Category: Federal Politics

The Simplicity of Poilievre.

by Peter Lowry

It is important to remember that Donald Trump caught Americans off guard with what Hillary Clinton described as his basket of deplorables. There are similar types of deplorables in Canada you know. And trust a weasel like conservative MP Pierre Poilievre to try to politicize them. He will have some trouble signing them up to the conservative party, yet he can be betting on the large numbers who turn out for his campaign. He is the first Canadian politician to make conservative politics interesting to the hoi polloi since John George Diefenbaker.

I remember, many years ago, arguing with my late friend Keith Davey about sending MP Judy LaMarsh and the “Truth Squad” to Diefenbaker’s rallies back in the 1960s. ‘Dief’ would welcome them and ask them to sit up front where everyone could see them. I felt that the point that Diefenbaker could wander from the truth was being covered very well by the news media. It was probably only two rallies that they attended but Keith thought Judy’s truth squad brought the problem of Dief’s creative approach to truth into sharper focus.

But Poilievre, as a phony Prairie populist, seems to have better writers than Diefenbaker. I was listening to part of his speech at the Steam Whistle Brewery the other day and I actually think he is dumbing down his language to connect with his dumber audiences. He was saying: “I dunno” in answer to his own rhetorical questions. Yet, he usually speaks in a more clipped style.

And speaking of the Steam Whistle event, did you know that the little worm is going around bad-mouthing the company. He stands up in from of his followers and in social media on the Internet to tell them that this brewery waters its beer. We all know that water is a very important ingredient in beer. Poilievre just says it in a nasty way. I hope the brewery continues to stay silent. He would love to have the attention.

I think Poilievre was one of the few Canadian politicians who actually used the pandemic to further his aggressive agenda. As soon as the Zoom meetings of parliamentary committees were launched, he had the best lighting and background of any member of parliament. That guy doesn’t miss a trick. He is a sleaze. As one of the two career politicians running in this year’s conservative leadership contest, he makes Brampton mayor, Patrick Brown, look like a country yokel.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Bitcoin Boosters Beware.

by Peter Lowry

At times, you just shake your head and quietly ask yourself, ‘What’s the use?’ You try to warn cryptocurrency advocates and they think they know what they are doing. There are more people speaking out against these pseudo currencies now and the bitcoin boosters have been warned by the Bank of Canada.

And the Bank of Canada is not in competition with bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrencies. They are interested in them only in the sense that they need to understand the phenomenon. While it might be the best known of them is called bitcoin, it is not money. It is, at best, a hypothetical investment. Yet, what the bank found out in their studies was that most Canadian bitcoin owners were not financially literate. And they did not seem to understand the risk involved in taking an ownership position in bitcoin.

In a series of studies between 2018 and 2020, it was determined that about five per cent of Canadians were actively involved with bitcoin. The Bank of Canada researchers tell us that the bitcoin owners were, mainly male, younger and educated, with high household incomes. They understood the technology involved and the block chain, yet saw the ownership as an investment.

It was interesting that the bank decided to release their studies at this time. It is when MP Pierre Poilievre is currently campaigning to win the leadership of Canada’s conservative party and supporting bitcoin ownership. Like many of his claims, Mr. Poilievre tends to wander from the truth. He reminds us more of former U.S. president Donald Trump than any conservative we have ever known. The inflation that is besetting all currencies today is hardly unique to Canada nor to be blamed on our prime minister.

The researchers did not say it but I will: The ownership of bitcoin is, at best, a poorly managed tontine (that is an investment club that gives all the money in the pot to the last person alive) or just a form of gambling where nobody wins.

Some people also accuse it of being a Ponzi scheme without a Mr. Ponzi. What it really is would best be described as a foolish fad that will pass on to more interesting challenges in the years ahead.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Conservative Values.

by Peter Lowry

When writing recently about how conservative leadership candidates were overusing the word ‘freedom’ it occurred to me that they also think they own the term ‘values.’ At their first English debate in Edmonton on May 11, I might count the number of times each candidate uses the two words.

What complicates the discussion of values among conservatives is that it reflects a mix of ideologies. The most persistent use of the word is in regard to social values—the ones that some conservatives want to inflict on others. This is despite the fact that Canadians seem comfortable with the rights of women to control their own bodies. They are also at ease with medical assistance in dying. Having to do endless battle with conservatives and the Roman church on these issues does not endear either to us.

Values seems to be a factor in conservative cancel culture and the promotion of book burning. I find the use of the word values particularly objectionable in conservatives fighting against Medicare and dental care. What is implied in these values is that the rich are better than the rest of us. I have never understood what the poor are supposed to do when sent to the back of the line for medical care. Do these conservatives think there is enough charity to help all? Or are the people at the end of the line supposed to die quietly?

And people think it is so sophisticated to be conservative. Yet they seem to see politics as adversarial. Why? Do they have to scoff at suggestions for helping others in our society? There are of course those who are quick to say they are not as extreme as the libertarians. So? If you espouse limited government and less taxes, I have a very basic question for you: Given a severe budget cut, which service would you like to live in a Canada without, paved roads or no police forces?

It has always amazed me that conservatives can preach balanced budgets and yet, often, run up the largest deficits. It is usually because they want to cut taxes for the wrong people. They are preaching to the ignorant when they claim that they are the ones who can trim the fat at any level of government. Of course, they make cuts—usually to the people who can least afford them.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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One little, two little, three little Tories.

by Peter Lowry

Just another week and we will know who is really running for the leadership of the conservative party of Canada. You know that Poilievre is in, so is Jean Charest. Brown is still busy selling south Asian memberships. And the rest, who knows?

Not everybody is about to waste $300,000 in party fees on a lost cause. Sure, the anti-abortion candidate, Leslyn Lewis, has little trouble raising the money but no matter how many votes her supporters add up to, it will never make her conservative leader. The triumvirate of Brown, Charest and Poilievre are the likely front runners.

It was obvious that someone on the organizing committee was thinking of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown when they changed the rules to only allow membership payments by personal cheque or personal credit card. That person must have been paying attention when Brown produced about 40,000 new memberships in Ontario a couple provincial leaderships ago.

Mind you, Brown is out of his league in this race. He probably has sealed a deal with Jean Charest for his second votes. Between 40,000 and 50,000 second votes could tip the scales out of as many as 350,000 national votes this time. 

Brown’s problem is that the bulk of his votes are from Ontario. That limits the impact of electoral districts with a large number of conservative members against eastern and western ridings with smaller memberships.

The emerging Charest versus Poilievre race is your classic tortoise and hare event. Poilievre might be off and running but those crowds in Alberta were misleading. That is really Poilievre’s home turf and the crowds included a rowdy bunch of yahoos who caused all the problems in Ottawa in February and at the major U.S. border crossing from Alberta into the U.S. They pissed off a lot of conservative voters as well as ordinary citizens.

What surprises me is the number of liberals who are hoping that Poilievre is chosen because he could never lead the conservatives anywhere but downhill. All I know is that I was wrong about Donald Trump when he first ran for president in the U.S. Canadians can ill-afford to make a similar mistake about a weasel like Poilievre.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Free + Dumb.

by Peter Lowry

You want freedom, you’ve got freedom. It is just hardly necessary to be free and dumb at the same time. Canadians will have to stop feeling so superior to those Donald Trump supporters in the U.S. Obviously Canadians can be just as ignorant.

It is hard to accept this so-called ‘freedom’ talk. It is difficult to imagine people swallowing MP Pierre Poilievre’s signature line these days, that he is going to make Canada the freest country in the world. That guy needs to get out more.

Poilievre should take some lessons from the Dutch and the Scandinavian countries. Yes, they are probably freer in some ways than Canada. It might be because those countries have had longer to think about it. They are people who also take their responsibilities more seriously. You cannot have freedom without responsibility.

For someone to say you cannot wear a religious symbol is bigotry from a closed mind. For someone to say you cannot have an abortion is a mind that is closed to reality. And if you think you are taxed too much, you need to study the economies of those freer countries.

Canada is a country of great possibilities. It is a work in progress. It needs to accept that it is multilingual for all, not just some. It needs to accept its secular nature. It needs to relegate anachronisms such as the crown to history. Our politicians need to run the country on behalf of all of us—not just for businesses or the rich. Prostitution should not be run by criminals. Liquor and gambling should not be major tax contributors. Cannabis should not be so controlled that the criminals still own the market.

You go to your church and I might go to mine but we can walk to vote together.

Freedom is choices. Freedom is knowledge. Freedom is education. Freedom is love. Freedom is when everyone is adequately fed and housed. Mr. Poilievre and other politicians should use the word more judiciously.

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Copyright waived by Peter Lowry

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Poilievre’s Polarization.

by Peter Lowry

It is probably wrong to use big words when writing about MP Pierre Poilievre. The type of people who are buying into Poilievre’s campaign for the leadership of the conservative party might not understand big words.

Like former president Donald Trump in the United States, Poilievre is a man who also has trouble with the truth. If a car ran over his cat, he would probably claim it was Justin Trudeau driving the car. Like Trump’s ambition to be president again, it is Poilievre’s ambition to be prime minister of Canada. Nothing less will do.

It is for this reason that he will sign up any extremist crackpot he can find to support him in this year’s conservative leadership. And it is sad to report that he is finding some. Those yahoos who cluttered the Ottawa streets earlier this year, think Poilievre is the cat’s meow. He supported them and they are supporting him.

Poilievre is a person who pushes polarization. He divides people. He plays to people who want to hate instead of care about people. He panders to those who hate people who are not like them.

He befriends those who distrust the Bank of Canada to protect our dollar. He thinks cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are the answer. It is supposed that nobody controls cryptocurrencies. Nobody probably cares enough. If you believe in Bitcoin, you probably also believe in Santa Claus.

Poilievre rails against the government’s mishandling of housing costs across the country. Instead of proposing simple solutions such as capping tax-free housing profits to the cost of living or taxing housing profits for homes not occupied by the owner, he just blames others and ignores the solutions needed.

What has been really annoying about his campaign for the leadership is his constant desire to ignore the truth. This guy is definitely environmentally challenged. He thinks Alberta bitumen is the cleanest energy of all.

Watching those western yahoos in Calgary and Edmonton who are supporting Poilievre makes you wonder. They might follow him today but will they drink his Kool-Aid?

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Finding Freedom.

by Peter Lowry

If anything could have annoyed us more, it was those damn demonstrators in Ottawa and at border crossings, waving the Canadian flag. These people were not respecting the flag nor the country it represents. It made the wife and I angry to see it.

At the same time, we tried to respect their rights. It is hardly difficult to suggest that they were absolutely wrong in why they objected to being vaccinated. We did not care if they got vaccinated to protect themselves. We wanted them to get vaccinated to protect the rest of us. We wanted them to wear a mask properly to protect the rest of us. Our country’s freedom does not give them the right to spread disease.

Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms starts out by saying that it is reasonable rights that are guaranteed. If we go to war against an armed enemy or an enemy such as a highly contagious disease, we may have to restrict some individual rights. If you want to be friendly with a country in armed conflict with us, you can be locked away from society for the duration of the conflict. Be thankful though. In some countries you could be shot. People who refuse to be vaccinated or to wear a mask can only be shunned or forbidden entry to places that observe a mask or vaccine mandate.

In this durance vile of an ongoing, seemingly endless, pandemic, I hate wearing a mask. They drive me crazy and I wear them anyway. It is like the courtesy of making sure your fly is zipped. As much as you might like the cooling breeze, you are considerate of others.

And that is what freedom really means. We are not alone on our island. We extend the olive branch of freedom to others. We expect the same olive branch in return.

Freedom is certainly not the right to block others from their free movement. It is not the right to have some foolish notion that you can dictate your concept of freedom without recognizing that others share their freedoms with you. All you have to do is respect the rights of others and they will respect yours.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Quebec’s fight on the right.

by Peter Lowry

It looks like Jean Charest has overestimated his conservative party credentials in Quebec. He hardly has the time to sign up CPC members one at a time. He needs to have large blocks of memberships handed to him. Ideally, he needs the 50,000 provincial conservatives of Éric Duhaime—which does not seem likely—to add the federal party to their memberships. Otherwise, he needs Quebec premier François Legault to take his provincial Coalition Avenir Québec members into the federal fold—which is even less likely.

But one thing for sure, there seems to be a plethora of conservative parties in Quebec these days. In addition to Duhaime’s provincial conservatives and Legault’s right-of-centre CAQ, there are Maxime Bernier’s libertarians in the Peoples’ Party and the right of centre Quebec liberals. And the pollsters put the two remaining viable parties, the initially left-of-centre Parti Québécois and Québec Solidaire, as drifting in the doldrums.

Talking to people in the Atlantic provinces the other day, I got the impression that Jean Charest was doing better in in the Atlantic than in his home province. I also suspect, Charest will have strong first and second votes in Ontario.

Charest is no darling of the west. If he gets more than a few second or third choice votes west of the Ontario border, he’ll be lucky.

Our myopic media in Canada seem to be driving MP Pierre Poilievre into the lead in the conservative race. Mind you, he would have to be running well ahead of the pack in the first count. I suspect that, as it appears now, if Poilievre can hit 35 per cent or more of the first votes, he could go on to win. Anything less than that and he could fall by the wayside. Poilievre is not an unknown. He is a weasel but some people like weasels. It is just hard to dope out which conservatives would consider him as second choice.

Of course, the real problem is the way conservatives structure their frequent leadership contests. They do not seem to understand the cliché that if you keep doing things the same way, you are never going to like the results.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Fool and His Bitcoin.

by Peter Lowry

You asked “Who will protect your money?” It won’t be the Bitcoin miners. It won’t be MP Pierre Poilievre. In fact, Poilievre is using the Bitcoin confusion to try to add to his votes in the conservative leadership race. He might add some miss-led support to his campaign but in the long-run, the Bitcoin believers are the ones who will lose.

The simple reason to be a skeptic of Poilievre’s Bitcoin BS is that no responsible conservative MP would support Bitcoin over the Bank of Canada. The Bank of Canada controls the Canadian dollar. Nobody other than the collectors control Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

And, critically important, is the simple question, “How does Bitcoin protect anyone from inflation?” The answer that Bitcoin is finite is capricious. Why should this supposed limitation on Bitcoin prevent it from inflationary influences? Inflation can impact Bitcoin in exactly the same way as a Loonie that sits in your dresser drawer. It is as simple as the price of a loaf of bread.

A loaf of bread starts on a potentially inflationary spiral when the farmer procures his seed and operates his cultivator. The cost of the seed is followed by the price of fuel for the cultivator and the other farm equipment. The price of the wheat is determined by the size of the year’s crop, along with world prices, storage costs and shipping costs. Then there are milling costs, bakery equipment, shipping to stores and employee wages. And finally, a loaf of bread appears on the grocery shelf and you wonder why the grocer has to charge so much for one lonely loaf.

It is not the Bank of Canada’s fault that the price of that loaf of bread went up, again. Bitcoin could hardly have any influence. The difference is that the Bank of Canada has oversight on the world economy. It can influence our domestic economy through the manipulation of bank interest rates, and yes, by the judicious borrowing and printing of money.

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Bank of Canada has worked to assist Canadians in alleviating pressures on our Canadian money. Bitcoin is not included. As noted above, the fool and his Bitcoin are soon parted.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A ‘No Future’ Budget.

by Peter Lowry

Whatever happened to ‘Building Back Better?’ Conservative Pierre Poilievre could have written that budget speech from finance minister Cynthia Freeland. Just who the hell she was out to impress, nobody seems to know. This was not a budget in which a liberal could take any pride.

Canada can have a prosperous future but it takes leadership and determination to take us there. It requires the attitudes and the expenditures that create the future that Canadians want for their country. It has to start now on the infrastructure. It has to have leadership from someone who can see that future.

Dental care and prescription drugs should have been a part of Medicare years ago. It was a logical progression that was delayed by the lack of effective leadership. Singh and his colleagues are living in the past.

A Toronto Star writer suggested that Freeland was pacifying what she calls ‘blue liberals.’ She is likely referring to the ones who call themselves social liberals and economic conservatives. They have always been an embarrassment to the liberal party. The worst is former prime minister Paul Martin. Paul was the one who advised liberals to campaign from the left and rule from the right.

It was Paul who opened the door to the Harper conservatives a couple decades back. The voters looked at the choice between a conservative liberal and a real conservative and opted for the real thing. The first Paul Martin who died in 1992 was a progressive. His son, Paul, was a regressive.

Back to the budget, I do agree that something has to be done about the high price of homes in Canada. In our climate, shelter cannot be a luxury item. We have to have adequate, safe, warm shelter for all. The proposals in the Freeland budget for home building seem inadequate at best and foolish at the worst. The problem is an industry that is milking the inflation. It needs to be forced to build what people need.   

It is far too early to worry about the pandemic deficit. I know nobody wants to admit that the pandemic is still with us but you can hardly wish it away. The finance department has both carrots and sticks at its disposal. Freeland has to learn how to use them.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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