Category: Federal Politics

Profiteering in Food.

by Peter Lowry

That young guy who runs Canada’s Weston Empire appears to be getting ahead of the game. He can enthusiastically raise prices in Loblaws, Zehrs, No Frills, Provigo, Superstore or Shoppers Drug Mart and the other chains will follow. The only question is why is he raising them more than necessary? It is when he contributes to the rising cost of living in Canada that the word ‘profit’ becomes ‘profiteering.’

Does the Weston heir think that nobody will notice? There are many people across Canada who know how to compute what something should cost. Grocers might not put their thumb on the meat scale very often but it is easy enough to compute what it costs to bring a product to the grocery shelf.

One of the reasons the wife likes to take me along grocery shopping is that I know meats and can quickly compute if so-called bargains are really a bargain. It comes from my early training in supermarket store management. Yes, I was trained by two different grocery chains in my youth.

Maybe things were a bit simpler then but the basics have changed very little. The highest mark-up in the stores is in the produce department. Controlling waste and keeping product fresh and inviting has changed little over the years.

Meat is a different story. While still a major profit contributor, fewer and fewer butchers are actually on the premise. Precut, prepackaged meats are most often from central cutting and packaging operations. Stores with real butchers are rare but always interesting, if they have time to chat. In store bakeries were rare when I was in the business as are the occasional fish counters today.

But the heavy lifting in the large grocery stores of today is still left to the grocery department with its stocks of canned and bottled goods, paper products and dairy and frozen foods.

What worries me today is the government involvement in developing a code of conduct between the grocers and their suppliers. I think we need to keep the tensions. We need the tensions to eliminate the collusion between suppliers and retailers. We certainly have to have some strong competition to keep the giants of the industry from just getting richer.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Which Ten is that?

by Peter Lowry

Ontario has bought into the federal government’s “Ten Dollars a day” daycare deal. That is what everyone calls it. And most people realize it is not going to happen overnight. What puzzles me though is this payment going to be in 2022- ten dollars or in 2027-ten dollars?

The way inflation is galloping along, it is very hard to say what a Canadian ten-dollar bill will be worth in five years.

It was good to see that finance minister Chystia Freeland knows that we are not going to be able to train a quarter million new daycare workers overnight. And, obviously, there will need to be a lot more daycare centres. These need to be built, staffed and in operation to serve the needs. And feel assured, if we build them, the kids will come.

Maybe the question of value will be solved if Pierre Poilievre wins the lottery being run by the conservatives to choose a new leader. As conservative leader, he seems to want to campaign on making Bitcoin the Canadian currency. We would probably need to keep our phone batteries charged, in that event. I checked and saw that a bitcoin was being quoted at over C$54,000. You would never want to make a decimal point error in Mr. Poilievre’s world.

What worries me though is that there are obviously going to be many daycare spaces in different daycares. They are not all going to be cookie-cutter daycares. Will not some of these daycares be more desirable than others? Will there not be extras? Is there a surcharge for chocolate milk instead of two-percent?  Is having junior in this daycare over that daycare going to be more prestigious? Will there be some where the drop-off and pick-up is more convenient? You never really know what junior or his parents will prefer.

I do not want to be a skeptic but there will be many cookie-cutter daycares and there will also be the innovators. And that is life. And if you don’t think lots of operators will find ways to get around the limit of ten bucks, you do not know human nature.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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What the Weasel Wants.

by Peter Lowry

It might seem disorganized to some politicos but the meanness of MP Pierre Poilievre’s campaign for the conservative leadership is coming into focus. He is befriending the conservative party’s extremists.

Poilievre is appealing to the hardened right wing of conservatism. Yet, he is not really a doctrinaire conservative. He is like a weasel appealing selectively to groups such as the Bitcoin proponents, the Freedom Convoy and the libertarians still within the conservative party, as well as the callow youth in a hurry and Canadian admirers of America’s Donald Trump.

But within this vale of lost souls, he promotes his eventual failure.

He is going against conservative tradition in attacking the Bank of Canada. For someone who can so maliciously malign the financial planning of other parties, he is promoting the fiction of cryptocurrency. Nobody wants others to control the currency—until you need someone to protect your savings.

The weasel is the pal of the people who came to party on Ottawa streets through February of this year. Maybe he would like to help pay the bill for cleaning up their mess.  

But in his successes, he is building his failure. What we are seeing in this contest is three or four of the leaders in the race dividing up maybe 70 per cent of the party to their cause. You have to look at their second or third choice selection before you can figure out who can win the brass ring. This is the dangerous consequence of preferential voting. What you want to know at this stage is who would be so foolish as to make Poilievre their second, third or even fourth choice?

Not Jean Charest’s supporters. His base is Quebec. He can expect little of the west. He might honour the deal with Patrick Brown who would be strong in Ontario. My guess would be that Brown could make it to the at least the fourth count of the ballots. It makes sense that his voters in Ontario would have Charest as their second choice. If I were a betting person, I would be inclined to make a trifecta bet on Charest in first place, Poilievre in second and Brown in third.

But the way this vote is manipulated with the preferential vote and all electoral districts being treated as equal, it’s anyone’s guess.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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A Dying Breed.

by Peter Lowry

It was a picture of Canada’s first nations’ representatives with the Bishop of Rome that got me thinking. Where are the anachronisms in this picture? And who are the people of faith?

It was the central figure in the white smock that got me thinking. He is the head of a dying religion. The opulent churches around the world have fewer parishioners these days and fewer funds to support the hierarchy in Rome. The funds they probably have set aside for a rainy day might be coming in to play. Even an audience chamber such as where the photograph was taken is expensive to keep in good repair.

But the Pope and his handlers made good use of the occasion. They welcomed the first nations, Metis and others who share ancestors that came to North America thousands of years ago. They came to Rome in the headdresses and fashions of their peoples. I guess Phil Fontaine, who normally wears a fedora, came in his plains Indian war bonnet—earned, I expect, for his hard work as elected chief of the assembly of first nations. He had been to Rome before on this quest. He saw Pope Benedict in 2009. Benedict brushed off the delegation.

But did they come to Rome to air their grievances or to make peace with their church? The Pope’s apology was no redress for the church’s failure to protect the children put in its care. If the church’s original intent was to proselytize, it did a poor job of it.

Canada has paid the price many times over for the failure of the residential schools. It is easy to understand the lack of trust for the society that takes your children and fails to return them all to you. Unmarked graves do not paint a picture of a responsible guardianship.

What I fail to understand is the competitive attitude of the various communities in inviting the Pope to visit some of our first nations. Why? Is he really interested in the oral histories he will hear? It seems to me that it would make more sense to ban any unmarried Catholic priest from coming onto first nations lands.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Emissions and Other Lies.

by Peter Lowry

There is a huge hole in the emissions target released by the Trudeau government the other day. Canada cannot continue to ship tar sands bitumen off shore and not take responsibility for added emissions of greenhouse gasses to convert it to ersatz crude oil and then the ultimate emissions of the refined carbon-based products. Once again, these geniuses promise paths to emissions reductions in ten or 20 years.

The Trudeau government needs to admit that the billions being spent on doubling the Trans Mountain pipeline are all in aid of making the lie of this fiction. It makes prime minister Justin Trudeau and his environment minister Steven Guilbeault look like foolish liars. And Alberta’s greed seems shared with the rest of the country.

And, one thing for sure, Steven Guilbeault has failed to live up to his advance billing. Is he really supposed to be some kind of environmentalist?

Canada has done nothing to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. You cannot achieve anything by continuing to push the targets further out. That is leaving the problems to someone else. And Canada’s carbon tax has been just another way to shift money around in the economy.

And there is no point in asking the oil industry. These people have no idea how the targeted reduction in emissions can be achieved. It really is not in their DNA. Carbon storage is the much-touted solution but the industry realizes how limited that solution will be. Carbon capture is creating a few time bombs beneath the surface of our earth.

Centuries from now, those caverns full of carbon could briefly fuel the light in a darkening universe from a long-dead planet.

And our saddest note of all is that these same liars of today have been tasked to help find solutions to the need for oil and natural gas in Europe to replace the Russian sourcing.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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The ‘F’ Word for the F-35.

by Peter Lowry

Here we thought that former prime minister Stephen Harper’s dream of the F-35 procurement had been put to bed. Nobody in Canada needs or wants the American F-35 aircraft. It is a bad idea promoted by the Americans to soothe their egos. It is a ground support aircraft that Canada does not need.

The only country close enough to attack us with F-35s would be the Americans. Since they would have our F-35s outnumbered by about ten to one, it would hardly be a fair fight.

It’s not that I was rooting for the Saab Gripen but there is no question that the Swedish fighter is designed for what Canada really needs. We need a reconnaissance fighter for our Arctic. We need its patrol characteristics.

And why would we want a stealth aircraft that needs air-to-air refueling before it is halfway across the north. The very essence of patrolling is letting people know you are doing it.

If we wanted to buy F-35s for the Ukrainians, I would agree, but we are probably a few years too late. With training and maintenance requirements for the F-35, it is also far too expensive for a country that is watching its cities and economy being destroyed. Mind you, Canada could arm some of our DeHavilland Beavers for Ukrainian ground support needs and that could be a winner.

Think of it. The MiG that attacks a Beaver flying nap-of-the-earth will end up either crashing or watching its rockets wander off looking for a larger target. And I would pity the poor helicopter pilot who thinks he can win a dog-fight with a Beaver.

The good news in all of this is that the U.S. has already had 20 years of the planning and design wasted on Lockheed Martin’s fifth generation fighter. Canada paid for some of that development to ensure that we get a share of the production. The government is now launching negotiations on the price (as yet unknown). Let’s hope those negotiations take another 20 years. By then there might be foreseeable peace and we won’t need the American planes.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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The CRTC Betrays Us.

by Peter Lowry

Hopes were high that the Canadian Radio-television-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) would reject the buy-out of Shaw Communications by Rogers. There can be no circumstances, when you reduce the major players in the industry from four to three, that it benefits Canadians. It is the raw greed of the incompetent management of Rogers today that the CRTC is feeding.

And that is the problem. Chair and CEO Ian Scott of the CRTC must still think he works in the business. He is pals with the head of Bell Canada He knows Bell, Rogers and Telus—the triumvirate. He thinks there should no more Shaw Communications. He said in his report that “the competitive landscape would not be unduly affected and that the transaction would be in the public interest.”

I would still like to know who the joker is in Ottawa who decided the CRTC should also be known as “Ian Scott and his Harem”? The other eight commissioners are all female.

Of course, I might have a problem with the new Rogers. When I decided to move from my waterfront condo to an apartment in the older part of Barrie, I had to arrange for telephone, Internet and television hook-ups. I had a good deal with Rogers at the condo for around $100 per month. When I asked for a quote from them for the new place, Rogers quoted me just under $200 per month for the same service I had for about half the price. When I asked why, the call-centre respondent said honestly that they controlled the telephone room in the new building. No deals to be had.

I went back to Bell and took a chance on the new fibre-optic service. While I never have got the bandwidth I pay for, I grudgingly continue to use Bell for Internet and TV.

I occasionally price the resellers of the same fiber-optic service but when you work out all the come-ons, you are paying the same rate as you would from Bell.

Canadians are paying outrageous rates for their telecommunications, be it cell phones, Internet or television services. And you can lay the blame on a CRTC that appears to work for the communications companies and not for us.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Pathos of Poilievre.

by Peter Lowry

MP Pierre Poilievre from Carleton riding in suburban Ottawa has his dark side. He gives no quarter. He is a career politician with no experience in the world of the workplace. He comes across as conniving and cruel, convinced of his rightness behind his political veil.  

Poilievre and Brown are two of a kind. Poilievre is more polished and more cunning. Brown is the small-town hick from Barrie. You can dress him up but you can’t take him anywhere. Poilievre must have played with action dolls as a youngster, while Brown would have preferred Raggedy Ann and Andy. Poilievre obviously has his hair coifed at regular intervals. Brown gets his cut when his wife tells him.

Before either struck out on their own in politics, they read in different schools.

Poilievre worked for Stockwell Day, the short-term leader of the Reform Alliance. Patrick Brown was a short term-trainee in the offices of Frank Stronach who preaches his own form of fascism.

The problem is that neither Brown nor Poilievre understand life at the short end of a paycheque. They have never gone hungry and they have never wanted. And yet they preach the gospel of conservatism, of small government and free enterprise. They want less restraint on business of which they know little. They talk of leading our country when they know so little of foreign affairs.

Poilievre knew his French name would be a problem if he ran for parliament in Alberta so he picked a conservative electoral district in the suburbs of Ottawa. The conservative voters there think they are proving they are broad-minded by voting for someone with a French name. He went directly to the house of commons.

Patrick Brown took the more traditional route to Ottawa by starting in civic politics. He did a stint learning the political ropes on city council in Barrie and it took him two tries to defeat the sitting liberal MP in town. He is more of a retail politician than is Poilievre.

But what neither of them will tell you is where the money comes from.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Brown’s Broader Bailiwick.

by Peter Lowry

Patrick Brown is in the race for the conservative party’s federal leadership. He told the media and some supporters the other day that he is going to restore the credibility and connections of the conservative party with a broader swath of Canadians. You can expect that broader swath to be mostly from the South Asian diaspora in Canada.

That was how Brown won the Ontario conservative leadership. It was the same immigrant group who won the national new democratic party leadership for Jagmeet Singh. Nobody has explained to these new Canadians that you should not be a member of two different political parties. Yet, if the organizers for candidates are willing to pay your membership fee for you, why not?

Brown’s most serious problem is the early cut off of memberships by the conservative party. It is only two and a half months to the June 4 cut off. Even starting with those he signed up in Ontario in 2015 and the concentration of votes in Brampton, he is unlikely to have much more than 100,000 new voters by the cut off. That is about half of the expected new sign-ups. The conservatives will again be bragging about the largest membership of any party in Canada if the total exceeds 400,000.

Brown is a hands-on organizer. He does not rely on others to do that job. He knows how the game is played and he works hard. I would expect him to come third in the present field of candidates.  He will likely follow Charest and Poilievre. Jean Charest will be the guy promoting the middle of the road route to a conservative government. Poilievre will appeal to the hard right and the fiscal conservatives in the party.

I really think Brown has to target the conservative caucus. He understands them and knows what buttons to push. They will be the ones that the rank and file in the ridings turn to for advice on second and third votes. He needs the second and third votes from losers such as Lewis and Baber.

It seems to this observer that in the race with the current candidates, Brown can only be the king-maker for Charest. That would give him an assured appointment in a Charest conservative government. We can only hope he does not come back to Barrie to run in the next federal election.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Jason Kenney is no FDR.

by Peter Lowry

It was in 1933 that American Franklin Roosevelt started his series of fireside chats on radio that won him two more elections as president. If Alberta premier Jason Kenney and Corus Entertainment think they can duplicate that record, they are dreaming in technicolour.

Jason Kenney and Corus Entertainment are many years too late if they think that a series of fireside chats on radio could save Jason Kenney’s ass. You can also be assured that the Alberta premier is no recreation of former Alberta premier ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart, who got his start on radio in the 1930s.

The current show, called Your Province, Your Premier, is scheduled to be aired on Saturday mornings live on Corus’ AM stations in Edmonton and Calgary. The first show aired On Saturday, March 12 to less than rave reviews. Whether there will be a second show, we have no idea.

One of the questions asked about this show is whether it could be considered somewhat one sided? Or, to put it squarely, is it unpaid advertising for premier Jason Kenney?

If you are going to complain to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) about this free advertising, I should warn you that it might be a waste of time. I banged my head on the door of that agency about Corus Entertainment airing patently biased shows in the last federal election. I was annoyed about the conservative party bias of the broadcaster in the week before election day. The response I got was that the bias had to be consistent throughout the election campaign.

To make that allegation, I would have had to have a recording of every political show and news show on the network for the entire election. I have no idea just who that agency thinks they work for these days but it is obviously not the Canadian public.

Maybe we will get an answer when we see how that commission votes on the takeover of what is left of the Shaw empire in Calgary by the high-flying heirs of the late Ted Rogers.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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