Category: Federal Politics

Einstein and the Tories.

by Peter Lowry

It is said to be Albert Einstein who claimed that insanity was when you kept doing things the same way and expected different results. That sounds like a reasonable description of the conservative party of Canada’s current Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC). There might be some different members of the committee but they must be insane to continue to use ranked voting in the party’s leadership selection.

Ranked voting is often considered the lazy person’s run-off balloting. When there are only three or four candidates and a candidate gets a majority of votes on the first ballot, it is the same as first-past-the-post balloting.

But when there are five or more names on the ballot and nobody gets a majority of votes on the first ballot, the insanity takes over. The system dictates that the candidate with the least votes be dropped from the count and the second choice on those ballots be counted in the totals.

What makes anyone think that the second choice of these loser ballots will be any more astute than their first choice?

What I have always said about ranked ballots is that the more candidates there are, the worse your final choice can be. You are actually drilling down in the appeal of the candidates.

One of your problems in these multiple counts are the voters who did not make a second, third, fourth or fifth choice. You find that the total votes are decreasing as you work your way through the ballots.

One of the ways of hiding this decreasing vote, LEOC has found, is to apply equal weighting to all 338 federal electoral districts across Canada. This takes away votes from your strong ridings and adds weight to your weak ones. Maybe that is just another touch of conservative insanity.

While I have always been a supporter of run-off elections—with some time allowed for reflection on the question—it would require more trust in computer network voting to keep costs within reason. Until then, first-past-the-post voting remains your trusted system.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

A Path to Power for Tories?

by Peter Lowry

As the federal conservative leadership race starts to gather some interest, the question of where the party is headed becomes critical. Regrettably, it will be the role of the contenders to define Canadian conservatism and where it should be going. And that is a very broad subject.

Obviously, Jean Charest, the retread liberal from Quebec, will preach winning by sticking to the middle of the political road. He offers nothing to the extremists. He offers little to the West and little more than hard times to his own province of Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Charest is out of touch and a conservative from the party’s past before it merged with the Reform-Alliance.

But if the range of contenders does not grow, Charest is in a position to win.

Despite his early entry, Pierre Poilievre, the MP from Carleton, is in a box. As the advocate for fiscal responsibility, he wants to take the party on an austerity trip. He is currently fighting rising gasoline prices, Justin Trudeau and deficits. He will get the hard-line conservatives and is probably close to a first ballot win but is unlikely to get the second votes needed to be a winner.

It appears that there is an attempt to block MP Leslyn Lewis from running in this race. It might be because she looks like the king-maker, if it stays just a four or five-person race. She is the darling of the social conservatives. There is a chance that Roman Baber, the Ontario MPP, could replace Lewis in the affections of the extremists but there is no movement yet.

Brampton mayor Patrick Brown is also studying the current political situation. Much depends on how he intends to handle the extremists. There will be a lot of second votes available to the contender who can pacify the social conservatives and the libertarians. The libertarians are the extremists who do not like Maxime Bernier’s Peoples’ Party and are still paid-up conservatives.  

But it is far too early to place any bets. This race needs more breadth and more talent. If the conservative party cannot attract more than these four or five to the race, there is little hope for the party’s future.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Useless Pipeline.

by Peter Lowry

The news that the Trans Mountain pipeline will cost Canadians $21.4 billion should not come as a surprise. At those costs, more analysts are considering it a bad investment. Did you think we haven’t been lied to? Did you listen to that crap from Alberta that energy self-sufficiency was Canada’s ace in the hole? Filled your gas tank lately? 

Canadians are paying the same world-wide surcharge on oil as everybody else. Alberta oil—better known as tar sands bitumen—has nothing to do with it. Some of what we pay at the gasoline station is likely profiteering, some is carbon tax and some is federal and provincial taxes, And the excuse for the serious escalation in price is Russia invading Ukraine.

And the problem is that Europe cannot switch its dependence on Russian oil and gas in the middle of the winter. The Russians are the experts in using winter as a weapon.

But there is only one rationale for the continued twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The old pipe has been delivering refined automobile and airplane fuels to B.C. and the State of Washington for many years. The $21.4 billion buys the second pipe and the high-pressure pumps and heaters for both pipes to pump tar sands bitumen at high pressure across the Rockies to ocean tankers in the Burrard Inlet. From there, it is to be shipped out across the Pacific Ocean to customers mainly in China and South Asia.

Of course, prime minister Trudeau takes no responsibility for the carbon released by the refining processes or the eventual carbon release when used to heat homes or fuel internal combustion engines in other parts of the world. Oh no, Mr. Trudeau does not think he is to blame for bitumen processed outside our country.

Our prime minister lies to the world that he is protecting the environment. He makes green-house gas emissions promises that he knows he cannot really keep. The promises are all into the future—when he is unlikely still trying to breath the air of a dying world. He leaves it for our children’s children to revile him as a destroyer.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Glory Awaits, Mr. Brown.

by Peter Lowry

It is only fair to hear that Patrick Brown’s lawsuit with CTV has been settled. Not that we ever believed the stories that took the Ontario conservative leadership from him. For Patrick Brown to be accused of treating women that way never did ring true. I would still bet that it was some of his conservative caucus members at the Ontario Legislature who orchestrated his losing the Ontario party leadership.

There were many of us in Barrie who were pleased to see his downfall for other reasons. He is a career politician who brings nothing to the table. He could be but a parasite, living off the body politic. His machinations four years ago to find a new political home rivalled a Mack Sennett movie. His home town of Barrie would not stop laughing at him. The County of Peel needed a newly-elected chair—Premier Doug Ford slammed that door on him. His solution was the mayoralty in Brampton. A weakened mayor and the voting strength of the Sikh and former sub-continent population were his key to the city.

And it makes you wonder just how many of Brampton’s beautiful parks have been converted to cricket pitches to please his supporters?

Brown was an acolyte of Jason Kenney when he was an MP in Ottawa. Having no agenda of his own, Kenney suggested to him that he become the party expert on South Asia. Those long flights to India paid off with the key to prime minister Modi’s office as well as close relations with the Sikh community.

But as Brown found, to win the Ontario conservative leadership and Jagmeet Singh found to win the new democratic party leadership, the sign-up of 100,000 new members from the Indian diaspora to swamp a smaller membership is possible. In the time for sign-ups in this federal conservative race, there is little chance of anyone swamping the more than 200,000 existing conservative party members across Canada.

Another problem for anyone thinking about the conservative leadership is the $300,000 that has to be handed to the party before you are allowed to join in. I might complain about liberal Justin Trudeau’s elitism but then the entire damn conservative party is a bunch of elitists.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Three to One.

by Peter Lowry

It is probably a little unfair but if it takes three, so be it. They are showing us how weak prime minister Justin Trudeau is by comparison. With Chrystia Freeland, Anita Anand and Mélanie Joli running things in Canada, Justin Trudeau can go back to his world travels. And all he gets is the credit for recognizing their talents.

With Freeland in finance and backing up the prime minister, Anand taking command of our armed forces and Joli being the face of foreign affairs, our government has an opportunity to show what it can be. We can be progressive and sensitive to the needs of this world in which we live. These three cabinet members have an opportunity to hit home runs for Team Canada.

The challenge for the finance minister is to look beyond the pandemic and see where Canada needs to head in the future. Our country can accommodate almost doubling our population in the next 50 years. It will be a land of electricity and nitrogen fueled trains, planes and automobiles. We have the land to feed us all, the resources to build our future and the will to make it happen. Freeland has to understand that future.

The toughest job goes to Anita Anand. In the years ahead, Canada needs to look strong and be strong. The realization has to be that we do not need a military person to imagine the military of the future. Our military has to multi-task. It does not require two per cent of our gross domestic product to protect and serve our nation and our commitment to our world. Our military needs to be versatile, dedicated and provide a career opportunity for people who want to serve their country. They are not cannon fodder but a resource.

Mélanie Joli is to be envied. She is so well suited to her role. She faces the world from Canada with the knowledge that relationships are what the world understands. Freeland and Joli can team well in the face of the Ukrainian crisis. Freeland has the on-the-ground experience with the principles in Kiev and Moscow, leaving Joli free to work with Canada’s NATO allies. At a time of world crisis, the teamwork of the three can make us proud.

It looks as though the liberal party does not need to worry about future leadership. People such as these three can offer solutions.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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The Rancour of Ranking.

by Peter Lowry

The idea of voting with ranked or preferential ballots is an idea that should never be implemented. If there are only three or four candidates on the ballot, it really doesn’t matter. It is when there are five or more candidates, the system can start to work against the voters.

And yet people still keep promoting the foolishness. There are municipalities using the system of voting to choose their councillors. The un-elected liberal leader in Ontario promises voters that he would implement a change to ranked voting if he became premier. It is mind-boggling what ignorance could cause.

Even the federal conservatives (who were supposed to have announced the rules by today and have not mentioned voting) are likely to use ranked voting to control the voting for their third new leader in three elections. Using ranked voting, the conservatives keep picking losers.

The problem is not the knowledgeable voter. The knowledgeable voter never votes for someone he or she does not know.  If the candidate is unknown to the knowledgeable voter, that space is left blank. It is the unknowing who votes for people they do not know. They think they have to fill out all the options.

And that is why, in a close race, with a large number of candidates, you are drawing from the bottom of the pile, with what can be a minority of the voters.

And the more you think about it, the sillier it sounds. You wanted to improve our democracy through electoral reform. That is commendable. The only problem is the reform should be based on knowledge.

It reminds of back in the days when the City of Toronto had two councillors (then called aldermen) per city ward. The alderman who got the most votes in his or her ward, sat on both city and metro councils and got more money. There were more than a few ways of convincing people to only mark one “X” on their ward ballot. While we were often accused of it, we never did anything improper. It was the former metro councillors who got bounced out of the top spot who expressed the sour grapes.

When the Trudeau government studied voting reform during its first four-year term, it should have listened less to political scientists and more to politicos who understand how people vote.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Is Kenney Coming Home?

by Peter Lowry

No, no, not to Alberta. Don’t you think that Alberta premier Jason Kenney really misses the Ottawa scene? Don’t you think he has found those Alberta conservatives are far too far to his right? Don’t you think Kenney’s chief of staff has taken a leave of absence and is out beating the bushes to put together Kenney’s run for the federal conservative leadership?

After all, it was Jason Kenney who passed up on the leadership when Stephen Harper left after the 2015 election. He did the decent thing, he thought: he went to Alberta to unite the right. Job done. Time to go on. It would be churlish for people to note that all he did was unite the right in Alberta against him.

People need to realize that Jason Kenney is only right in his own mind. Here is the guy who showed Stephen Harper how to stand in front of an ethnic wall of people to make prime ministerial announcements. He is the Catholic who never mentions abortion but fought it in college.

And don’t you think it would be fun for him to blame all the pandemic mistakes on Justin Trudeau and just forget his crock-up in Alberta? And he can recant on his promise to support Ten-Dollar Day Care.

But time is short. He has to announce before the April 9 meeting in Red Deer that plans to dump him as premier of Alberta. He needs to resign first. It is the honourable way. The entire weekend can be devoted to telling him what a wonderful job he has done in uniting the right. Even Brian Jean might be tempted to say something nice about him.

Of course, there are some other problems to solve. He can hardly run against his “good friend” Pierre Poilievre. He has got to convince Pierre to stand down and support the Kenney Campaign to Save Canada from Justin Trudeau.

After all, Pierre will step aside with a guarantee of being Kenney’s choice as finance minister, with deputy prime minister thrown in for good measure.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Leadership Losers.

by Peter Lowry

It’s hard to tell if the conservative leadership race is just winding up or already winding down. It doesn’t look good either way. The first problem is that the party is likely to use the same method of choosing a leader as it did for the last two losers. The second problem are the losers who are trying to get their campaigns in gear.

But before we discuss Poilievre and the other losers, can you imagine using the same foolish method of choosing a leader as produced a win for ‘Chuckles’ Scheer or that fool O’Toole.

The first problem is the weighting of the electoral districts. I can tell you, with some authority, that all electoral districts are not created equal. To block the strong and successful ridings with large memberships from everyone having a democratic vote is basically stupid. You are effectively promoting losers and suppressing winners.

The second problem is that preferential voting for candidates might work to the second level but how many people pay any attention to those they consider third or fourth choice? And that is where the conservative party gets its losers.

And then we come to the early birds in this contest:

Pierre Poilievre from Carleton will be lucky to win his own riding in the next election. His love affair with the ‘Freedom Truckers’ was embarrassing for his constituents and for his party. His Donald Trump-style lies about Justin Trudeau have embarrassed many a fellow member of parliament on the conservative side of the house. As early birds go, I would rate him as a pigeon. They make a lot of noise and leave a lot of excrement behind.

As for Barrie’s embarrassment, Patrick Brown, the former MP, he is an ostrich. He has had his head buried in the sand in Brampton for the past four years.

And then there is the former liberal leader from Quebec. Jean Charest reminds me of a prehistoric bird. They would have to run him for the conservative leadership as a long-forgotten relic of the past.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Is Boy Wonder Back?

by Peter Lowry

It was almost 30 years ago that we referred to Jean Charest as the boy wonder of the conservative party. It was in 1998 that Charest, the then leader of the federal conservative party, became leader of the Quebec liberal party. Which proved to me, what I had known all along, that Quebec liberals were neither progressive nor particularly liberal or democratic.

Now some of the federal conservatives want Charest back in Ottawa—in his former disguise as a conservative. They liked what he did as a liberal in Quebec and want him to do the same for the country.

As premier of Quebec, Charest was noted for his fights with unions and his sharply increased costs of government. He paid the government’s bills by increasing charges for electricity, increased fees for government services and increasing fees for automobile insurance. He was no populist.

He was everything a conservative is expected to be. He was narrow in his focus and mean in his actions. As premier of Quebec, Charest survived three elections—one with a minority government. His nemesis was in 2012 when he took on the youth vote and raised university fees. His government actually passed a law outlawing the student protests, that was quickly abolished by the succeeding Parti Québécois government of Pauline Marois.

Defeated in his own electoral district, Charest left politics in 2012 to return to the more profitable field of law. He has not mellowed much in the past decade.

While he might want to restore his credentials as a conservative, there is only MP Pierre Poilievre in the field at this time. It would be hard to decide between the two of them. Neither would satisfy the libertarians nor the social conservatives on the fringes of the conservative party of Canada.

No matter which of the two might be chosen by the rank and file of the conservatives, it is just going to add to the votes for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party in the next federal election.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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The Canadian Way.

by Peter Lowry

There will be many recaps of the events in the City of Ottawa during February 2022. Most visitors to the city at that time of year, prefer indoor recreations. Skating on the Rideau Canal at -20˚ C is for the foolhardy. Camping out on the streets around our parliament by a large number of anarchists seemed more like idiocy. It became an excellent example of the way Canadians like to handle their problems.

The events that unfolded told the world not only of Canada’s belief in the rule of law but of the benefits. While toes might have been stepped on, both indoors and out, nobody suffered serious injuries. Though frostbite was of concern.

The worst bite seemed to be indoors as parliamentarians argued the merits of an emergency measures act. The debate reflected the back and forth of the police and protestors outside. There was a lot of standing around and waiting both indoors and out. And there were winners and losers in both places.

The most serious losers were Canada’s conservative party. MPs such as Pierre Poilievre brought the party dishonour for supporting anarchists. Fighting against the emergency measures was a lost cause. The conservatives were identified in the debate with the troublemakers of the Bloc Québecois. And there is nothing the Bloc like better than a chance to stick a finger in the eyes of les anglais.

The only problem for the liberals was the reminder that their MP Bill Blair was the police chief in Toronto in 2010 who had his troops stand down while Montreal-based anarchists rampaged in downtown Toronto. Yet the next day, his troops kettled the innocent in reprisal.

But this time was different. The police always left the anarchists an escape route. And they had lots of warnings and polite requests. Only once were the police on horseback brought into play.

To many, who watched the events unfold, it was a long and sometimes boring scene. Let’s keep that as the Canadian way.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]