Category: Federal Politics

It seems to have the news media scratching their collective heads. Public opinion polls, taken across Canada since the robo-call situation came to light, show little change. The federal conservatives are down a bit, the NDP are about the same and the Liberals up a bit. The conclusion the media come to is that an election would change nothing and people are not very concerned about the possibility of another political scandal. It just goes to show that looking good on television does not necessarily mean you know what you are talking about.

It has been stated many times that the only polls that matter are those conducted by the chief electoral officer. What happens between those electoral events is a slow drip of extraneous information that can be shed easily by the politically devout or be an irritant that worries its way under the skin of the politically sensitive. And then an election is called and the critical questions of the day are effectively answered by those who stay home and do not vote.

Elections are much easier to lose than to win. Voters want to vote for those who are confident but not arrogant. They want to vote for winners. They want to vote for those who think like them but also have ideas. They want to vote for someone they can look up to but does not look down on them. They want to vote for a local but would not know the person if they tripped over them. They vote for the leader of the party because the media ignore the rest. And they only get around to thinking about the election after the polls have closed.

Public opinion polls taken today are somewhat useless anyway. Both the Liberals and the NDP have interim leaders. The NDP get to choose a leader in a couple weeks. So far it has been a lacklustre campaign. The biggest surprise will be if the NDP choose MP Thomas Mulcair from Quebec. The least surprise will be the emergence of MP Peggy Nash as the new leader. The worst news for the NDP would be the coronation of Brian Topp. The best news for the Liberals would be a win by MP Nathan Cullen from B.C. We all await the party’s decision.

The Liberals are not slower in the choosing of a new leader but they know they have time. There will be no sudden general election. Prime Minister Harper will go at least four years from May of 2011. The Liberal candidates will come out of their cocoons during 2013. The election of a new Liberal leader will be a spirited, hard-fought affair in 2014. It will be fun.

And then some honest public opinion polls can be done. They will be more indicative of reality. And then we can try to make that reality happen on the next election day.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Maybe we should just be glad that Stephen Harper and his government are not social conservatives. They are not in a rush to hang people nor to ban same-sex marriage. Those are some changes they might get around to down the road. Today, they are showing what they can do for the corporations.

The alacrity with which Labour Minister Lisa Raitt hopped to it and moved to end a possible strike by Air Canada’s unions on Friday of the past week was remarkable. If just a fraction of that speed had been put to helping keep the jobs of the Caterpillar workers in London Ontario, we would have been more impressed.

What was wrong with the Labour Minister’s action was the lame excuses she used for her actions. Despite her reasoning, March Break is not a national emergency. Air Canada needed the revenue. That was the emergency.

It is like the urgency of the XL Pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas refineries for Athabasca Oil Sands crude. Same for Enbridge’s dual pipes over the Rockies to the West Coast so we can ship crude oil to fuel the Chinese economy. With Harper and company pushing these projects, tree-huggers best get out of the way!

Mr. Harper has already shown us what he can do for his corporations. How do you think Bell Canada ended up with CTV? How did Shaw end up with Global Television? All Mr. Harper had to do was emasculate and co-opt the purposes of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Soon enough, Canadians will rue the day Pierre Karl Péladeau became the proud owner of Quebecor and Sun Media.

One of the first acts of Stephen Harper’s majority government was to remove the government election funding that Jean Chrétien’s Liberals had brought in to try to level the political playing field. Harper and his corporate friends have no wish for a level field. They want power and they want to keep it. Do you think there will not be further changes in who can finance elections?

If Mr. Harper’s party is capable of voter suppression on the scale such as Elections Canada is now investigating? If the Conservatives can plead guilty and just pay a fine for the In-and-Out schemes of previous elections? Do you not think he already has all the support he needs from his corporate friends?

With all of this corporate support, you would think he would finally get VIA Rail to arrive on time.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

It was interesting the other day to watch a news clip of Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae in a scrum in Ottawa. He was actually having trouble describing a Conservative Member of Parliament in civil terms. He almost lost it. He could barely believe what the MP had said to the House. It was Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro. As parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, he answers questions for the Prime Minister without seeming to be too concerned about truth, logic or morality.

Del Mastro, MP for the electoral district of Peterborough in Ontario, seems to have two sets of morality. He has one set that applies to the Liberal Party and the NDP and none for the Conservatives. It must make his life fairly simple.

Del Mastro seems to have no problem standing up in the Hose of Commons and maligning other parties. He complained, for example, that the Liberals had been using a U.S. based call centre. Yet when we find that the Liberals had not used a U.S. firm but it was Del Mastro and other Conservatives who had, he brushes it off as unimportant. He goes further and says that other parties should release their calling lists when a year earlier the Conservatives refused to release theirs.

This is not just a double standard but it comes across as amoral. Raised a Catholic by his Italian immigrant parents, Del Mastro should have a clear understanding of right and wrong. Is it his boss Stephen Harper who absolves him from telling the truth?

Del Mastro’s double standard is a matter for his constituents. It is up to Peterborough voters if they can tolerate an MP who finds it so easy to lie. They are probably just voting for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and could care less about who represents them in Ottawa. Maybe some of them believe that politicians are supposed to lie.

What is frightening about that is that our system of government requires a much higher standard of political morality than we are getting today. If it is a true reflection of our society we must have many very worried sociologists in this country.

Maybe they are worried about the shallowness and the lies people spread through the social networks on the Internet. Yet anyone who has to read business résumés is aware of the lowered standards that business must deal with on an ongoing basis.

But each of us has to decide for ourselves. Will we tolerate lies? Will we accept half truths or do we want our best in politics? If we want our best, we better start joining political parties and demanding it. We have a long way to go.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

The quiet is the most alarming. It is unnatural. It bodes ill. The opposition parties quietly discuss options among themselves while Green Party caucus and leader Elizabeth May talks to herself. The members ready themselves for the cut and thrust of Parliament and Question Period. The news media are impatient to see who will win the networks’ ‘clip of the day’? It takes a while in the time of this hush to realize what has been missing. What is not happening in this House of controversy?

Is this one issue so deadly that nothing else in the pattern of government can be allowed to interfere? Has the Robo Call issue so paralyzed the House? Are the denizens of the Prime Minister’s Office too busy mixing the Kool-Aid to allow them time to approve and move normal routine?

Why is Finance Minister Jim Flaherty so quiet? He would normally be out setting the parameters for his upcoming budget. He would be testing tax cuts for the rich. He would be checking new ways to squeeze more from the poor and impoverished.

Where are Sheriff Peter MacKay and his side-kick the ex-cop who handles the F-35 stealth fighter procurement for him? Defence Minister, MacKay has had no time for fishing trips lately from which he can be so ably rescued by the newly renamed Royal Canadian Air Force.

Has Public Safety Minister Vic Toews taken time off for some quickie courses in marital relations and twitting? And where are our Bobbsey twins, Foreign Minister John Baird and his alter ego, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney? The Bobbsey twins are usually ready and on the alert for opportunities to kiss up to the Americans and spread fear and loathing among less-favoured foreigners.

Why is our Environment Minister Peter Kent not out there on the rubber chicken circuit telling Canadians how our benefactors who are digging in the tar sands are working for us? He wants to tell us how Mr. Harper’s government will ensure that the heavy crude is shipped to the Americans and Chinese to fuel their economies.

And what has happened to our Treasury Board President Tony Clement? You would think by now, Tony would have come up with some new washrooms to build in Muskoka to shore up the Canada-U.S. border fortifications.

But all eyes are on the issue of voter suppression in the last election. The legitimacy of the Harper government is in question. The Harper bag of tricks is empty. Will the government do the decent thing and resign? Probably not.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

There is much to be reflective on in today’s politics. And what would be a better subject to reflect on than the crassness of the Conservative Party of Canada? The scoundrels have been abusing Canadians. They have been scurrying around this past week like a house full of rodents. They have been trying to find a way to weasel out of the mess they are in because of their incompetence. They cannot even get their telephone calls right. Are we really surprised to hear that the Harper Conservatives could lie and cheat to win an election? These are the same people that had to fight to keep some of their senior people out of jail over the ‘In and Out’ scam of 2006.

And how can anybody forget that deplorable leaders’ debate in 2008 when Mr. Harper stoically sat there and ignored every suggestion that there might be a growing financial problem that could hamstring our economy? Mr. Harper found that he could flat out lie to Canadians and some of them were stupid enough to still vote for him.

In this most recent election, he was so determined to win that he wrote off Quebec and concentrated on confusing Liberal and NDP voters in electoral districts where his party had a chance. It was hardly a coincidence that Liberal and NDP voters were getting bogus calls from people saying their voting location was changed. Yet Prime Minister Harper stood in the House of Commons and said that it was Liberals making the calls. That was not even funny.

It makes you wonder if Mr. Harper has lost it. The man just does not seem to be able to comprehend the world around him. Does he think he is invulnerable now that he has a majority government? Whoever is responsible for those calls—thousands of them—was breaking the law. These people knowingly committed a felony. To attempt to confuse the issue, to defend the law-breakers, to try to switch the blame to others and to refuse to face facts are not the actions that Canadians expect from their Prime Minister.

Stephen Harper is a man with a powerful ego. He sees himself as redemption for Canada. He knows what is right and he fails to understand why others might disagree with his solutions. His cabinet, that he appointed, are sycophants that he has raised to level that most could never have achieved on their own. His back benchers in the House of Commons are mindless lemmings who will follow him to the cliff’s edge and into the abyss below. And his Senate of Canada appointees are further proof that the Senate should have been abolished years ago.

And Stephen Harper has lost his grip. He goes to Davos, Switzerland to give a speech on an internal Canadian matter that the delegates at Davos neither care about nor understand. He did the ritual walk-around camera shots with the Israeli Prime Minister on Friday like a zombie. His answers to questions in the House are more and more desperate. This guy is supposed to be our Prime Minister. Can anyone suggest a good shrink who might be able to help him?

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

While everyone was complaining about robo calls and Conservative call centres, we were busy trying to make sense of the local Conservative’s election expenses. Of a legal limit of $96,630.18 that could be spend on his campaign in May 2011, Mr. Brown claims to have spent $95,328.54. Someone obviously kept a close eye on expenditures to cut it that close but it appears that a bus might have been forgotten.

And how the heck do you miss that bus? It belongs to a local company and was provided to Mr. Brown for the duration of the general election last year. It was hard to miss. It was plastered with signs for Mr. Brown. In fact, since there was no out of town need during the campaign, it was a daily eyesore here in Babel.

Mind you an eyesore is just in the mind of an observer. As the bus normally parked overnight at the company’s premises just a block from where we live, it was a regular reminder of the in-your-face nature of Mr. Brown’s campaign. Obviously, we are not impressed with Mr. Brown.

But this bus was a movable eyesore. We never saw it full of Conservative party faithful joyfully going for a picnic. Its principle use was to be parked at spots that it would be illegal for Mr. Brown’s supporters to erect a billboard. These parking places seemed to be prominent and busy intersections in Babel and at polling places when people were voting. Mr. Brown was, of course, advised by the local returning officer that having a portable billboard at a polling place is illegal and Mr. Brown’s supporters had the bus moved.

The Babel supporters of Mr. Brown must have been disappointed with the returning officer’s interference but it made sense. Almost anyone who had ever worked in a federal election campaign before could have told them that election signs at a polling place are a no-no. We are only allowed to act stupid so many times!

But the point of this diatribe is that some how, Mr. Brown’s accountants appear to have forgotten to include the bus in his expenses. Since the company that owns the bus is not included in contributions in kind, we have to assume there is a bill somewhere for that bus. No matter what value the campaign placed on the bus, there is no place in those figures to hide that large an expense. It could not be accounted for in the sign expenses.

Realistically, nobody can rent a bus and driver for less than a couple hundred dollars a day—and probably more. Assuming it cost just $200 a day, that would be an expenditure of over $6,000 to have it available for the entire campaign.

Maybe more Babel residents should ask Elections Canada what happened to the bus.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Interim Federal Liberal Leader Bob Rae fired a caucus researcher yesterday. The person stood accused of embarrassing the Liberal caucus by being identified as establishing the “Vikileaks” Twitter site. This site was designed to attack Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. The notoriety of the site made it doubly embarrassing when the Speaker’s Office discovered the culprit was in the Liberal caucus office as opposed to the original belief that it came from the NDP caucus office.

Bob Rae had to stand up in the House of Commons and publicly apologize. That can take a lot of wind out of your sails when you are trying to be indignant about possibly illegal Conservative Party activities. At a time when the NDP official opposition are busy with their leadership contest, the Liberals were enjoying the opportunity to appear as the real opposition. Their party employee did not help.

But do not feel to sorry for the miscreant in this case. He will reappear sometime down the road in another incarnation. Most young aspiring political apparatchiks do.

We all carry the memory and the scars from such events. It is part of learning the trade. In our case it was working for a certain cabinet minister, organizing events for him. One of the first events was a critical announcement in one part of a hotel and then the minister wanted to show the news media he was one of the gang by leading them to a bar that was set up in a suite. It would have worked but for a combination of events that had the minister standing, looking foolish, at a locked door. The minister did not like it when things did not work.

Luckily, the campaign manager understood what had happened and knew that it was not possible for his young organizer to be in three places at the same time. He asked us not to slash our wrists and to carry on. The minister took more time to be forgiving.

Bob Rae did not have that luxury. He needed a body to display for the Conservatives and the media. The fact that the researcher might now be enjoying an unexpected holiday on some sunny Caribbean beach is another matter.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

One of the least loved of the technological innovations in telephony is the ability to call thousands of people automatically and play the person answering a recorded message. They call them robo calls. They are an affront, annoyance, irritant and cheap. And being cheap is why they are heavily used by Canadian politicians. With a great deal of luck, they could even cost Prime Minister Stephen Harper his majority government.

When this automated ability was first developed, it was thought to be beneficial because telephone companies could offer subscribers the ability to call a group of telephone numbers to inform the subscribers of a church supper or a change in a little league schedule. It became a little silly when the son’s high school started using automated calls to inform the parents that Johnny had missed school that day. The reason it was silly was because parents rarely get to answer a call when teenagers are at home.

Certainly one of the most irritating of the more recent automated calls is the political survey. This is the one that asks you to tell the unnamed call centre how you will vote. It gives you a number for each candidate that you can press and hangs up when you press a choice. Since we always press a number at random, we have to reassure the local Liberal candidate occasionally that we have not switched party allegiance.

If everyone would just press a random number, we could soon end the foolishness. The most accurate answers on those surveys are probably those entered by four-year olds when they get to the phone first.

The recent revelation that the Conservative Party has been using these automated systems to discourage voters from going to the polls is a far more serious subject. These are not simple pranks by low-level party people. This is direct interference in peoples’ right to vote and is a criminal act.  While a lot of Conservative apparatchiks will have to fall on their swords for it, there is enough cause for there to be some by-elections in closely contested ridings.

If the Liberals and New Democrats could just agree to stay out of each others’ way, we could have a good chance to take away the Conservative majority in Ottawa. Now there is a cause, we can all agree on.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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

Have you met Canada’s parliamentary Bobbsey Twins? They are representing Canada to the world. We can only hope that their tenure is brief and the world forgives us for the confusion they cause. They are Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney. They might come from different backgrounds but you would be forgiven if you got them confused.

Neither of the gentlemen has ever held a private sector job. They found their calling in the extremes of right-wing politics. Baird must have been bored with his early years, learning his trade working for less extreme members of the Ontario Conservatives. He became something of a legend of ideological overkill though when he served in Premier Mike Harris’ Cabinet. He is best known to former friends of Canada for his opposition to the Kyoto Accord, earning derision and insults for Canada in breaking its word to other countries who signed in good faith.

Jason Kenney, the junior member of this duo, grew up with extensive training in a narrowed vision of things. Educated in Catholic institutions in the West, he capped it with studying philosophy at a Jesuit university in San Francisco. His crowning achievement there in 1990 was to lead the fight against a women’s group at the school who wanted to distribute pro-choice literature. Back in Canada, he served various right-wing political and catholic organizations.

Kenney was first elected in 1997 as a Reform Party member and went through his party’s various iterations, becoming a Canadian Alliance member and then a United Alternative supporter of Stockwell Day.  He worked so hard for his parties that Stephen Harper made him his parliamentary secretary, responsible for multiculturalism, when the new Conservative Party of Canada defeated the Martin Liberals.

With the majority Harper government, the portfolios of these two political extremists are labelling Canada. Today, Jason Kenny tells us that he is going to stop women from Hong Kong from visiting Canada to have their baby here so that the child might later claim citizenship. This is on top of his new and draconian approach to refugees. He is making sure Canada is no longer a safe haven.

His twin, the External Affairs Minister, set the tone for his job back in 2003 when he fought the Chrétien government of the time trying to get Canada to join the American Bush administration in the Iraq War. He continues today to toady to the Americans while casually dismissing the concerns of other countries.

Canada used to have a reputation around the world for decency, fairness, openness, for peace keeping and for being an honest broker. Prime Minister Harper is letting these extremist Bobbsey Twins besmirch our image as a country to satisfy their narrow view of right and wrong. Are they representing our Canada?

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

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