Federal Politics – Page 206

And Mont Royal has two Members of Parliament?

March 23, 2012 by Peter Lowry

If there is a lower-class, sleazier way of conducting themselves in office, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper will find it. The latest is that they have dug into the taxpayer-provided Heritage Ministry funds to pay a salary to the Conservative candidate-in-waiting for Montreal’s Mont Royal electoral district. And the guy has the audacity to complain to the news media that he is not being paid enough!

Remember that Stephen Harper and friends just recently cut off government funding for the opposition parties. To then use public money to blatantly pay a political wanna-be to harry a sitting MP is chutzpah that only gonnifs like the Conservatives would attempt.

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler has served Canada and Mont Royal well for the past 12 years. A highly regarded law professor and a human rights advocate, he has been Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. The Conservatives were way out of line in using one of their call centres to recently lie to Liberals in the electoral district that Mr. Cotler was resigning. As an attack on Cotler and the Liberals, it made no sense.

It seems to be all the Conservatives know how to do is attack. It must be some sort of pit bull instinct. It is like the current attack on Liberal Interim Leader Bob Rae. Why? Do they think they are going to have to run against him soon? Bob Rae is laughing at them. If those are the nastiest things they can use against him, they are years behind the times. Stupid attacks like that might encourage him to run for the Liberal leadership.

The point that the Conservatives are missing is that you have to be a better than average representative for people to win election against the money and dirty tactics that the Conservatives use in elections. People such as Cotler and Rae are elected by the people in their electoral district to represent them in our Parliament. As an MP and as a representative of those voters, they deserve respect. They are hardly the nebbishes that the Conservative Party encourages to run for them and then do nothing in Ottawa but vote for Conservative bills when told.

As for this person Saulie Zajdel who ran for the Conservatives in Mont Royal in the last federal election, we have little comment. As a ward healer in the Cȏtes des Neiges area of Montreal, he spent a number of years on city council. If he wants to be paid as much as a Member of Parliament, maybe he should get a real job.

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Canada is not just an economic union.

March 22, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Never tell a Canadian they do not have a country worth fighting for—not unless you want to start a fight.

But we have many problems eating at our country and we need to find a way to fix them. You cannot write a constitution in the 1860s and expect it to meet the needs of an entirely different type of country in the 21^st Century. We have left the country to fly on autopilot for far too long.

The changes made in 1982 did nothing more than remove Canada’s constitution from the British parliament and bring it home to Canada. It left us with impossible conditions for modifying the document and a country that is harder and harder to govern.

A paper written about 20 years ago makes the point that most of the formal discussions on the constitution have been about economic matters. Since the destructive effort of the Macdonald Commission was undertaken in 1982, Canada has had nothing but failed attempts at addressing our constitution. We had the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, then the Beaudoin-Dobbie Report and the Allaire Report and proposals for co-operative federalism and asymmetrical federalism. Canadians had every right to be thoroughly disgusted with the business of trying to build a country. They feel it is not worth the hassle and the upsets watching politicians fight for territory.

And yet, the writer of the paper felt that Canadian voters had learned from it all and were using unemployment levels, the rate of inflation and the rate of economic growth to judge the performance of government. The writer, an academic and an economist, obviously knew nothing about government or voters.

Even those who understand voters find it easier to tell you what voters do not want than what they want. For example, Canadian voters do not want the constitution to be discussed behind closed doors. They do not want it left to politicians. They do not want it wrapped in academic mumbo-jumbo. What they might accept is an open and transparent process that ensures them a vote on any and all proposals.

What that process might be, needs to be debated. And we need to decide on the process before we get into the specifics of what needs to be discussed. We need to accept the premise that anything related to our country has to be free to be discussed. There are no sacred cows. The future makes no guarantees.

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The Harper Conservatives are selling us cheap.

March 17, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Canada used to have some rules about concentration of news media. Mr. Harper and his pals have sold us out. With the announced sale yesterday of Astral Media to Bell Canada Enterprises, Canada’s news media are now mainly concentrated under the control of four huge companies. And these four companies hardly have the best interests of Canadians at heart. Nor are they politically neutral.

While the Astral deal still needs approval from the Competition Bureau and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), this will be a pro forma exercise. Both federal agencies have been gutted by the Conservatives and will do what they are told. Harper and friends work on the be-with-us-or-be-gone approach with supposedly independent federal agencies. With the early dismissal of CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, the Harper government has made the point very clear.

And Bell Canada knows it. When von Finckenstein made too much of Bell’s buying CTV network, Harper’s people made it clear that if the CRTC did not agree, the Cabinet would override the agency. Today, the CRTC is there to act as a servile head waiter, ready to meet every demand of the four media giants.

All four of the companies are quick to support Harper’s Conservatives on the federal level. The only television holdout left is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio-Canada and Harper’s friends at Pierre Karl Péladeau’s Sun Media are waging war against the CBC on Harper’s behalf.

Quebecor’s Péladeau might be Harper’s friend but he still supports the separatists in Quebec with his major Quebec print media. He is hardly a wise choice for broadcasting licenses by a federal agency.

But not liking someone does not seem to be the criteria today. Bell Canada has long deserved its position right up there with Canada’s most hated corporations. Consumers have been bruised, berated and belittled by that corporation for years and Bell continues on because the banks will give them all the money they need to buy whatever they want.

Shaw’s Global almost looks politically neutral until you note the position the Wildrose Alliance leader’s husband holds in Global’s Calgary operations. Maybe that is why Danielle Smith has those TV programs to promote her cause.

Recently Rogers has become more aware of its competitive position in trying to become more hated than Bell. Roger’s call centres are starting to work on being nicer to customers. It is a very pleasant change.

Mr, Harper put these four corporations in their current position of power and he is getting full court press from them to promote him. You have to wonder why it is not working.

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Mr. Harper reads the handwriting on the wall.

March 16, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The message is clear that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 will not fly! It must have been the Almighty or somebody who finally let Prime Minister Harper and his minions know that they were not on the list for F-35 stealth fighter plane delivery. It is just as well. Canada never needed that type of fighter aircraft.

Despite the repeated assurances of Defence Minister Peter Mackay and his junior minister, former cop Julian Fantino, Canada does not need any F-35s at this time or probably ever.

Why Canada’s military would even consider a short-range, single-engine, stealth fighter is a mystery. Those of us who have served in the military always understood Canada’s aircraft needs were determined by having the best way to patrol our borders and that is a lot of borders to patrol. It was not until the Harper government sent some of our F-18s to Libya that our pilots got a chance for live-fire experience in a ground support role. How often do we want to get involved in somebody else’s war?

Canadians have made it very clear over the years that they are proud of their military being peacekeepers. We are not mercenaries. There is nobody whom we wish to fight.

If the Harper government is serious about cost cutting, they can always consider the Swedish offer of some of their Saab JAS 39 Griffin multi-purpose fighters. The Swedes would cut us a very reasonable deal.

But if Canada could have its druthers, we should ask the Americans if they will sell us a couple squadrons of F-22 Raptors when they are in a deliverable condition. The F-22 will be far more expensive than the F-35 but, penny for penny, it is better suited for Canadian needs. And a dozen F-22s would still be less expensive than 65 F-35s.

The F-22 Raptor (also being developed by Lockheed Martin) is a twin engine fighter platform with the advanced electronics for patrol assignments. Capable of speeds in excess of Mach 2.2, the F-22 can fly higher and faster than virtually any other fighter.

While the airframe for the F-22 has been shown at air shows, much of the inner workings of the aircraft remain cloaked in secrecy. So far, the Americans have been reluctant to admit to discussing this fighter with any of its allies.

But we could always ask. If the Americans cannot trust Canadians, who can they trust?

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The eastern pipeline option.

March 14, 2012 by Peter Lowry

You have to admire the resourcefulness of Albertans. They always have answers at the ready to overcome political obstacles. Whether the blockage is created by Ottawa or the Legislature in Edmonton, they will come up with an answer. The usual solution is to form a new and more right-wing political party. The current provincial inheritor of the Conservative-Reform-Alliance parties is the Wildrose Alliance. The party has been poised to move in on the Alberta Conservatives as that party’s strength erodes.

Well ahead in the public opinion polls, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith is acting as premier-in-waiting for the election to be held in the next couple months. Smith has Conservative Premier Alison Redford in a bind as the Premier is committed to supporting the Trans-Canada’s Keystone XL Pipeline through the United States to the Texas Gulf refineries as well as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline over the Rockies to Kitimat, B.C. This left Smith with an option that had not been considered, an all Canadian solution. She suggested shipping Alberta’s heavy tar sands oil to refineries in Sarnia, Montreal, Quebec City and Saint John. The only pipeline that would be new on that route would be to Saint John from Montreal.

While it was not a brand new suggestion, it got rave reviews in the more conservative media when Smith proposed it in a speech in Ottawa. It could hardly be ignored in Alberta.

But what Smith did not add was the fact that the Enbridge eastern route is through the U.S. before crossing the Canadian border again into Ontario. One of the options all along was to divert heavy oil from the Enbridge pipelines south to Texas. This is a slightly roundabout route but it gets around most of the serious ecological concerns.

Mind you, the more practical people with a concern for the ecology are pointing out that heavy oil can cause the most serious harm to the ecology. They explain that refined oil cannot mix with water and is much easier to clean up than heavy crude. They ask why the heavy crude cannot be processed to a stage in which it could flow easier and not be an ecological disaster waiting for a pipeline break. Nobody seems to be able to answer that.

Nor would it be a concern of someone such as Wildrose’s Danielle Smith. This is a person who did her internship in Alberta politics as an acolyte of the Fraser Institute. In the convoluted politics of Alberta, Ms. Smith describes herself as Pro-Choice Libertarian. That is quite a fence-sitting accomplishment for any politician.

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Singing the liberal blues.

March 13, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It is appearing more frequently. People are addressing and talking about what they call ‘blue liberals.’ It seems to be the new way of talking about the right wing of the Liberal Party. And, yes, there is a right wing. It used to include people like John Manley and Paul Martin Jr. Paul used to laugh it off as he told people to ‘campaign on the left and govern on the right.’ It was how Paul Martin made Stephen Harper Prime Minister.

Michael Ignatieff capped the foolishness when he drove the Liberal Party of Canada down to third party status. This very capable and very intelligent man simply did not understand the modern Canada. He tried to be all things to all Canadians—to embrace both right and left wings—and failed everybody. We paid lip service to his concept of the ‘Big Red Tent’ and let him down.

But we Liberals have always had the seed of our own defeat as a party. It is the myth of the all-inclusive party with right and left wings. This is what fails us. It was the choice of John Turner as leader after Pierre Trudeau. It was the same as the party collectively stepping off a cliff. And then going from Chrétien to Martin; same cliff. The fiction of Paul Martin balancing the country’s books in the 1990s, in a booming economy, ate at the heart of the Liberal Party. The confused message was too much for Canadian voters.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives currently own the right wing of Canadian politics. And it includes the extremists. It includes those who put property rights ahead of human rights. It includes the fanatics who want to deny women control of their own bodies. It includes those who want to return the death penalty. It includes those who put their religion ahead of tolerance.

Liberal values are different. Liberals have always placed the individual first. It is this recognition of individual rights that has lead the party to Medicare, Old Age Security and to build Canadians’ pride in their country for its peace keeping, openness and reputation for fairness around the world—a reputation that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are now trying to destroy.

The key to a transition of the left is that there is much to add to the Liberal Party from the New Democrats. There is a balanced social democracy at the heart of that party that should become the flag of a new liberalism in Canada. There will be much to repair in our country after the Harper years.

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Mr. Broadbent regrets.

March 12, 2012 by Peter Lowry

For many years some people have thought that the sign outside New Democratic Party headquarters in Ottawa should have included the line: ‘E. Broadbent, prop.’ It will be an end to Ed Broadbent’s era later this month when his hopes for the party will be destroyed by democracy. Control of the party will be wrested from him.

For good or bad, the next leader of the NDP will not be Ed Broadbent’s creation. Mind you, he has had a heck of a run since being chosen leader of the party to succeed David Lewis in 1975. Some people know when to quit.

Probably Broadbent’s worst fear is that Thomas Mulcair from Quebec will win the NDP’s first truly democratic leadership convention. Mulcair is the demon from the unknown. He is no social democrat. He is barely a blue liberal.

And he is not Ed Broadbent’s boyo! Broadbent made it clear from day one of this interminable NDP campaign that he was fore-square behind Brian Topp. It was made perfectly clear that Brian Topp was the establishment candidate. That endorsement and Topp’s seeming to have all the personality of a sack of potatoes, did him little good.

With the current consensus that Thomas Mulcair is in the lead, Broadbent has much to answer for among the titular leaders of the NDP. It seems the boy can sell memberships. Quebec has never had so many New Democrats as it has today.

But, by no stretch, has Mulcair won the leadership. If he has a going in position of 25 per cent of the vote, that is formidable. His only problem will be how to turn 25 per cent into 51 per cent. For that, you have to have more people thinking you are second best than thinking you are number one. That is not as likely.

And we know that Brian Topp is no compromise. Paul Dewar is nobody’s second choice. Nathan Cullen from B.C. would be an interesting compromise but nobody knows him. And that leaves the darling of the NDP, everybody’s second choice: Ms. Peggy Nash.

And why not? She will make nice with Ed Broadbent and send him off like an aged parent to a seniors’ residence. She will keep the fiction of Jack Layton’s social democrats alive by not pandering to the unions in public. She will be tougher than previous women leaders of the party. She will still watch her inflated caucus numbers in Quebec recede. She will be back in third party status after the next election. Without a rapprochement with the liberal left across Canada, she is taking the NDP nowhere.

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When polls matter.

March 11, 2012 by Peter Lowry

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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The corporatism of Stephen Harper.

March 10, 2012 by Peter Lowry

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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Where is the political morality?

March 7, 2012 by Peter Lowry

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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