Federal Politics – Page 199

The economics of Social Democracy.

November 27, 2011 by Peter Lowry

The late Tom Kent was practically raised to sainthood by the Liberal Party of Canada. It was Kent’s ideas that fuelled the rebirth of the party in the 1960s. His ideas also spurred the growth of the left wing of the party. And it was the growing and vocal left wing of the party that pushed through Medicare and welcomed the leadership of Pierre Trudeau.

Yet we never thought of Tom Kent as a social democrat. That idea is being promoted by former New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent. It seems that Kent wrote a paper on the future of social programs for the Broadbent Institute. What is unusual about the paper is that it advocates refundable credits in federal income tax to combat poverty and further other social democracy objectives. He uses the example of the Baby Bonus cheques that went to the mothers that were replaced by the supposedly more sophisticated child tax credit in the federal income tax.

But the monthly child credit still goes mainly to the mother or to her bank account. The tax system is then used to claw back the money from families with better incomes. Not even Stephen Harper has been able to find a more effective system to distribute these funds. And it is hardly an example of the use of refundable credits in the tax system.

Refundable credits are the ones where the taxpayer spends the money and then claims the refund in the subsequent year’s income tax. That system was used for the home repair credits in Harper’s economic stimulus plan and seemed to do no more than ensure people got receipts and paid the GST for their home improvement expenditures instead of keeping them hidden. The real amount of economic stimulus was probably limited.

The most serious basic social need in this country is a guaranteed annual income for every person. This is a basic income to keep a roof over their head and a proper diet on the table. It is neither generous nor fun but it does ensure survival and an opportunity to earn more. It is not something that can be paid in the subsequent year, based on your failure to earn an income this year.

That is what a Liberal believes in: basic dignity for the individual in our society. That is also what a social democrat should believe in.

We are not too sure what point Ed Broadbent is trying to make with Tom Kent’s paper. The way it was said in the version we saw, the refundable tax credit system was a roundabout way to make social programs work under our current government system. The time is long overdue to change that system.

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Tony Clement: An ideologue in Parliament.

November 24, 2011 by Peter Lowry

The federal New Democrats do not seem to like Treasury Board President Tony Clement. This dislike might be because of Mr. Clement’s hard right wing stance, his distain for any opposition and his seeming lack of concern for taxpayers’ money or taxpayers. Since his days at the University of Toronto, Clement has shown a propensity for annoying people who might be more fair-minded than himself.

We first heard about him at the U. of T. when he tried to promote a debating event with the South African Ambassador, at the time, a known advocate of apartheid. It was more an attempt to goad than to promote free speech.

That chip on his shoulder seemed to reveal what was probably a deep-seated inferiority complex during his political career. An Ontario politician, Clement, allied more with the Western Canadian Alliance, wrote policy for Michael Harris’ program-slashing plans in the early 1990s under the strange title of the “Common Sense Revolution.” He was elected provincially in 1995 and in 1997 became part of the Harris Provincial Cabinet and its successor government headed by Ernie Eves, until defeated along with the Eves government in 2003.

Clement won election to the House of Commons in Parry Sound-Muskoka by 28 votes in 2006 and was appointed to the new Harper Government as Minister of Health. He was immediately in hot water because of a drug company conflict and then his stand on providing AIDS-related drugs to the Third World. He went on in that portfolio to cause a Supreme Court ruling on safe injection sites for addicts. This was in addition to his trying to enforce draconian treatment of drug users instead of going after drug dealers.

After two years of annoying people in Health Care, Clement was moved to the supposedly safer Industry Ministry in 2008. In this role, he made many controversial remarks. The most note-worthy that applied to his job for Harper was to refer to the danger of the City of Sudbury becoming a “Valley of Death.” His interference in Statistics Canada being able to provide assistance to Canadian industry led to the angry resignation of the Chief Statistician.

The G8 $45 million spread-the-wealth fiasco that he arranged for his own riding in 2010 was a classic of pork barrel politics. It certainly got him re-elected with more votes this time. His only problem is that he keeps trying to correct things he has said and, if he had a Pinocchio nose, it would be a foot long by now. The NDP opposition smell his fear and have now accused Clement of falsifying parliamentary records.

Prime Minister Harper is watching his minister squirm. Harper has a majority now and he knows that Clement is disposable. Fix it or fail, Tony!

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Politics in Babel: Strange happenings.

November 20, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Writing about politics is fun. Being part of the game is hazardous. You never know from where the next missile will come. That thought was present the other day when we found out that the upcoming annual general meeting of the Barrie Federal Liberal Association would not be as uneventful as these events usually can be.

Instead of just considering dull constitution changes, there will be a contest for the party presidency. The role of president is no easy job. It requires a lot of work, a considerable amount of time and dedication. When you get a good one, you like to keep them for at least a few terms. It helps build a strong association.

And the local party has a good one at this time. He has been in the job over the past year. He helped bring the party together. He provided strong organizational support during a tough federal election campaign in the spring. He has been doing an excellent job in building the riding executive. He not only worked hard through the federal election but he helped ensure good support to the new provincial candidate this fall.

And now he is being challenged—not by a newcomer–but by a former Member of Parliament and the now retired Member of the Provincial Parliament. Why she wants the job is not clear.

She hardly needs the position of riding president to be influential in Barrie. It is actually a step backward. She would never put in the work that the current president is doing.

And where was she during the federal election earlier this year? The federal candidate could have used her help.

When people run for a position such as president of the riding association, you expect them to explain why. When they decide to run against someone who has been doing a good job, you expect them to have a very interesting explanation.

To help her campaign for the party presidency, the former MPP has enlisted her husband to run for the association position of fund-raising chair. The riding association would have sent a brass band to welcome one of Canada’s more prominent lawyers if they had known he was willing to do that job.

But what is her agenda? She should explain.

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Liberal demise: A premature report.

November 19, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Peter C. Newman has done it again. As the lead drummer and chronicler of the Conrad Black Memorial Marching Band, Peter has again announced the death of the Liberal Party of Canada. Peter has been wrong before. He is no prophet.

The first problem with Peter’s report is that his conclusion was based on interviews with former party leader Michael Ignatieff. One can well understand that Michael is a bit down at this time on the future of the Liberal Party. We can only hope that Michael will be the last person chosen to lead the Liberal Party without knowing where it wants to go.

There is no question but the Liberal Party of Canada does have some self-destructive tendencies. As does any political party. It is a safety mechanism for the voters. Our voting system of first-past-the-post also provides wild swings in party representation. In comparison, proportional voting would provide glacial change and the country would stagnate politically.

As gloomy as Michael and some others might be about the Liberal party, its current condition is really an opportunity. Political parties have to be able to renew themselves. New ideas, new solutions are available to those who seek them. An open and democratic party can not only refresh its direction but lay out a better future for Canadians.

What the Liberal Party might never find is a way to rid itself of those who would hold it back. To admit that naysayers are necessary is to admit that you need internal checks and balances on your arguments for a future. And you accept the inevitable. You let them stay because you need the early warnings on the arguments of your enemies.

But they have to be open to change. That is part of being liberal. Liberalism should never be a fixed target. It moves with the times. It has to be in the current century. While liberalism in Canada might have its origins in the muddy streets of 19th Century Toronto, it has embraced a country stretching from Labrador to Vancouver Island.

In his book When the Gods Changed, Newman concludes that Canada no longer needs a Liberal Party. In the same manner, one can also conclude that Canadians no longer need a Conservative Party. And while Canada very much needed a Tommy Douglas, the union-dominated New Democratic Party has proved itself an anachronism.

We certainly need a new Liberal Party.

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Is fear alone derailing our future?

November 16, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Franklin Roosevelt said it best in his 1933 inaugural address that the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That certainly helps explain the pitiful excuses from both Ottawa and Queen’s Park to again shy away from high-speed train service in the Windsor–Quebec City corridor. These so-called politicians do not serve us well.

When something is so vital to the political and economic future of our country, why are we letting it be blocked by the callow, the myopic, the self-serving and the ignorant? “It’s time for us to pause and reflect,” says Ontario Premier McGuinty in answer to questions from reporters about the high speed train service. If he had told Ontario voters that, during the recent election campaign, he would have been doing his reflecting today back in his law practice in Ottawa.

Neither Prime Minister Harper nor Ontario’s Premier understand that, in times of adversity—such as today’s economic problems—the country needs clear, non-partisan direction. It needs determined and understandable leadership, not ideology. It needs bold moves forward, not quavering inaction.

They think of high speed trains down the Windsor–Quebec City corridor as train tickets. They have little understanding of how those rails of steel can hold this country together. If they keep letting Quebec isolate itself from the rest of the country, they will never notice when it leaves. It is important to remember that the Quebec government also wants this high-speed rail service. We have to build for togetherness, not separation.

Today, we know that the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal part of the scheme is doable, economically viable and essential to our nation. The only people who will hate it are the people who own Porter Airlines.

The right of way exists, the train stations exist, the dire need exists. All this country really lacks is leadership.

And with all the electricity that the two provinces generate, the trains have to be electric as an example of Canadian engineering to the world. At 300-plus kilometres per hour, Canadians could even learn to enjoy on-time rail service

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Defining 21st Century Liberalism.

November 14, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Liberal Party of Canada President Alfred Apps is a brave guy. In his paper Building a Modern Liberal Party, he tries to define modern liberalism. He roots around in the muddy middle ground of politics attempting to assemble a representation of the big red tent of Liberalism.

When you consider that this is the party of Mitchell Sharp, Bill Graham and Paul Martin Jr. on the right as well as Herb Grey, Lloyd Axworthy and Paul Martin Sr. on the left, you can be excused for thinking the party covers a broad spectrum of ideologies. Today, this broad spectrum is the party’s weakness.

It is our opinion that Canadians are getting tired of the Liberal Party posturing in a fictional middle ground. We need to pick a path to the future.

Apps touches on where we should build on our strengths when he says, “We believe in the ‘servant state’.” There is an entire philosophy to be built around that statement. It is one that we need to believe in beyond anything else. And yet Apps is wrong when he says, “We are capitalists, not socialists.” To be an effective servant, you must be both.

To serve, to engage and to lead is a long road that liberals need to travel. It has little to do with modern technology and has much to do with our beliefs. Believe first. Earn the trust and then the mechanics are easy.

Alf needs to learn that there is no such thing as a “balanced middle road.” The question always has to be: Are we effectively serving the needs of our people?

Liberals are not the natural government of Canada. That is arrogant. You have to earn the right to be the government. Or you could learn how to lie and steal and cheat your way into government the way the Conservatives have learned to do it. If you can earn peoples’ trust, you could come up with programs people want to make life better. Or you could just run scurrilous attack ads against your opponent and not offer anything positive.

Alf admits that he does not understand the emotional rationale of how people vote. It is probably just as well that he is not likely to run for the party leadership in 2013.

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Toronto Star needs better research.

November 13, 2011 by Peter Lowry

There are people who consider Toronto Star editorials as gospel. Their numbers will be decreasing if the editorial writers do not pull up their socks and do a little more research before pontificating. The editorial (Nov. 13, 2011) on the delay of Trans Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline is a good example of the lack of research.

The headline was that the pipeline delay was a shabby rebuff from a friend. They could have started with a little better understanding that ‘the friend,’ by the name of Barack Obama, is fighting for his political life and Trans Canada Pipelines is not even in his vocabulary. What President Obama saw was a concerted effort by major environmental groups to derail a plan for a pipeline to get Alberta oil-sands crude toTexas Gulf coast refineries. Those environmentalists are Obama’s supporters and he needs them to help keep his job in the 2012 elections.

The Star editorial writer just sees this as another rebuff from Obama after the ‘Buy America’ provisions of his $447 billion American Jobs Act.

Has the Star writer even considered that Canadians might not want to ship their expensive, polluting crude from oil sands to American refineries? Maybe Canadians think that there should be enough refinery capacity in Canada to handle what crude we have to produce from oil sands. That would at least keep some of those refinery jobs in Canada, if not the profit from doing the refining in Canada.

The Star writer thinks it is just rotten, crass American politics that Trans Canada Pipelines is not being allowed to go ahead with the creation of 20,000 jobs (mainly in the United States of America) to build its pipeline.

What that writer should read is the posting in Bloomberg News about Mr. Obama’s decision. Bloomberg, in case the writer does not know it, is a well respected business news network that pays attention to matters such as U.S.-based pipelines and new construction plans. Bloomberg says that Trans Canada’s loss is probably Enbridge’s gain. Enbridge is a Calgary based energy company that runs pipelines from Alberta down through Illinois. Enbridge would like to compete for the contract to ship the oil-sands crude through Illinois and, from there, down to the Texas Gulf coast. Bloomberg’s conclusion is that Trans Canada’s loss is Enbridge’s gain.

It seems Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is also unaware of the Enbridge plan. When he heard about Obama’s delay of the Trans Canada proposal, he suggested a pipeline to the West Coast so we could ship all that crude to China. Flaherty must also be an environmentalist. It seems nobody wants to refine Canadian crude in Canada. The Toronto Star writer never thought of it.

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“If there were ever a time for Liberals to be bold,”

November 12, 2011 by Peter Lowry

“It is now.” The headline and those three words are from a discussion paper released by Alfred Apps, a prominent Toronto lawyer and President of the Liberal Party of Canada. The title is “Building a Modern Liberal Party” and we think that Liberal Party members should certainly be bold and tell Alf Apps to stuff it!

The document is supposed to provide warm-up thinking for the Liberal Party of Canada’s biennial conference in January of 2012. While we had some trepidation in trying to read a 79-page document by a lawyer, it turned out to not be a lawyer’s document. Somebody with a marketing background was involved. It is a pure marketing. It is a treatise on how to sell the Red Tent of Canadian Liberalism.

Judging by the definition of liberalism in the document, that red tent would have to be made of spandex. And that is only its first mistake. By trying to be all things to all people, his visions of liberalism come to nothing. Alf’s big red tent goes nowhere.

And where was our party president when he points out our failures in the last federal election? What was he responsible for in that lacklustre performance by the party? There was no forgiveness for poor Michael Ignatieff. Who decided that Alf Apps gets a pass?

There is far too much in Alf’s document that needs to be discussed and even more that is not there. In the run up to the January convention, it is obvious that the party ‘bosses’ are heading off the growing demand for party democracy that is coming from activists throughout the party. The basic step of returning power to the electoral districts is being brushed aside in favour of another ‘commission’ and the commission’s recommendations are to be vetted by the council of party electoral district presidents. Nothing will change.

Alf’s paper does not recognize that the top down management of the party is what has left the party with almost a third of the electoral district associations becoming moribund and more about to join them.

We will come back to this subject but in the meantime, Alf Apps needs to understand that before you market something, you need to understand the people who might buy it.

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Bob Rae does not do economics.

November 10, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae spoke to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto this Wednesday. We know it was a Liberal speech because he quoted Wilfrid Laurier. Anyone looking for a liberal insight into solving the current world economic situation was bound to be disappointed.

The last lesson in economics that Rae ever listened to was from Thomas d’Aquino, when d’Aquino headed up the Business Council on National Issues in the 1990s. At the time, Bob Rae was the New Democratic Premier of Ontario. After listening to d’Aquino, Bob Rae soon became the ex-premier of Ontario. He tried to sell his Social Contract to NDP supporters and they turned on him.

As economics and socialism are not compatible sciences, Bob Rae became a Liberal and offered to replace Paul Martin as Liberal leader in 2006. The road from Martin to Rae was fraught with too many hurdles and Rae came third to Dion and Ignatieff. When he won a seat in Parliament in 2008, he again put his name forward for the leadership but the party executive chose Michael Ignatieff. When Ignatieff’s leadership garnered fewer seats than the NDP in the 2011 election, Rae won the interim leadership by default.

But being interim leader does not guarantee instant liberal wisdom. It did him little good to heap praises on Paul Martin’s management of Canada’s books in the 1990s. Martin balanced the country’s books on the backs of the poor, the unemployed and by cutting provincial transfer payments. While he was at it, Martin burned the red book and blocked all the liberal promises of the Chrétien Liberals. Some role model!

Rae’s speech in Toronto called for a simpler, clearer tax code. And he wants to have a comprehensive review of tax spending to make sure we are getting value for the money. He does not think we are right now. You can hear that in any Conservative economic speech.

Rae complains that the Liberals find they are competing with two other parties with simplistic messages. Bob needs to keep thinking. Eventually, he will come up with some simplistic messages for us.

It was very much a kitchen sink type of speech. There were not many economic clichés left out. One good idea that was lost in the speech said we had to support innovation. It was too bad that Rae had no idea how to do that. Instead of beggaring our municipalities with debt through infrastructure programs, Canada should have realized that it could shovel more liquidity through the economy faster by a mix of programs that put money in the hands of entrepreneurs. You do not do that through tax credits alone.

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Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has a revelation.

November 9, 2011 by Peter Lowry

It must have come to him in the middle of the night. It was an insight that said, “Jim boy, you are not going to get the country’s books in the black as soon as you have been telling people you will.”

It was not one of those hard and fast Word-of-God kind of things. It was more in the form of friendly advice. It just said, in a kindly way, that he had better stop lying to Canadians about their excellent financial position because of their wisdom of having him drive the economy along with his good friend Stephen Harper.

The only problem is that Stephen is busy travelling around in a Canadian government A300 Airbus solving world economic problems. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is in Europe straightening out the eurozone crises. And here, the Canadian economy has gone into the toilet. This is Jim’s mess to fix.

The first thing he did was order a new backdrop for when he made his speech. “It has to be positive,” he told his staff. “Base it on the old Action Plan backdrop, people liked that, and make sure it is Conservative blue and has lots of arrows going up. That always makes things sexy and positive.”

Next Jim looked at the programs he is proposing and decided he would give employers a tremendous break. He would only increase Employment Insurance premiums by half of what he intended. He thought that would please them. At the same time, he decided another sop would be to extend a minor work-sharing program that did not cost the government much. He was ready.

They also had decided to make the announcement in Calgary. They knew that there was no Occupy Calgary demonstration allowed in that town. And the media is kinder to Conservatives there. After all, it is Stephen’s adopted city and, because of the annual stampede, it is used to horse manure.

So that was what Jim Flaherty gave the news media. The only problem was that while the staff had done a perfect backdrop, they had forgotten the box behind the podium for Jim to stand on. He looked like a little boy, peering over the podium with a surprised look on his face.

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