Federal Politics – Page 209

Mr. Harper is in heady company.

January 27, 2012 by Peter Lowry

It must be the rarefied atmosphere in Davos, so high in the Swiss Alps. It could also be the company of so many of the world’s leaders, political, industrial and academe. With his toupee firmly in place, our Prime Minister is ready to read the riot act to the World Economic Forum. He gently chides the world leaders for their economic bungling. He tells them that in Canada, we know just what to do. Canada can penalize those who cannot fight back.

Why Mr. Harper chose such a remote forum in which to announce that he would take more money from impoverished seniors, was not clear. He was certainly safe from having enraged Canadian seniors rising up and rendering him into a crushed mass on the floor of that august stage. Not many Canadian seniors can afford the lift fees at Davos at its peak season.

But if you think Canadians back home are puzzled at Mr. Harper’s choice of topics for these world leaders, the world leaders are equally puzzled by him. He has no message of interest to them. He barely gets polite applause.

The Prime Minister and his staff seem to have no clear understanding of what the World Economic Forum in Davos is about. That breaks a cardinal rule for people giving speeches and their writers: you have to know your audience. These people have not come to hear the old conservative economic bromides. They are here to be challenged, to hear new ideas, to see if there are solutions. They are deeply concerned about the world economic situation and have no interest in the same old conservative ideology.

The Davos participants must be shocked by the threat from Mr. Harper to force through the pipeline to Canada’s British Columbia coast from Alberta. This twinned pipeline is to take oil-sands crude to ocean tankers for shipment to the Far East. To threaten to ram this pipeline through the Rockies and native lands to the coast, without proper consideration or precautions, comes as a shock to any caring person.

Mr. Harper needs to look out the window of his Davos hotel suite. He needs to see the majestic beauty of the Alps, the challenging ski runs on the Junkerboden and the fact there is a world out there where people care about people, not ideology.

-30-

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

Babel’s MP sends urgent news to the cognitive.

January 25, 2012 by Peter Lowry

While working on a story concerning President Obama’s State of the Union address, we had urgent communication from Babel’s Member of Parliament. It seems that the young gentleman has claimed the honour of being among one of the first parliamentarians to have cross-platform (software that works on different devices with different operating systems) instant communication with his constituents and twits who follow him. Not content with just Facebook and Twitter and similar social media, Babel’s MP can now instantly harass his faithful and, maybe, respond to their pleas for assistance.

If you are not too sure just how something like this can work on both Apple and Rim products at the same time, it is best you have a smart 12-year old explain it.

The information on the breakthrough was not communicated via our iPod but through the pages of the Babel Backward. This is the twice-weekly grocery ad wrap published in Babel by an offshoot of the Toronto Star. The golly-gee-whiz story featured a nicely contrasted black and white photograph of the Babel MP’s special assistant. (This might be because the MP is somewhere else. It also might be because the special assistant is better looking, speaks more eloquently and is probably smarter than the MP.)

As exciting as this information might be, it is not complete. The reporter forgot to ask some quite critical questions. Or, maybe she asked them and forgot to include them in her story. Excited fans of the Babel MP deserve to know where they can also buy this remarkable bit of software for their own followers. And where can they get someone to do the layout of the application with appropriate pictures and logos. Considering that it needs to work on two different operating systems, it probably involves at least eight lines of well-written code.

The reporter thoughtfully included some of the advertising copy supplied by the special assistant. This included information such as the number of followers the MP has on Twitter: 2803 and ‘friends’ on Facebook: 4944—some of whom live in Babel.

But to make up for possible limitations in her article, the reporter closes on the promotional line: Pass on the news about how Patrick is making a difference in Ottawa. We would, if we could just stop laughing at the idea.

The important difference will be when he stops spending so much of our taxes on self-promotion.

-30-

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

Liberal Party is not about who leads but where.

January 24, 2012 by Peter Lowry

In discussing the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, it is easy to name contenders but the more complex question is to determine where the party and its leader want to go. The one thing the recent biennial conference proved is that the party is searching for that direction. Silly resolutions about the monarchy and marijuana are hardly the stuff of resolving direction.

The questions that the party needs to address will hardly be conceived at a policy convention. Directions require slow and careful development. These questions need to be tested, vetted and developed before being brought forward for party debate and decisions. They are questions that will define the party for many years to come. They are questions that will cause Liberal Party members to re-evaluate their beliefs. They are questions about the future of our country that Canadians have to consider.

The first need is to redefine liberalism for Canadians. The ongoing myth within the party of “The Big Red Tent” is foolishness. It is defeatist. If liberalism represents the rights of the individual in our society, we have to believe in it. If we believe in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we have to stand firm against the collective chains of socialism and the stifling oppression of conservatism. We have to recognize that the ultimate freedom of the individual can only be achieved under the aegis of a liberal and social democratic type governance.

Canada’s New Democratic Party has no lock on the left nor does the union-dominated party have any right to claim social democratic status. That was the positioning of the NDP in the 2011 election that enabled the party to win big in Quebec. It is a position that belongs to the Liberal Party of Canada and the true Quebec Liberals need to claim their right to the position.

The Liberal Party of Canada has to show its colors. It has to be proud of what it represents. It has to show what a truly liberal government can do for Canadians. It has to be a government that cares about national standards for Medicare and can expand Medicare services across Canada as Canadians can afford it. It has to have a national strategy to increase opportunities for education. It has to have rules that bring corporations, foreign-owned or domestic, to act as good corporate citizens. Employer or employee, there has to be equality under the law.

Liberalism is a cause that fights for the rights of the individual in our society. Could we ask for more than that?

-30-

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

Mr. Harper’s agenda.

January 23, 2012 by Peter Lowry

We could be so wrong about Stephen Harper. He might not be the devil incarnate. He could be just a sweet, lovable family guy with a toupee who likes to take his little boy to his hockey games. And, if we let him, he will forever change the nature of our country. It will be a Canada we might not like.

People worry about his conservative social agenda but that is, hopefully, not the problem. He has clearly indicated that he wants to stay out of arguments about capital punishment, abortion, same sex marriage and other social issues. They are not his thing. He panders to the religious right because he needs their votes but knows that bringing up social concerns will just inflame passions on both sides of the issues. And when have you seen him passionate about anything?

Stephen Harper is an economic conservative. He has more empathy with the Libertarians in his party than with the social extremists. He believes in a government reduced in size, restrained from interfering with business, puts property rights ahead of human rights, the rich ahead of the poor and would rather incarcerate malefactors than reform them.

While our Prime Minister basks in the approbation of the G20 countries, he is turning the world against Canada where his foreign affairs approach is bruising our reputation for fairness and for peace keeping. He reflects the American right-wing’s distain for the United Nations and, to please the religious extremists, denies third-world countries birth-control assistance and the support they need against AIDS.

His most invidious act to-date has been the denial of the taxpayer support for Canadian political parties. This funding was established by the Chrétien government to try to bring some balance to the political scene and end corruption. By closing this avenue of support, Harper is trying to silence his opponents’ ability to respond to his attack advertising.

He would prefer the American situation where the Republican Congress has opened the doors wide to corporations to fund the politicians and third parties that do what they want. The political corruption in America has created a sharply divided and vicious political climate that sets no limits on the extremists. The American Tea Party, for example, is a Looney Tunes faction that feeds on hatred and we will hear more from them in the current American political quagmire.

Harper is so dishonest that he claims those nasty foreign environmentalists are trying to stop Canadian tar-sands oil from reaching the west coast from where the crude oil can be shipped to China. At the same time, he ignores all the native bands, fighting desperately to stop the pipeline from potentially destroying their traditional lands.

This man does not care for people. He proves that every day. He does not care what Canadians think. He is an ideologue. And that is the devil of it.

-30-

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

Has the Liberal leadership race started?

January 22, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The news media is panicking. They are concerned that the Liberal Party of Canada has no contenders for its upcoming leadership convention scheduled for sometime in 2013. They figure Bob Rae is the logical winner because he is the interim leader. When Rae took on the interim leadership, he promised to not run at the upcoming convention. Do they think the Liberal Party would want someone who did not keep his word?

There is no question but Bob Rae is doing a good job as interim leader. He is keeping the caucus focused, he is speaking out effectively for the Liberal Party and he has kept the party in a position of de facto opposition while the official NDP opposition fights its own leadership contest. He has impressed a lot of people with his skill at the interim job.

But that is all it can be. There is a solid core within the Liberal Party who would never accept him as full-time leader. It is not just the fact that he was NDP Premier in Ontario in the 1990s but he showed a serious lack of political sensitivity back then and it is not something that people can really learn. You have got it or you have not got it. Bob, nice guy that he is, has not got it. He makes a great interim leader. That is as good as he gets.

Bob Rae sees himself as a career politician. And he is. In that regard, he is very much like Bob Nixon, Leader of the Ontario Liberals back in the 1960s and 1970s. Bob Nixon was Treasurer in the Peterson Government in the 1980s. He brought the same love of the political scene to his work for the party as Bob Rae. The difference is that Bob Nixon is probably the best Premier of Ontario that we almost had.

When the media think that Bob Rae has some kind of a lock on the Liberal Party leadership, they just show how little they know about the party. Do they really think that Martha Hall Findlay is out for the count? She is one of the smartest and most determined women in Canadian politics and if she ever gets the kind of political management of her campaign that she needs, she could be almost unbeatable for the leadership.

If the media people have never heard of MP Dominic LeBlanc from New Brunswick, their research on up and coming Liberal leadership prospects is sadly lacking. LeBlanc needs to spread his wings and get out and meet his party more often but he carries large credentials and four winning elections in his party pack.

And we have not even considered MP Justin Trudeau, who is wisely holding himself off from being a contender. A lot can happen in the next year and many Liberals are waiting for him to answer the call.

We could keep going and come up with five or six good potential candidates. The leadership of this party is no small prize. It is a party Bob Rae is helping to rebuild and he will earn our approval for that—just not the leadership.

-30-

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

Who do you trust?

January 21, 2012 by Peter Lowry

There seems to be a universal inability to trust these days. We have come a long way from the politics of trust. We can forget the former grandfatherly images of the sage politicians who would look after our interest. Today we look at politicians as no-holds-barred fighters in a cage. Politics has become a survival of the fittest contest as the savaged and bleeding winner earns the title by being the last person standing.

As usual it is American politics that leads the way. Who is Mitt Romney and why is he ordained to lead anyone, anywhere? And why is President Obama so relaxed and laughing while it is the Republican’s turn in the cage? Is Newt Gingrich that funny? And did Rick Santorum (who?) really win in Idaho? And does it matter? Can the Tea Party recover in time to win South Carolina and save the nation from Romney?

Stay tuned folks.

The question is not who is going to win, but why. The United States of America is practicing the politics of hate and if you hate, you no longer trust. And that is the growing concern of political observers across North America.

In Canada we are already reaping the fruits of Conservative hatreds. The formerly docile pet poodles of Stephen Harper’s Conservative caucus are growing fangs and demanding the raw meat of vengeance on their left-wing opponents. Harper is still looking at the long-haul strategy and is trying to keep them penned.

But enough of their hatred for the liberal left spills through to keep the tensions high.

In Ontario, Premier McGuinty is about to exact his revenge on the electorate for reducing his caucus to a minority government. When he plotted this, he must have thought he was going to lose. He hired a banker, Don Drummond, to plan his revenge. The not very secret Drummond report is soon to be released. The fact that McGuinty is still there to present it presents him with a conundrum. This is not chicken soup he is bringing to the electorate. It is a political expectorant. In bringing up the worst of the detritus of government, he is likely to have coughed himself right out of office.

Meanwhile, back in the United States of Hysteria, the Republicans continue to savage each other to prove who is the most pure, the most religious, the most hate filled—and who can defeat that abominable Obama. The election is in November.

-30-

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

When wielding words of worry.

January 16, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The cliché is that a picture is worth a thousand words. You can paint a picture with fewer. You can bring pictures to mind as easily. You can evoke emotion, encourage prejudice, denigrate a people, challenge an opponent, demonstrate love, bring forth a memory and start a war with simple words. Words are the arrows in the speechwriter’s quiver. They are there for both the rich and the poor. They are used by both the political right and the left. They are yours to use.

Why then are the political pundits so surprised at Prime Minister Harper and his Cabinet cohorts using words to denigrate those who challenge the Gateway Pipeline through pristine British Columbia? To denounce the so-called ‘foreign radicals’ who dare to involve themselves among the thousands challenging the pipeline is hardly worth a notice. For the news media to be suckered into using the words in their headlines and television leads is the disgrace.

The first realization of the young public relations person is that all your illusions of the gruff but kindly editor and the inquiring reporter are wrong. They are just people trying to do their job. It is your job is to make it easy for them to advance your client’s side of the issue. You have to remember that it is not the prose but the power phrases. It is not site for the shot but the backdrop. And emotion trumps logic.

The lie in Stephen Harper attacking the foreign-radical environmentalists challenging the Gateway Pipeline scheme is that there is far more foreign money on the side of the pipeline than there is supporting the environmentalists and B.C. native tribes. It is easy though for one to share the concern of the natives who are absolutely appalled at the vision of a spill along the beautiful inlets and shores of Northern British Columbia. Mr. Harper is only looking at the money the pipeline will earn.

And we should remember what the international oil companies want to ship through that pipeline. It is heavy crude oil from the Athabasca tarsands. They want to pump up to 500,000 barrels per day of this gunk through a twinned pipeline across and through the Rocky Mountains. It will be through forests and over streams and rivers to Kitimat which is up a long inlet from the coast and the Pacific Ocean. They want to bring huge ocean-going tankers up that inlet to unload light weight petroleum which will be pumped up the smaller diameter pipe to Alberta where it can be mixed with tarsands oil to enable the heavy oil to be shipped to Kitimat through the larger pipe. The ships, will then load with the heavy mixture and then wend their way out the channels to the Pacific and head for China and points east.

The one thing for sure is that the rhetoric has hardly had time to ramp. There will be highly paid writers plying their trade for both sides. There is enough money involved.

-30-

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

Was it a successful Liberal convention?

January 15, 2012 by Peter Lowry

The Liberal Party of Canada gathered in Ottawa this weekend for the party’s biennial convention. This type of event is like old times to this writer. It was 48 years ago that we helped organize our first Liberal Party event. The fun times over the years were the conventions when we only had to deal with the news media. The more onerous ones were those requiring us to be up all night, triple checking every detail for the next day’s events. We did not go to this one. The only expectation of this Liberal convention was extreme frustration.

How would you feel about a convention that has been set up to obstruct real reform? From the opening bell, you were presented with the dinosaurs of right-wing Liberalism of the past. Can you imagine Dalton McGuinty keynoting the conference to tell you how to achieve electoral success? Thanks Dalton, we already had you to thank in part for the Liberal’s lousy showing in May’s federal election. The only thing that saved your sorry provincial Whig asses in the October election was the confused youngster posing as a Conservative Party leader.

This Liberal convention would have been embarrassing. How would you feel about a convention in which nothing technical worked other than the automatic flushing of the urinals? Nothing was on time except your wake-up call. And why, when everything was so damn predictable? Don’t you know that the Young Liberals have been passing resolutions to legalize marijuana since the 1960s? And how can you pass a stupid resolution to dump the monarchy without a clear explanation of the alternative? You need to understand that voting on resolutions that do not make sense, produces results that do not make sense. Why bother?

There were over 3,000 people at the convention. Nobody missed us. Sure it could have been better run but then, who would notice? There were some small wins, here and there. The only major win, we think, was the win by Mike Crawley running to be president of the party. There is a promise from Mike that he will restore control of the party to the electoral districts. We will hold his feet to the fire to make sure he delivers. When you consider how close the race was between Mike and Sheila Copps, you know how serious the schism is in the party between those favouring reform and the old guard on the right. It makes one wonder just how big the membership loss will be when the Liberal Party of Canada moves to the left of the political spectrum and merges with the New Democrats.

-30-

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

Somewhere Jack is laughing.

January 13, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Being a member of the United Church of Canada, the late Jack Layton never seemed to have strong religious beliefs. We have no idea from what heaven, hell, purgatory or Elysium field that he might be observing his deification back in Danforth electoral district in Toronto. If he is, he certainly must be enjoying a heck of a good laugh about it.

As Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in Canada’s House of Commons, Jack was so much out of his depth that that alone might have killed him. The news media liked to project him as ‘Just plain Jack,’ ignoring his doctorate and years as a professor of political science. Those of us who campaigned against him knew him better as a doggedly determined social democrat. We also knew that he had few moves and little creativity in political manoeuvring. You knew what he would do.

Mind you, he must have been on strong pain-killers when he chose NDP MP Nicole Turmel as his stand-in when he once again tried to defeat the cancer that was ravaging his body. The choices made as to many of the NDP candidates in Quebec in the May 2011 election where, in turn, slipshod, careless, unorganized and undemocratic and clearly indicated that Jack had no expectation of any NDP breakthrough in that province.

The biggest joke of Jack’s last election campaign was that it heralded his return to campaigning in Quebec Province. He campaigned as ‘Just plain Jack’ from Hudson, Quebec, not as a product of Anglophone Montreal. He and his advisors in that province had no indication of the plummeting popularity of the Bloc Quebecois and the seriousness of the continued dissatisfaction with the federal Liberals.

You have to be a liberal to still be annoyed at Jack for the cheap shot he took at Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff in the English-language leaders’ debate last April. What was obvious was that Michael was in no way prepared for it and Jack got away with it. It was the remark he made about the time Michael spent in the House of Commons. Of course, the Leader of the Opposition has tremendous demands on his time and he has to balance his attendance in the House with all those other demands. Jack knew that.

While you could appreciate the pomp and ceremony of Jack’s funeral and the opportunity it presented to the NDP, the truth is that Olivia and Jack are not saints and the NDP could never repeat the same stunt in Quebec. The stars will never align like that again.

Jack never was much of a union guy. He marched with them on Labour Day and accepted their support. He was a social democrat and that is the nicest thing we can say about him. He would have looked on the bringing together of the Liberal and New Democratic parties as inevitable. Let us hope his successor is a like-minded person.

-30-

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

Stephen flies to China.

January 12, 2012 by Peter Lowry

Did you hear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is flying a commercial airline to Beijing next month? He wants to show that he is a man of the people. He is even flying tourist class. It will be an historic occasion. And the beauty is that he has absolutely no idea what he is getting in to.

It starts with his being awoke at 4 am at his taxpayer-provided Sussex Drive residence in Ottawa. He is to be packed and ready to leave for the Ottawa Airport at 5 am for his 7 am flight to Toronto to board his 2:30 pm direct flight from Toronto to Beijing. Grumpy and rushed, but with every hair in place, he is whisked to the airport where the limousine deposits him at the departures entrance. From there, he and his nine pieces of luggage, piled on two luggage carts, begin their journey.

He is recognized by an employee who sometimes votes Conservative and is offered special treatment to ensure he catches his flight to Toronto on time. While he insists on being treated like any other passenger, the security personnel decide to forego the cavity search in his case and he does make the flight. This is despite the confrontation between the Prime Minister and the check-in clerk who said there was no way he was taking all those pieces of luggage to Toronto on the same plane.

The luggage problem was solved by slyly purchasing some empty seats on the flight and crediting the extra luggage to fictitious passengers. It is when he has to take off his shoes to go through security that he used the bad language. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police security guard, nattily attired in a brown RCMP uniform and a turban, tells him that if he does not present a more pleasant image to the other passengers, he will be barred from taking his flight. Flying places in Canada is a privilege, the officer tells him, not a right. He can either follow the rules or walk, he is told.

The Prime Minister’s staff see the all-too familiar ‘prepare to die’ type smile on the PM’s face and seek out the furthest coffee shop away in which to enjoy a cup of coffee. They find him later in the boarding lounge, ruefully examining how a hole in his sock has allowed his big toe to peek at the world. During the flight toToronto, he thoroughly annoys the businessman beside him with a discussion of how uncomfortable steerage class seats are in the aircraft.

It is when he arrives in Toronto and sees the line-up that laps twice around the terminal, to clear security, he understands why he has been told to allow six hours for his connection in Toronto. He immediately identifies himself and demands to speak to the airport manager. When that harried individual is finally brought to him, he demands to know what is going on.

“Well, sir,” the fellow explains, “Some idiot in Ottawa decided that we can handle security in this airport with 300 fewer people. These people make about $10 an hour and a guy making more in a year than these people can make in a lifetime decided that they are too expensive. And if you think you are going to catch a plane today, you better take off your shoes and get back in line. There are no exceptions.”

-30-

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