Category: Federal Politics

In search of Canadian liberalism.

by Peter Lowry

If Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau really wants his party to have a serious policy conference next year, we better get to work. It is tough to come up with coherent policies for a party that does not understand where it stands. It is even more difficult for a federal party to be progressive when its provincial counterparts are all on the political right wing. If the Conservatives in Canada were not extremists, there would be little difference between them and the Liberals.

And most Canadians are unaware that there is a difference. They see the Conservatives as more aggressive, harsher on law and order, stingy on social expenditures but willing to offer the voters bribes with their own money. In turn, Liberals are seen as more vacillating, soft on crime, wasteful on social spending and also willing to bribe the voters with their own money. And then there is the New Democratic Party—on the run from socialism.

What these perceptions mean is that if the Liberals and other parties follow the same old-same old patterns in the coming election, we might as well declare Stephen Harper Supreme Ruler for Life.

Alternatively, Liberals can run as Liberals. That is a breed of politician that we have not seen for a while in this country. Liberals are the real reformers—they are the progressives who put individual rights ahead of everything else. Liberals are the true social democrats because they recognize that the fulfilment of individual needs best serves society’s needs.

Justin Trudeau has already indicated that he wants federal support to lower the cost of post-secondary education. This is one of the keys to individual fulfillment. While Trudeau is just talking some financial relief at this point, the objective of a Liberal government should be free higher education for all who can make the grades.

After many years of abuse, the federal role in Medicare has to be reviewed. One of the keys is a national conference of federal and provincial finance and health ministers to assess needs and improve long term funding. We will never have all the solutions but this is moving way ahead of the Harper government attitude.

We also have to address the sham of trades training perpetrated by the Conservatives. Again, a cooperative approach with the provinces to make sure the job is getting done has to be used.

And if we really want to be creative as a federal government, Liberals need to promote the idea of a Canadian constitutional conference by citizens elected in federal electoral districts across Canada. Such a constitutional conference could take a couple years but when the country votes on the proposals in a referendum, they will know what the proposals mean.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

When Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister.

by Peter Lowry

Yesterday’s blog about the Boston marathon incident and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau drew some very interesting comments. One thoughtful reader suggested that we might have been overly enthusiastic about Justin’s honesty. The reader drew a line between honesty and naïveté. And if Justin were Prime Minister, there is no question that some of what he said in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview was enough to make an old political apparatchik cringe.

But Justin Trudeau is not Prime Minister. Hopefully in just over two years, he will be ready to be Prime Minister. His father never had that luxury of time to prepare himself for the job. Pierre Trudeau made his mistakes as he went. He is no role model for his son in how to handle the news media or in how to measure his statements.

The truth be known, Pierre Trudeau went from phenomenon to bust in just one term as Prime Minister. During that first term from 1968 to 1972, Pierre was arrogant, uncaring, flip, rude and caused constant migraines for the people trying to keep him in office. It was in 1972 that the voters told him, quite empathically, that he was not as smart as he thought he was.

The realization that his arrogance had almost cost the party the 1972 election forced Pierre to become more political. And it was the belief in his leadership that caused people such as Keith Davey to start to work much harder on his behalf. We never did restore the Trudeaumania of 1968 and that was fine. We thought that people should support him for what he was and what he represented. Trudeaumania was a media invention that got him elected in ’68 for all the wrong reasons.

And there is no danger of that with Justin Trudeau. Justin represents something very different. He is more like John Kennedy or Barack Obama than his father. It is a generational thing. He represents hope and change. For a while, he can be a bit naïve. He is actually a straight arrow type and he will eventually get that tendency to honesty under better control. He certainly has enough people telling him how.

In watching Justin over the past three years, we have seen dramatic improvement and changes in a very determined person. His objective is still more than two years away but it becomes more obvious every day that he will be our next Prime Minister.

The person who commented on the blog suggested that Justin and his advisors should study that CBC interview carefully and learn from it. You can count on that.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Is Harper a root cause?

by Peter Lowry

Boston is a wondrous city and adds an indomitable spirit to the American psyche. That is why, when hearing about the Boston marathon bombing, you stop for a bit, you consider what you have heard and you question what could cause people to do such a thing. That is what Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau did. He wanted to understand the root causes of such an act.

But Prime Minister Harper does not need or want to understand. He took time from the funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to condemn those unknown persons who perpetrated such a thing. It was a knee-jerk political reaction to a sad and disturbing event. His comments were a deliberate feeding of the American paranoia. He wants punishment instead of prevention. His comments were in stark contrast to Justin Trudeau’s humane search for understanding.

The question we really need to ask is if attitudes, such as those expressed by Mr. Harper to politicize the events, are part of the root causes. Do people such as Mr. Harper add to the alienation from society that can produce home-grown terrorism? This is a very serious question.

Did a young Steve Harper maybe find himself alienated from the middle class orientation of his parents in Toronto? Did he find his niche in life with Calgary natives who sometimes put down those they consider effete Easterners? Did the young Harper find his cause with the Reform Party that said “the West wants in”? Did he not serve as the angry president of the extreme right-wing National Citizens Coalition? Does he not represent the one per cent?

And what has Stephen Harper done for Canadians lately? Is he not lying about how his government’s economic action plan is solving all our problems? Is he allowing citizens the right to voice their concerns about their environment? In fact, does he even allow his own party’s backbenchers to speak out for their constituents? This man is an ideologue and does not give a damn about what anybody else thinks. As long as we let him be Prime Minister, he is going to fly around the world telling people how to run their economies while micro-managing a mean and dysfunctional Parliament in Canada. He is going to continue to be part of the problem, instead of part of the solution

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Meet your emancipated Member.

by Peter Lowry

It is long overdue. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is attempting to free the slaves. These are not your traditional type of slaves. After all, they are paid $160,000 plus per year as Members of Parliament. They are the ones controlled and directed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They are Harper’s Conservative backbenchers in Parliament. Justin wants these poor downtrodden Members to have a voice in Parliament.

It is all very Machiavellian. The Liberal Leader thinks Canadians should hear how Members think and how they represent them in Parliament. He has proposed a motion that will ensure that every MP will be given time in Parliament to speak out about the concerns of their constituents. Trudeau is defying Harper to stand up in the House of Commons and say to his backbenchers that he will not let them speak out. Harper and Trudeau both know that it will open Pandora’s Box for the different factions within the Conservative Members.

Principal among these freed factions will be the religious zealots who make up a strong group in Harper’s backbenchers and some of his Cabinet. The first issue that this group will bring up, when freed, is abortion. Harper has prevented this until now by refusing to let some of the louder Right-to-Life Members to speak. Maybe they will also speak out to return capital punishment.

Another group will be the Libertarians in the Conservative Party. These people are extremists who demand small government, small taxation, and an every man for himself business environment. This group includes those who convinced Harper to put an end to the long-gun registry, so they are not without some influence.

And then there are the few old-fashioned, socially conscious Conservatives who are appalled at Harper’s cut and slash approach to the federal civil service and social programs. They could do serious damage to the Harper government if they were allowed to speak out.

That leaves another major category of Conservative MPs. They are the ones like Babel’s MP. How they got to Ottawa is an embarrassment for all concerned. They have nothing to contribute and nothing to say. To stand to read prepared texts on behalf of different Ministers is not representing your constituents. Trudeau thinks that voters should also have an opportunity to hear and assess these MPs.

The Conservatives have stalled any debate on this motion until next Wednesday. It will be interesting to see how Mr. Harper weasels his way out of this possibility.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Worry about lies, not attacks.

by Peter Lowry

The kids in the school yard are at the name-calling stage. It is a long way from anyone getting a bloody nose. And as attack advertising goes, these Conservative commercials saying Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is in way over his head are a waste of time and money. The Tories should have taken the time to do some focus group analyses with the target audiences.

This first advertisement says more about Stephen Harper and his party than it says about Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. The Tories are getting sloppy. They are overconfident, arrogant and lazy. And there is no mileage to be had in saying that Trudeau is young. If you were under 40, a person without too much interest in politics, what would your response be to greybeards like Stephen Harper putting down a younger and vital challenger? If those Conservatives (men obviously) had just checked their proposed ad with more women, they would have scrapped it unaired. They are causing women to be defensive of their opponent.

Justin Trudeau is not Stéphane Dion or Michael Ignatieff. The attack ads on Dion were cruel. They caught Canadians off guard but his failure to fight back was the reason they were so effective. With Michael Ignatieff, it was the snowball effect. He not only failed to address the scurrilous attacks on his “visiting” but he seemed nonplussed by it. It was like when the late Jack Layton used that rude attack in the English leaders’ debate about Ignatieff’s attendance in parliament. It was a simple attack to put off but he failed to say anything in response.

The guy who should be concerned about these attack ads is New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair. He has a complaint that the Conservatives are ignoring him. You have to at least give the Tories credit to realize that their problem in the upcoming election in 2015 is not any resurgent NDP but a well-led, strong Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau.

But the major concern for all Canadians is the current advertising for this mythical “Economic Action Plan” being paid for with taxpayers’ money. The quickly slurred words at the end of the commercial “Subject to parliamentary approval” do not justify or correct the impression that the Conservative government is doing something about the economy. This is the “Big Lie” of Stephen Harper. It is why polls are consistently showing that Canadians might hate Harper but they think he is doing something about the economy. He is not.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Justin’s on the job: Let’s get to work.

by Peter Lowry

That was no barnburner speech last Sunday. That was the real Justin Trudeau speaking. He was gracious. He was humble. And he appreciated the phenomenal level of support he received from across Canada. His point was well taken: now the real work begins.

Later this year, the new electoral districts will be proclaimed and the party will proceed to restructure itself to contest 338 seats across Canada in the next election. The most extensive change will be in Ontario with 16 new electoral districts. Those 16 new ridings will be among the most hotly contested in the election expected in October of 2015. They will also be among the most hotly contested by Liberals seeking the nominations to be the candidate.

Most of those electoral districts are going to need lots of help. We need a much stronger provincial and regional party organization to help get that job done. The federal party organization in Toronto has to start asserting itself and provide the support to assist every riding to do its job. In Ontario, we also need strong regional executives to share that workload and make sure no opportunities are lost. And it means an entirely different mindset than before as the riding organizations take responsibility for candidates, policy development, fund raising, supporter identification and local public education efforts.

It has been more than 20 years since local ridings have had the responsibilities they are now undertaking. Most executive members have no concept of how to get the work done. They not only need to know how it was done 30 years ago but they also need to understand new technologies and new opportunities that can make the job easier.

But we have to start with the basics. If you have no idea of how the ground game works in politics, every member of your riding executive and every key member of the electoral district has to go to school. You need to be out on the streets of your electoral district tomorrow, practicing effective door-knocking techniques, identifying and recruiting supporters, opening up avenues for fund-raising. Ready or not, we have to get to work.

Justin’s job today is in Ottawa. Your job is here in your riding. And after you have done canvassing for the day, you can start to think about the policy issues Justin and Liberal candidates need to articulate for us in the run up to that 2015 election. Where should the Liberal Party lead Canadians in the 21st Century? We know how bad the Harper government is but what can we do better? Platitudes are what you use when you have had no time to think. We have two years before we need to publish a policy book. With all that time to plan it, it should be a fantastic Liberal policy book.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Marketing Mr. Mulcair.

by Peter Lowry

Will many Canadians notice that the New Democrats renounced their socialist origins over the weekend? Will they realize that the party of Tommy Douglas is no more? The party has decided that it wants to move to the mythical middle of the political spectrum. Despite the Liberal Party having dibs on that part of the political playpen, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair says it is just a marketing position.

Mr. Mulcair must have learned his political marketing from Stephen Harper. Harper has two methods of handling his political opponents. He either trashes them or ignores them. And, as many of his opponents have learned, trashing means you are worrying him.

Todate, Mr. Mulcair has not seemed to worry Stephen Harper. In fact, as long as Mr. Mulcair wants to attack the Liberals, Mr. Harper can sit back and enjoy the show. If anyone knows the problems and rewards of a split opposition, Mr. Harper is the expert.

But it is now Mr. Mulcair who has the marketing problem. He said to Tom Clark of Global news the other day that he will win in 2015 because of Stephen Harper’s disrespect for the institutions of government in our country. Canadians knew all about that disrespect in 2011 and it produced a Conservative majority. Mr. Mulcair will have to do better than that issue.

The key question for him is whether he can even hold a majority of seats in Quebec? While the laughing description of voters in Quebec as ‘flash mobs’ is popular with the media, it is a volatility that needs to be understood.  Jack Layton caught the attention of Quebecers in 2011 because of his understanding of the problems they faced. They hated Harper, they despised the old Liberals and were tired of the Bloc Québécois. Voting Orange was their version of the Canadian one-finger salute to all politicians.

And Mulcair and his crew of kids think they can hold that position in Quebec? Mulcair was part of the former Charest Liberal regime that fought with students. Just how he is going to be marketed as young and vital in a centre-left party will take a lot more than a diet, a shave and foregoing the three-piece suits.

And that leaves the problems of the rest of the country. Traditional strongholds of NDP support in the Atlantic, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia are isolated and have their own regional concerns. It was the old socialist origins of the NDP that knitted the party together across Canada and gave it the purity of purpose. Mr. Mulcair is going to miss that strength.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Babel’s Brown discovers new challenges.

by Peter Lowry

It was an article in Babel Backward (or Barrie Advance, if you wish) that caused ruminations about Mr. Brown’s service to Barrie. The article was entitled Brown defends private trips. It was written by Laurie Watt. It does not say who complained about MP Patrick Brown’s extensive travels but provides a so-so defence.

Having also traveled the world when Mr. Brown’s age, the writer can appreciate that travel can be a wonderful learning experience as well as an opportunity to help others. Of course, members of Canada’s parliament are offered many opportunities to travel to countries seeking material or other aid from this country. An MP has to carefully consider his objectives in parliament, on parliamentary committees and the needs of constituents before flying off thither and yon around the world.

It is not as though our MP is Minister of Foreign Affairs or Prime Minister, who regularly fly to many parts of the world. When the Prime Minister took MP Brown to India last year, we assumed that it was to help carry the Prime Minister’s luggage. The many problems one runs into in keeping diplomatic luggage secure have become something of an international disgrace.

The good news is that we have always noted that the MPs who do the most travel—leaving parliamentary duties and constituents behind—are the ones who do not intend to run for office in the next election. And, frankly, not having Mr. Brown under foot, so to speak, in Ottawa and Babel could be something of a blessing. He is hardly the most useful of the Conservative’s back-bench contingent in Ottawa. It has been noted though that some of the Ministers of the Crown have appreciated his willingness to ask them the questions they write for him to help use up Question Period.

His travels have also been appreciated by many of his constituents as they have helped keep him from interfering in the fund-raising activities of many of our charities to give him more publicity. He did make it home last year for the annual skating show at the Molson Centre. Many in Babel would certainly like to see that show turned into a proper fund raiser instead of a Conservative Party rally—just think about how much more could be raised for Royal Victoria Hospital if that event was run properly.

One item we are reluctant to query in Ms. Watt’s defence of Mr. Brown is the part of the article that quotes him as saying: “I travelled to Tanzania last year to work in rural health clinics…” We have a problem with the concept of him “working” in rural clinics. The only work, Mr. Brown might seem qualified for at a clinic would be on bed-pan patrol. Did we recently give MPs a raise to $160,000 per year for him to empty bed pans?

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Justin Trudeau and servant leadership.

by Peter Lowry

In his speech to the Liberal faithful from Toronto last weekend, Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau referred to the concept of servant leadership to explain his approach to greater democracy in the Liberal Party of Canada. One of the most successful leadership techniques in business and organizations around the world, you rarely hear of servant leadership in politics. Too often, people question the sincerity.

And yet servant leadership is what politics is all about. The essential step to becoming an effective leader is to first be a good servant. That rare person who is a natural leader knows that instinctively. It is the desire to serve that brings that person to a position of leadership. To remain an effective leader, you remain an effective servant. It is leadership that can corrupt the servant.

While examples of servant leadership have been around for thousands of years, it was only in the late 1900s that an American, the late Robert Greenleaf, studied and tried to explain servant leadership. He listed the characteristics of servant leadership and identified how they contributed to successful organizations. His foundation today continues to train leaders and servants.

Many of us in business saw these relationships as just an ethical basis for moral dealings with the complex relationships of business publics. When Greenleaf was writing his books, we were addressing university business classes on the importance of ethics in all business dealings.

And yet in politics the struggle is always to find the people whom you can serve. The knowledgeable political apparatchik can always find takers. And they take until they bleed you dry. The more freely you give, the less likely it is to be paid forward or back. Your usefulness becomes finite to those you serve.

The greatest danger is for the need to serve to be taken as arrogance. The best example of this in politics was the rhetorical question Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau asked on a western trip: Why should I sell your wheat? What is always left out of that quote was his continuing with a defence of the Canadian Wheat Board.

It is expected that Justin Trudeau will be more cognizant than his father of why you should never ask rhetorical questions of an audience. He also appears to have more intelligence than people want to give him credit for. That could be the ideal balance.

It will be fascinating to see how Stephen Harper’s people decide to attack Justin Trudeau. He will not be as easy a target as they think.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

The challenge of the Liberal-NDP merger.

by Peter Lowry

Nobody is giving up on this issue. MP Justin Trudeau did not lay the issue to rest in his address to Liberals and supporters in his speech from Toronto last week. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair cannot brush the issue aside. The decision belongs to the parties; not the leaders. The rationale of these parties working together is too persuasive to go away. We have to find a way for the Liberals and NDP to cooperate going into the 2015 federal election. It is simple as that and as complex as that.

We are not talking about anything that might be novel or new. It has been done before and it works.

As recently as 2003, the Canadian Alliance (the former Reform Party) merged with the Progressive Conservative Party and became the Conservative Party of Canada. The difference was that these parties were losers. The Reform Party was a Western rump unable to make inroads in the east and the Progressive Conservatives had hit a low of just two seats in Parliament after the 1993 election. And the Canadian Alliance experiment was short lived. It was these losers who united the right.

Why cannot a strong left create a more vibrant party, a progressive party and a winning party to better serve Canadians?

It is not as though our respective leaders of the left would let their ego’s interfere with the needs of Canadian voters? Would they?

It is certainly time for the merger. Canadians want to get rid of the Harper Conservatives. They want to be proud of their country again. They need a government that can restore their pride.

The New Democrats are obviously moving to the right, away from their socialist origins. The Liberals are far more conscious today of the social needs of Canadians that the Conservatives have been ignoring. Both Liberals and the NDP are moving into the space of social democracy. Their combined objectives can create a better future for Canadians.

In the next year the new Liberal leader and the New Democrat leader will be directing their parties to develop and endorse election platforms that will say very much the same things. The same needs have to be met. The same voters have to be served.

If these parties intend to fight each other in the coming election, they will be helping the Conservatives defeat them both. When you come together with strength, when you work together with pride, you are building a future for all. Think about it.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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