Federal Politics – Page 200

The Brits can certainly handle royalty.

July 29, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Who would not have enjoyed that jolly send-up of the Queen in the opening of the London Olympics. Even many of Her Majesty’s Canadian subjects could understand those odd bits of British humour that made the obligatory opening celebrations a delight to watch. Director Danny Boyle, who produced the living movie, as he described it, must have thought he had died and gone to Heaven when he got that assignment.

The Queen (a stand-in at least) parachuting out of a helicopter with filmdom’s current James Bond (Daniel Craig) was about as broad as British humour gets. Mind you, actor Rowan Atkinson—in his Mr. Bean persona—was much funnier in his skit with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Watching the ceremonies, you had to admit that the Brits really know how to do pantomime. At the same time, you have to admit that British designers should never have been allowed to dress any of the cast of thousands. When one hears the words “British design, one automatically thinks of the word: dowdy. Mind you, for the Mary Poppins portion, they had to stick with the period.

Even during the entry of the athletes—pronounced ath-letes, not ath-el-etes—those costumes on the escorts where ridiculous. If the attempt was to be sure not to overshadow the athletes’ costumes, they certainly succeeded. And the ladies with the stand-up letters over their heads, for each country, were hardly dressed in anything close to haute couture.

But, backing up to the royals, that was supposed to be the highlight of the evening. Even the Queen’s corgis got into the act. Those little dogs were much better actors than the Queen. They certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves in their role—much more than Daniel Craig. When Craig jumped out of the helicopter, you understood why he wanted to do it, seemingly without a parachute.

And this is just another reason why Canada should not use the British royals for its head of state. Canadian politicians would never agree to the Queen doing acting stunts like that in this country. Our Canadian politicians are far too bloody uptight for that.

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Mr. Harper’s China sale.

July 24, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There is probably no ideogram among the thousands of Mandarin characters for a ‘pig in a poke.’ It is more likely that the Chinese language has its own derogatory term for really dumb purchases. A case in point is the offer to purchase Calgary-based Nexen Inc. by the state-owned Chinese oil company CNOOC Ltd. for some US$15 billion.

Canadians should be delighted to see that Stephen Harper is really sticking it to the Chinese government. We figured he must be selling something to them but we never figured he would get such a hefty premium. There is more than US$4 billion in that deal that is pure profit for the Nexen shareholders.

Nexen has energy assets around the world that the Chinese want. What they might not have bargained for are the problems surrounding Nexen’s Long Lake tarsands operations in Northern Alberta. While part of Canada’s vast tarsands oil reserves that all countries are eying, Nexen has had constant problems getting into production.

Nexen has been using the solution of processing the tarsands bitumen into synthetic crude oil before shipping it. The company has been struggling with its refining processes and with production targets.

Other companies are counting on shipping unprocessed bitumen through the Northern Gateway pipeline across British Columbia. As designed, this Enbridge solution is really two pipelines. A smaller diameter pipe running parallel is designed to carry light crude oil to the Alberta terminus where it will be mixed with the tarsands bitumen to, in effect, grease the way, for the combination to be shipped at higher temperature and higher pressure to the terminus at Kitimat, B.C.

It was the same type of bitumen and crude oil slurry that was spilled in Michigan two years ago by Enbridge. What the company proved for all to see was that its inept disaster planning was inadequate, careless and irresponsible.

The recent demands of the British Columbia Liberal government seem to ignore the dual pipeline aspect of the Northern Gateway proposal. While it is hard to envisage all the conditions being met, it would appear that the demand for a better share of the profits from the pipeline shows us from where the provincial government is coming.

The Chinese might not be too pleased with their purchase if the only way they can ship their new tarsands production is through the American Midwest via TransCanada Pipeline’s XL pipeline to the Texas ports on the Gulf of Mexico.

Canadians will be puzzled to hear that Stephen Harper, super salesman, is now wearing the mantle of Stephen Harper, protector of Canadian ownership. We wonder how long he will take to approve his own deal?

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Canada cursed in Kandahar.

July 16, 2012 by Peter Lowry

They no longer think kindly of Canada in Kandahar. The Canadians have left the building. Their promises no longer heard.

Oh, they marched so bravely up the Khyber Pass (figuratively) past the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan into the reality of the Pashtun peoples of Afghanistan. The image of the Canadian soldiers following the skirl of the bagpipes up the pass gives death time to mark those who would be his.

Turn the clock back 200 years and those are British troops marching up the pass. They marched up the pass to make the world safe for the growing of the opium poppy on the Northern Frontier of India—now Pakistan. The British East India Company had ready markets in China for opium back then and the safety of the growing fields was important.

Little has changed in the succeeding 200 years. The Afghans have learned to live on the rations of foreign troops and the opium poppy crop in the country has become the largest in the world. Only under the Taliban has the opium poppy crop been reduced but they became the enemy when they would not turn over Osama bin Laden to the Americans.

Despite the efforts of foreign troops in Afghanistan to kill off the Taliban, there are ample new recruits for them in the Madrassas of Pakistan. These religious colleges are indoctrination centres producing a steady stream of zealots eager to smite the infidels in the name of the Prophet. And the profits of the drug trade pay for their weapons.

In the ten years of Canadian military taking part in active fighting duty in Afghanistan, nothing has been accomplished. Soldiers have died. Pashtun fighters have died. The drug trade continues. The Afghan warlords stay in power. Nothing is resolved.

Canada also has shipping containers full of materiel for its troops left behind in Afghanistan. Trucking this materiel to Karachi in Pakistan for shipment to Canada will take much time and many bribes. Luckily, the Chief of the Defence Staff tells us there is nothing essential in the containers.

And, oh yes, we should also mention that the Americans started the current war against the Afghan people because the Taliban in Afghanistan would not give up Osama bin Laden. The Americans attacked and removed the Taliban and established a group of warlords in their place. As for Osama bin Laden, he was killed by some U.S. Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives on May 2, 2011. He was hiding in his home in Pakistan.

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Calamity in Kalamazoo can cancel B.C. pipeline.

July 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Enbridge blew it! The company can kiss the Northern Gateway Pipeline through British Columbia goodbye. It is not going to happen. It all came down to a report out of Washington by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). In July of 2010, Enbridge pumped over three million litres of bitumen slurry from Alberta’s tar sands into the Kalamazoo River in south-east Michigan and nobody will ever let the company forget it.

Of course, we have known about the spill for two years. There has been a clean-up—of sorts. The damage is more or less permanent. The company spent more than $800 million to clean up the carrier oil—the lighter crude that they mix with bitumen from tar sands crude to help it flow. The tar is settling into the water table, becoming part of the wetlands of the area. It will take a long-term study to determine the permanent damage.

The NTSB report was scathing. The board actually found that Enbridge kept pumping for 17 hours after the first alarms. It was a third-party that finally convinced the company that there was a serious spill. And the company did not even have clean-up equipment available for a bitumen spill. It had some equipment for the floating crude—not the stuff that sinks.

Would anyone trust this company to say it is never going to happen again?

The chair of the NTSB said the company’s response to the spill reminded her of a Keystone Kops effort. That is an image that Enbridge will wear as long as the company continues to operate under that name.

It leaves Stephen Harper and his pseudo environment minister, Joe Oliver, hung out to dry. It is a win for Thomas Mulcair that he did not earn. It leaves acting Liberal Leader Bob Rae with egg on his face. He was trying to find a compromise position on the issue. There is no compromise available. You just lose support from people on both sides of the issue.

Enbridge has given inestimable ammunition to the anti-pipeline forces with this report. It could bankrupt the company. Back when we knew the company as Consumers’ Gas in Toronto, there was a high level of trust. The NTSB said that Enbridge had known for five years that there was a corrosion in that pipeline through south east Michigan. And then they put more corrosive, higher temperature tar sand bitumen through it at higher pressures. That was a death wish.

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The Trudeau argument goes on.

July 13, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Whenever two or more Liberal Party members meet, the argument rages on. It starts with ‘will he?’ and deteriorates into ‘who else?’ Justin Trudeau has yet to make up his mind, again. He made it up once and most Liberals accepted the decision. He said he was not ready and would not contest the party leadership to be determined early in 2013. It was the right decision.

We have watched him working the Liberal faithful. He is good. He is a relaxed and easy speaker. He gives the party faithful all they expect and more. He needs only to develop his message. He needs direction and we have no idea where that is going to come from—if he decides he needs it.

He is not his father. He lacks his father’s passion. He lacks his father’s distain for the political realities. The intellect is nowhere near as sharp. He has some of his mother in his thinking process. You can see him shift moods. He is easy to read. He is no poker player. When he whaled the tar out of that Tory senator in the boxing ring some months ago, you were pleased that he did it but you were embarrassed by the juvenile behaviour.

Remember his father was almost 50 when he contested the Liberal leadership in 1968. Justin can wait another six or eight years. He also saw what his father’s job did to his family. He rightly wants to protect his wife and young family from that.

The major problem with Justin Trudeau is direction. Where does he want to go and where does he want to lead the Liberal Party? He has that Quebecoise sensitivity to constitutional issues without his father’s intellectual curiosity. He is wary of English-French biases in the simplest of constitutional discussion.

If he does decide to go for the leadership at this time, there are many questions. The party need not to not only listen to him but we really need to know to whom it is that he listens. People who liked Jean Chrétien needed to know that his main mentor was Mitchell Sharp. They thought Chrétien was left wing. Sharp certainly was not. Chrétien’s promises were shallow and rarely kept. What was his legacy? Was it Paul Martin’s budgets?

We have no idea what the full field is for this leadership contest. Members of the party would be wise not to leap on the first bandwagon passing through town.

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The effete followers of Stephen Harper.

July 11, 2012 by Peter Lowry

How can Prime Minister Stephen Harper even begin to create a new cabinet? There is no second tier of his caucus ready to step up to the task. In fact, it is hard to tell the bottom of the barrel from the contenders. The word ‘effete’ comes to mind when considering Harper’s Parliamentary caucus. To say they are just tired and feeble is to compliment them. The Conservative caucus is a sorry lot with sorrier prospects. And yet all the pundits are calling for a cabinet shakeup.

Bev Oda’s recent resignation from cabinet was the first improvement to the cabinet in a long time. Mind you, promoting a cop such as Julian Fantino to handle international cooperation is an obtuse gesture. It is as though of Harper were to take the podium at the United Nations and give the rest of the world the finger!

And then there are the Bobbsey twins? They represent Canada to the rest of the uncooperative world. We think of these Bobbsey twins as lemmings rushing for the precipice. They are Foreign Affairs’ John Baird and Citizenship’s Jason Kenney. You are forgiven if you get these two ideologues confused.

Kenney is the twin in the news recently for winning the award for self aggrandizement. There really is a form in his web site where you are invited to compliment him for saving taxpayers money by not helping refugee claimants with medical problems. Luckily most of Canada’s doctors have signed the version of the Hippocratic Oath that promises to do no harm.

If you think about it, you realize that this Harper cabinet minister has disgraced our country and its reputation for less than 0.000001 per cent of national health care costs.

We keep waiting breathlessly for Prime Minister Harper to consider the MP from Babel for his cabinet. What this kid really wants is Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s job. He wants to have his picture taken in a mock-up of an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. He could send autographed copies, suitable for framing, to every Babel voter.

Another wannabe on the back benches, waiting for Harper’s call-up, is Chris Alexander, MP for Ajax-Pickering. He spent many years in Canada’s foreign service and was considered the go-to guy with Afghanistan’s tribal leader Hamid Karzai. If anyone knows how much it will take to bribe Karzai to release Canada’s war materiel that was stupidly left in Afghanistan, Alexander should.

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Building a new liberalism. Part II:

July 10, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The Liberal Party of Canada is far from dead. Pundits prattling about its demise do not make it so. Nor has it succumbed to wounds so grievously inflicted by friends such as the Toronto Star. Being deserted by voters in the last election is a wake-up call for the party to heed.

Existing means choices. And the Liberal Party has choices. The choice of the middle of the road is gone. The voters know it is meaningless. They do not trust it and they are smart not to. Wishy-washy will not work. You have to stand for something.

And liberals have always been good at standing up for the individual in our society. It is where we stand for access to education for all. Where we stand up for women’s rights and daycare and national dental and drug plans. This is equal opportunity for all that means something. And that road is on the left.

Neither Stephen Harper nor Thomas Mulcair’s parties work for the individual in our society. Mr. Harper’s Conservatives could care less. Mr. Mulcair leads a party that looks at people only in the collective. Mr. Harper treats people as commodities—to be manipulated and used and discarded. Mr. Mulcair’s New Democrats are dominated by the NDP’s member unions.

You hardly need to be a mathematical genius to know that the day the Liberal and New Democrat parties unite their votes, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives will be defeated. We can welcome the NDP to work with us. We can keep an open door.

But in the meantime, the Liberal Party needs a new leader. It will have to be a leader pledged to having an open party. It will be a party where ridings pick their candidates without interference from Ottawa or regional headquarters. It will be a party where policy is decided by the rank and file in effectively and democratically run policy conventions.

The new Liberal Party leader will be able to hold out the olive branch to New Democratic Party members who share our respect for individual rights in a caring society.

The new leader must also hold out the olive branch to all Canadians to ensure that our citizens share equally in the bounty of our nation. That we work to having a balance of resource and manufacturing strengths to support a vigorous and growing economy. That our farmers have the marketing assistance they need to ensure a healthy agriculture base to support our food supply. And that is a beginning.

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Building a new liberalism. Part I:

July 9, 2012 by Peter Lowry

On political seas, liberalism has always been a flag of convenience. It is a political party without heavy ideology. Looking back, the party was its leaders. It was leaders such as George Brown, Oliver Mowat, Wilfrid Laurier, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien and lesser mortals. Michael Ignatieff saw the party as a big red tent that welcomed everyone but, with him leading it, he found that it tempted few.

Ignatieff’s main problem in the last election was that he had no concept of where the party should be going. We had fallen on hard times. The party’s promises were too vague for the voters. It could no longer survive on past success. This was the internationalist party that built and glorified the country around the world. It owned Quebec and spoke nationally for a bilingual and multicultural Canada. It was strong in the cities and their suburbs. It was the party that made things happen. It brought Medicare to the nation. Liberals created strong programs to support business and job creation. We were the party of the burgeoning middle class of Canada.

But we lost it. Quebec played with separatists and wandered off to the left and the demagogues of the elite. Like a jaded partner in a dull marriage, Quebec needed to experiment, to live it up, to try what is new and to regain the spirit. In a rising tide of political division in Canada, the Liberal Party tried to keep selling inclusion.

The Jean Chrétien years were the troubling years. The middle class was under attack and shrinking. The Reformers took over the Conservative Party. The rabid right in America was creating a new cant of property rights and small government in which nobody understood the contradictions. This new ideology of the right brought the religious right to their cause and a marriage of convenience was born.

Ontario experienced this new breed of ideologists earlier than the rest of the country when Michael Harris’ Conservatives replaced Bob Rae’s conflicted NDP. The two-term mandate of Harris created a base of support in Ontario for Harper’s new federal Conservative Party. And the resource-rich West gathered wealth to support him as the East bled manufacturing jobs.

In the 2011 General Election, two things happened. A tired Bloc Quebecois was increasing irrelevant to Quebecers and Jack Layton and his colloquial French offered a new and left-wing alternative. The Liberals were in disrepute and Harper’s Conservative ideologues had little to interest Quebec.

The second thing was the dominant newspaper in Ontario, the Toronto Star, abandoned the tired Liberal Party and told liberal voters it was alright to vote NDP. And they did in enough numbers to assure a majority for Harper’s Conservatives. The Liberal Party ended up with just 34 seats in Parliament.

We knew the party was in trouble and we needed time to think.

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The honeymoon of the NDP’s M. Mulcair.

July 7, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Jack Layton never got it that good. It was as though nobody noticed or cared when he won the New Democrat leadership. It took him another year to even get a seat in parliament. Thomas Mulcair was already a Member of Parliament when he won the NDP leadership on the fourth ballot after Layton’s death and moved directly into the role of Leader of the Opposition.

Until Mulcair got the job, Bob Rae of the Liberal Party had been the de facto Leader of the Opposition. Rae had continuously gone around the NDP’s Interim Leader Nycole Turmel as though she was not there. The media went along with it because Rae knew how to frame the news clips, use effective analogies and provide the leads.

But now Mulcair was there. He also knew the ropes. And the media liked the promise of Mulcair. Most did not know him. His time in the Legislature in Quebec City had been stormy. There were concerns about his ego and his temperament. As a politician, he had never proved to be a team player.

But Stephen Harper had never played nice with his political allies either. Which one is the most determined at micro-managing things is a good question. Mulcair quit Charest’s right-wing Liberal cabinet in Quebec and went to Jack Layton’s NDP on his own volition. Whether based on principle, or pique, we do not know!

What he obviously saw was the growing dichotomy between the political left and right in Canada. His experience with the Liberal Party in Quebec had left him no option but to go to the NDP. The real enemy he perceived was Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Prime Minister Harper returned the compliment with an attack advertisement before Mulcair was settled in office.

Since moving to the Leader of the Opposition role, Mulcair’s moves have been determined and clear. He left Conservatives and Liberals alike behind when he went out to challenge the Alberta tar sands oil producers on their own turf. It was a move reminiscent of Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Policy. It made strong friends and stronger enemies.

Mulcair has made himself the current rallying point for those who wish to challenge Harper. Recent polls show that he is achieving that objective. He will hold the ground as long as the honeymoon continues.

But (and there is always a ‘but’) honeymoons end. Reality will be when the Liberal Party chooses its leadership and direction in the year ahead. Liberals now know the challenges the new leader will face. They also have to understand that in a Canada of left and right wing politics, there is no middle ground. The Liberal Party cannot leave the political left as the sole preserve of Thomas Mulcair.

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Ms. Coyne is in the starter’s gate.

July 2, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Deborah Coyne might be running out of her class in the 2013 Liberal Leadership Stakes but she brings special credentials to the race. And they are much more than being a former paramour of Pierre E. Trudeau. Deborah Coyne is a constitutional lawyer and professor. While her website introducing her to the race is a cliché laden ode to Canada, she is one person you want to have on side if you want to do something about Canada’s sorry constitution.

Coyne opposed both Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord which gives her solid credentials as a Liberal. She took on the thankless job of running against Jack Layton in the Toronto-Danforth electoral district in 2006 but then did not have the organization needed when she tried to move to Toronto’s Don Valley riding in the next election.

But that helped her understand what was wrong with the way the political parties are being run and what needs to be fixed. And she is a prolific writer. She has obviously spent months in preparation for entering the race and her words are almost too professorial. Reading and understanding her website takes hours of concentration. How many will give her the time is a question. That is a very expensive website and it would be a shame if the expense is wasted. She also has top professional help with her social media and that will give her campaign considerable punch with younger Liberals.

Deborah Coyne will bring a level of debate to the leadership that we can only welcome. She has done her homework. Whether she is willing to give her creative mind full rein though remains to be seen. She needs to not only run for the leadership but she has to show leadership.

It is hardly venturesome to recommend a form of preferential voting. That is a very small step in correcting our country’s political system. Regrettably the major changes needed can only be done through constitutional change and, as an expert on our constitution, it could be one area where she might fear to go.

If there was one lesson learned from the New Democrat’s snore-fest last year is that a leadership contest is not a mutual admiration event. You have to get into it. You have to challenge the status quo. Deborah Coyne has taken the pole position in the race and it will be most interesting to see how she uses it.

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