form of responsible government that we can all believe in.

By the way, ‘gerrymandering’ is an American way to carve up voting areas to cheat on people’s voting rights that we need to watch for in Canada.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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