Category: Federal Politics

Getting your royal reward.

by Peter Lowry

It was difficult. Not being a monarchist, you are not inclined to boisterously sing along to God Save the Queen. The problem was that a number of very good people were being honoured and you are hardly going to be churlish about it. It was a well attended event and the council chamber at Babel City Hall was standing room only.

The conundrum with which you are faced is that honouring Canadians who make a substantive contribution to the community is too often a political event. You have got to figure that, when the federal government is involved, you can expect those klutz Tories in Ottawa are going to shove the royals in your face and promote their local Member of Parliament. It is hard to say which is worse. At least the MP was elected!

There was a quite excellent suggestion back in Mr. Trudeau’s day that we have an Order of Canada to celebrate Canadians who make a special contribution to our country. It worked rather well until the Order was politicized back in the late 1980s. And if you do not think the Order was politicized, how do you explain Conrad Black being named to the Order? Honours only work if they are fair, rare, earned and respected.

When the honours become so politicized that people lose respect for them, you are forced to come up with new ways to honour those who really do make a contribution to your community. The Ottawa Conservatives, with their majority this year, decided to regress to using the Queen. In honour of her diamond jubilee event this year, the Tories minted a Diamond Jubilee Medal in the Queen’s name. This medal is supposed to be used to honour Canadians who make a special contribution to their community.

We assume that the Conservative Member of Parliament had some involvement in the selection because we know that he was telephoning recipients back in April and May to tell them they had been selected for the honour. (With a target of 60,000 Canadian receiving the medal, we expect even Opposition MPs are helping nominate winners.) The Conservative MP was very much front and centre for the awards ceremony.

The 20-page, self-cover, four-color program booklet said on the front that the event was presented by the MP. Luckily the picture on the front was of the Queen, not the MP. He got three mentions on the agenda page as he brought greetings, made the medal presentations and had closing remarks. Which is somewhat more of our MP than most from Babel can stomach.

Listening to him, one could not help to wonder why his parents had not had that boy’s adenoids removed as a child. His nasal tone becomes grating very quickly. And if he said “without further ado” just one more time, there might have been a contest among the crowd to see who got to strangle him.

It was annoying that in their enthusiasm organizing the event, the MP’s staff provided the MP with a microphone, when most did not care to hear him, but left the award recipients, who had something to say, the option of shouting.

It should also be noted that the RCMP constable who provided the color backdrop for the pictures did a good job cutting the medal cake. Mind you, the cake tasted terrible.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Meet two potential Liberal leaders.

by Peter Lowry

While meaningless in the long term, the arguments in Canada’s Parliament over the omnibus budget bill have benefitted parliament and the opposition parties. First of all, it has clearly pointed out–once again–to Canadians that they might have erred in giving Mr. Harper and his sycophants a majority government. Secondly, it brought the NDP’s Nathan Cullen into the fore as the Opposition House Leader, where he is doing a solid job. And third, it displayed the tenacity, brains and aggressiveness of the Green Party’s only MP, Elizabeth May. Both Cullen and May could add much to the upcoming Liberal Party leadership.

While the Liberals are hardly without viable candidates who are already members of the Liberal Party, Cullen and May could bring many side benefits to the Liberal race. While the turning in of their respective New Democrat and Green credentials when they take out Liberal membership cards could be a bit wrenching, it would be a solid career choice.

Nathan Cullen has already stated his case for cooperation with the Liberals to defeat the Harper Conservatives. He campaigned on it during the NDP leadership race and gained considerable credibility for being forward thinking. While Cullen did not win in his NDP bid, he knows that the younger people agree with him that the future of the NDP is in some accommodation with the other parties of the left. What better way to lead the movement.

Elizabeth May already has strong credentials with many Liberal Party members. She has made it clear to Green Party adherents across Canada that there are issues that have to be addressed beyond the Green Party agenda. And she hardly needs to revoke her environmentalist standing to work within the Liberal Party. The party is in critical need of her level headed environmental approach in dealing with the Harper pipeline agenda for the Alberta tar sands crude oil.

The adding of these two candidates might seem an extreme approach but you can hardly hold a Liberal Party leadership contest at this time without addressing how you intend to defeat the Harper Conservatives. And nobody is going to buy a right wing answer.

Only the news media are convinced that Interim Leader Bob Rae will be in the Liberal race. We expect that strategically, he will keep his own counsel until the field starts to develop. His only hope of winning is by offering himself as someone who can help rebuild the party. Nobody will expect him to defeat Harper. Nor would his former NDP ties indicate any likelihood of him leading a combined Liberal-NDP party.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Stephen Harper is doing Europe.

by Peter Lowry

After going to London to fete Her Majesty in her Diamond Jubilee, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has climbed back aboard his military Airbus A310 and headed for the next capital on his European tour. Paris can be quite lovely in June, before the summer invasion of tourists. It is also a good time this year to get a reading on the new French President François Hollande.

The bad news is that Harper has his work cut out for him in trying to convince François Hollande of anything. Hollande is a socialist—which says it all as far as Stephen Harper is concerned. The first socialist in power in 17 years, in his first month in the Elysée Palace, Holland has already stated that his government will lower the retirement age for some French workers from 62 to 60. This is at a time when Mr. Harper is telling older Canadians that they better suck it up as they will not be able to draw old-age security until they are 67.

Mr. Harper brings a message to Hollande that has already been stated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel: Both leaders have said that Europe requires a strong political union to function effectively. Merkel made the point as early as this Thursday morning in Europe that the Eurozone countries have to give up more power. “We need not just a currency union; we also need a so-called fiscal union, more common budget policies. And we need above all a political union,” she said.

Mr. Harper said that the European members of the Eurozone will have to come up with a plan to make this happen. It is his opinion that Europe is a ‘half-done project’ that lacks the tools to get the job done. He said that he told Hollande that there needs to be quick action when the two met for breakfast. The French President was probably too much of a gentleman to tell the media what he said in return.

The only problem with the Harper-Merkel scheme is that many in Europe are contemplating that what the German armies could not accomplish in two world wars is now supposed to be as simple as a signature on a piece of paper.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

‘It’s fragile, Mr. Mansbridge, it’s fragile.’

by Peter Lowry

It was so very kind of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to take a little of his time from feting Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee. After all, it was Her Majesty’s time in the sun. (Or, since this was London, it was her time in the rain.) Why Mr. Harper was there seemed vague until he explained that Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier attended Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee 115 years ago and Mr. Harper could do no less. This was all while being interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Peter Mansbridge.

We lost count of the number of times that Mr. Harper told the CBC news reader that the world economy is fragile. That was the key word of the evening: ‘fragile.’ The word also applied to the health of the Queen’s Consort, the Duke of Edinburgh. At 91, the old Duke was watching most of the Diamond Jubilee spectacle from a hospital bed because of enduring the chill off the Thames during the great flotilla.

After gushing appropriately over the Diamond Jubilee events, the Prime Minister and the news reader switched to the more mundane. “The world economy is fragile,” Mr. Harper informed us. He shared with the CBC viewers back home that whilst the Canadian economy remains strong—and well managed, under his regime—there are warning signals from the European community. Mind you, the economist in Mr. Harper did not see the Greek elections as a particular watershed in world economics. He delivered a (luckily brief) discourse on the stability of the Euro currency and its weakness in not being backed by a single national government. He felt that the Canadian dollar was in particularly good shape but believed Canada might get caught in the spatter if the poop hits the fan in Europe.

But as part of his much-promoted, multi-faceted ‘Economic Action Plan’ Mr. Harper and his government are ready to put the Canadian taxpayers’ money to work to stem the tide of recession. He assured Canadians that he will leave no street unpaved, nor Conservative MP without oversized cheques, to stem the tide of economic disaster.

With the world economy in such good hands, the news reader and the prime minister returned to the subject of the Queen, God Bless Her.

But our favourite part of the whole Diamond Jubilee was the wonderful fireworks after the concert down in the Mall.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Taking a chance on Canada’s future.

by Peter Lowry

It was a planned move. It was simple. We are now a member of the Liberal Party of Canada for the next two years. Last time we did that nothing worked properly. It created a series of telephone calls to the Ottawa headquarters of the party. It was a programming error at their end. It was fixed but the party never did collect the monthly support payments that they were offered.

This time, we kept it simple. Here is a credit card number, take $20 for a two-year renewal. The confirmation was in our e-mail within seconds. We can now look people in the eye and confirm that we continue to be a card-carrying Liberal Party member. After all, everyone deserves a second chance.

There is a leadership decision to be made in the coming year. That is a major event for the party. It will decide its direction for quite a few years into the future. We intend to comment on it, mix in the dialogue, question the candidates, influence policy and vote for the leader of our choice.

And it will not be an easy choice. There is no indication at this time of who will be candidates and that leaves us little opportunity to speculate on winners. Neither of the candidates most discussed by the news media are likely winners. By this, we mean Bob Rae, M.P. and Justin Trudeau, M.P. When you consider the age spread between these two, you can see the room there is between them. Neither is really in the running.

Bob Rae has earned the party’s debt and appreciation for the excellent job he has done as interim leader. He has worked hard and did what was asked of him. He has kept the Liberal Party caucus in line and kept them in a viable position. Nobody in Ottawa has thought of the Liberal Members as a third party.

Justin Trudeau is glib and hard working. He has said that he is not in the running at this time and he should stick to that decision. He will have plenty of opportunity in the years to come. First, he needs to be tested in government and to gain the maturity he needs. We can expect much from him in the future.

This leadership has to be the watershed for the party over whether it is of the right or the left. It is the time to decide. Leadership candidates will have to state whether they will offer to merge with the New Democrats or fight Stephen Harper for the position on the right. There will be no middle ground. It never really existed.

We paid our membership for a party of the left. That is where our vote will go.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Dialogue on Canada’s last monarch.

by Peter Lowry

Bob Hepburn at the Toronto Star is one of the good guys. A veteran reporter, an astute observer of the political scene and a solid thinker, Bob had an opinion column in the Star today about the end of the monarchy in Canada. It is an excellent opportunity to carry on the dialogue.

It was surprising last week that readers of this blog peaked at the highest point in several years. What was really surprising was that a large number of the new readers were accessing a column we wrote two years ago about Queen Victoria. You can find it through Google by searching for ‘Babel, the queen’s birthday.’ The conclusion of that entry was that fairy story time of kings and queens, princes and princesses is over. Canada needs to strike out boldly to create a new future. It is good to know that Bob agrees with this.

But it is not just the agreement that is needed. There is no point in one writer having a dialogue with himself. We need the rationale, the thoughts, the ideas, the hopes, the suggestions that each of us brings to the discussion. We need friendly commentaries, learned polemics, passionate concern and open discussion. The more who get involved, the better will be our conclusions. Let us have at it:

Bob’s column makes some good points about how out of date and out of touch the monarchy is in the 21st Century. He sees the royals as little more than a soap opera, ‘a Royal Coronation Street, if you like.’ He quibbles a bit too much though when he complains about Canadian women having to comply with the ridiculous custom of the curtsy, when being introduced to the Queen. There are many Canadian women who have met the Queen who would have stood on their heads and showed off their knickers to be introduced to her.

It is only after you have met some of the royals that you wonder what was so important about it.

Bob agrees with retired University of Toronto history professor, Michael Bliss, that we should be laying the groundwork for a dignified phasing out of the monarchy, the last relic of our colonialism. The only possible error in his recommendations might be that he could have the steps backwards.

Bob wants to start with a referendum. That is a wrong move. That is setting us up for failure and heartache. It is too easy to say ‘no’ when you do not know the alternatives.

And if you are unaware of some of the other glaring problems in how our country is governed, you have not been paying attention. This country is going to be 150 years old in five years and it is bloody well about time, Canadians had a say about how they are  governed. We need to have a constitutional conference of people elected to that purpose.

The findings of a constitutional assembly can be the subject of a referendum.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

A Conservative MP speaks honestly: that’s news.

by Peter Lowry

David Wilks, MP for Kootenay, BC made news the other day. He spoke honestly and openly with some of his riding people. It was another win for having cameras in cell phones. He was commenting on the omnibus budget bill now being pushed through parliament by the Harper Conservatives. This Conservative MP admitted that he was unable to examine the bill properly.

It appears that Stephen Harper took his wayward MP to the woodshed when it was learned that Mr. Wilks’ comments were on the Internet. He had broken the rules. Back bench MPs are there to vote and say nothing other than they are told to say. Canada’s parliament is no longer a place for debate.

We are, of course, quite safe from any such shenanigans in Babel. The MP for Babel is not elected to think. He is elected as a Conservative nebbish who does what he is told. He accepts the pay and the perquisites of office without ever having to care, to think, to plan or to worry about anything other than re-election.

The MP for Babel is the king of the ten-percenters, the obnoxious grey, self promotion government mailers that come so often in our mail. He has never met a charity that he could not use to promote himself. You can always count on him to rush to his riding if there is another picture opportunity. He has become a master at inserting his name into government news releases without caring or understanding what they are about.

But this pathetic person should not be allotted all the blame. Who picked him to represent the Conservative Party in Babel? Are these Babel party members proud of what they have done? Does he really represent them?

And what does this say about the voters of Babel? Does this person represent them? Did they bother to ask him of his understanding or position on the issues of the day? Did they care to find out if this person could make any contribution at all to our country? Did the person for whom they voted have any qualifications to be a Member of Parliament?

Two years ago, we engaged in a thorough study of voting patterns and attitudes in Babel. With the electoral maps for Babel, municipally, provincially and federally being almost the same, we were able to use voter turn-out and voting tendencies from all levels to conduct the study. The information gathered was used to considerable advantage in the municipal election that year. It also told us who would win in the subsequent provincial and federal elections.

You have to recognize that Babel is made up of various communities. It is not a cohesive entity. It has no identity as a city. The traditional east end (north of the bay) still thinks it runs Babel. The larger numbers of younger homeowners in the south end do not even know the east end exists. Communications in the city is a fascinating challenge. There are no simple solutions.

But what we do know is that there is a strong and shared devotion to this country. If a city ever needed leadership, it is Babel. It needs people who can speak up for it in Ottawa. It also needs people who can speak up for it at Queen’s Park.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Police Chief Blair gets a pulpit.

by Peter Lowry

It has been almost two years since Police Chief Bill Blair’s people ran roughshod over human rights at the G20 event in Toronto. Canadians watching the news at that time were horrified at the failure of the Toronto Police, augmented by police from across Canada, to rein in a group of anarchists on a rampage and the following day taking their revenge on helpless bystanders by kettling them in one instance and brutally attacking them in others. We finally had an opportunity to hear Chief Blair’s side this past Sunday on Global Television’s Focus Ontario.

This program is considered a pulpit because it is speaker-friendly. Hosted by John Tory, a former leader of the Ontario Conservative Party and news reader Leslie Roberts, the public affairs program is not known for sand-bagging guests or being particularly tough in its questioning. Chief Blair was allowed to use this friendly venue to go on at some length about how his police are so good at facilitating peaceful protests for our citizens.

It is more than a week since Gerry McNeilly of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director issued his 300-page report condemning police actions at the Toronto G20. The report states that ‘It is fortunate that, in all the confusion, there were no deaths.’

For all the anguish caused and the 1100 people whose rights were ignored when illegally detained by police, the report only recommends that 35 police officers be disciplined. What the report lacks is a condemnation of Blair. He should have been fired immediately after the event. He asked the Attorney General of Ontario under what law he could keep citizens away from the G20 meeting site. He was given the wrong law, he had to know it was wrong and he did not question it.

And then he allowed inaccurate information to be spread about the law supposedly protecting the summit.

The event itself was a failure in intelligence in more ways than one. With combined resources from national, provincial and municipal police forces across Canada, Blair was unable to place sufficient police among the crowds to keep track of what was happening. He was blind-sided by some anarchists who could have been stopped. He left them to their rampage. They did it when he was responsible.

The anarchists were used as an excuse to come down hard on the gawkers and bystanders. The mass arrests were a disgrace for Canada. They were also a disgrace for the politicians who made no protests.

Prime Minister Harper was to blame for wasting our money on a summit in a stupid location. Tony Clement had spent enough on Huntsville for a dozen G20 events.

Premier McGuinty and his Attorney General were to blame. We never saw them when the police were trampling on citizens’ rights.

And since Chief Blair did not have the grace to resign for his part in this, he should be fired. He disgraced Toronto, our province and our country.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Leading with your left.

by Peter Lowry

(This blog entry was first run on May 20, 2010. It is still a valid premise. It has been modified to reflect the changes of the past two years.)

They used to say that the Liberal Party campaigned on the left and governed on the right. It used to be true. When it failed was during the short tenure of Paul Martin as Canada’s Prime Minister. After the damage done to Canada’s social programs when Martin was Jean Chrétien’s finance minister and his so obvious ties to the business community, he had no credibility with which to campaign effectively from the left of the political spectrum. The voters did not buy it.

Since the days of Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Liberal Party has tried to sit broadly across the middle of the political spectrum. It enables the party to attract both left and right wing candidates, supporters and voters. The party tries to be all things to meet the wants of the voters but slow enough to implement change to please the most stolid of the right wing. As a provincial party leader once explained to a group of unhappy left wing members of the party, no policy was going to happen unless both the right and left wings of the party could flap in unison.

For a left-wing thinker such as Herb Gray, who gave 40 years of his life to Canada’s Parliament, the rate of change was glacial but he never lost his humour or his belief that the party could meet its commitments to people. The same could be said about another long-serving left-wing Liberal, Lloyd Axworthy. Lloyd did much to meet the needs of the people in his riding and across Manitoba. These parliamentarians believed in the promises of the left.

But where does the Liberal Party stand today? There seems to be a question mark. And it falls on all Liberals to clarify the question. They have to stand to be counted.

Despite the voices calling for a merger with the New Democratic Party, there is no clear movement in that direction. When Stéphane Dion tried to form a coalition with the NDP, along with the support of the Bloc Québécois, it was never clear whether Michael Ignatieff rejected the coalition because he was more concerned about being seen out and about with the NDP or taking help from the Bloc.

Michael never stated his intentions. He ran a campaign on the right and lost to Stephen Harper. He ran on the right so badly that he lost to the NDP.

We never said that a merger with the NDP is the only answer. The Liberal Party could lose two right wing supporters for every NDPer being dragged kicking and screaming into the den of the enemy Liberals. What such a merger can do is return credibility to the Liberal Party. Social solutions can be promised by a clearly left of centre party and social solutions can be implemented by the party when in power.

We can have a national daycare program. We can strengthen Medicare. We can work towards a guaranteed income for all Canadians. We can make things happen.

It is up to all Liberals to speak up and be heard. If you want to fight Stephen Harper on the right of the political spectrum, he will laugh his way back to the Prime Minister’s office with a clear majority for the rest of his life. Fight him on the left—with the NDP on side—and you will have an opportunity to lead Canada into a greater future.

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

Comparing country’s capitols.

by Peter Lowry

It was most interesting. After being in Ottawa earlier this month, we just returned from a week in Washington, D.C. We enjoyed both cities in ideal weather. Ottawa was in bloom and the Washington spring was teetering towards the grinding heat and humidity of the wetland’s summer.

You can be assured that casual breakfasts and fine dining still exist in both cities. Just take lots of money. Suspicions are easily confirmed that neither city represents its country. Neither city looks to its country for guidance. They are insular. They stand separate and apart.

The major difference is that the District of Columbia is America’s Mecca. It is a city of Ka’abas for the devout to circle and to worship. It is where Americans come for their Hajj. Washington is monuments, memorials, tributes, honours and shrines. It is America’s past and its future. It sits low in its architecture, kneeling to the Gods of the Capitol. Recognizing the power of the White House and the enormity of the Pentagon, the city lays before the hill rising to Arlington with its dead. It is the escape of the Beltway and the pleasures of Georgetown. It is one massive traffic jam.

Ottawa, regrettably, gets a bum rap. It is where Canadians come to stone the devil, not to worship. The city lacks the monuments, the tributes, the marble halls of history. The Parliament Buildings are a façade. The Senate is somnambulant. The peanut gallery in the House of Commons offers a tiresome theatre of the absurd. Debate is questionable, even in Question Period.

There is not even a marble memorial in Ottawa to John A. Macdonald, the man who imagined Canada. He is buried in a simple weed-infested family plot in Cataraqui, a town swallowed by Kingston, Ontario. His place of honour is Canada’s ten dollar bill.

Ottawa revels in its natural beauty, its restaurants, its museums, its parks and canal, its tiny lake and the majesty of its river. It is a city of pleasant summers and that thrives on the challenges of winter.

In that, it lords it over Washington, a city that has to shut down for a few inches of snow. Ottawa also lacks Washington’s pretentions. If you want to stay out of traffic jams in Ottawa, just stay out of the way of the civil servants on the Queensway in rush hour.

Ottawa might be all we have for a nation’s capital until Prime Minister Harper decides to move it to Calgary. We should enjoy it while we can.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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