Federal Politics – Page 27 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Truckers Rolling Over O’Toole.

January 28, 2022January 27, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Who says that Canadians will not contribute millions of dollars to stupidity? It was a treat the other day to read Althia Raj’s column in the Toronto Star on the so-called “freedom convoy” of truckers and their maybe supporter conservative leader Erin O’Toole. It proves to me that the measure of another person’s intelligence is how much they seem to agree with you. Obviously, Althia Raj is brilliant.

Those truckers are—or were—Mr. O’Toole’s people. Yet, like that fisherman named Peter, in the New Testament of the King James Bible, he denies them. Raj reports that in the eight times he was asked where he stands on the ‘Freedom Convoy’ he gave no straight answer. Another four times, he was asked the simple question: “Will you meet with the truckers of the Freedom Convoy.” Raj tells us that O’Toole would not answer.

O’Toole sticks to his mealy-mouthed position that everyone needs to be vaccinated but not forced to be vaccinated.

By continuing to be confused in his direction, O’Toole keeps on sending the more rabid conservative voters over to Maxime Bernier’s people’s party. It is not the he is not desperate for their votes but he doesn’t want to be identified with them. Some leader!

Raj is kind when she says the conservative leader just lacks clarity. The way he can flip-flop on issues leaves most Canadians lost as to where he stands.

She points out that O’Toole probably understands that these truckers might give cover to far more unsavoury elements who will use them for less innocent objectives than not just against being vaccinated. The last such truckers convoy seemed to contain elements of misogynists and racists. And, who knows who is riding this pony.

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A Caravan of Hate.

January 27, 2022January 26, 2022 by Peter Lowry

They are driving across our country and the anger is growing against them. These fools and their backers are doing nothing but building anger and frustration across the country. Truckers who don’t want to be vaccinated against Covid are carrying flags into battle instead of guns. They obviously don’t know that flag bearers are among the first to be shot.

And other idiots are supporting this foolishness. We hear figures in the millions from troublemakers on some Facebook funding. These weasels supporting the caravan are even bigger fools than the ones driving the trucks. They are wasting their money. They obviously have too much.

There is no way the government is going to back down. Both Canada and the United States are firm: If you want to be part of trans-border trucking, you have to be vaccinated against Covid. The fools in the caravan can drive their trucks into the Atlantic Ocean for all we give a damn. Just stay in your truck.

And you are smart not to drive your trucks through Barrie, Ontario on your way to Ottawa. In Barrie, I would be one of the people throwing rotten eggs at your trucks.

There is no honour to be earned in this truck caravan. This is cheap, unconsidered snivelling. It does no good. If there was ever a time when people needed to support each other to end this pandemic, it is now.

And please do not tell us that people will go hungry because some truckers are not allowed to cross the border because they are afraid of being vaccinated. Children might be afraid of being vaccinated but we expect people old enough to drive those rigs to be people able to endure a second of discomfort because of a needle in their arm.

So why don’t you show you are an adult and get vaccinated. They are the people we respect.

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Time running out for Guilbeault.

January 22, 2022January 22, 2022 by Peter Lowry

We are nearing the 100-day mark for Canada’s environmental superstar Steven Guilbeault. You remember. The Quebec MP was a byproduct of the October election last year. He had lots of promise and was put to work to save the world. Prime minister Trudeau appointed him minister of the environment and climate change. Almost immediately, he was off to the United Nations COP 26 climate change conference in Glasgow.

And Glasgow was not his first rodeo. He has been to most of the United Nations climate change conferences. He can probably discuss the minuscule progress that has been made on the promises of the Paris Accord. Canada, he can report, is no leader—unless you are measuring the lack of progress on vague promises.

By the time Guilbeault got back, the house of commons was ready for recess and he likely spent the holidays as his reading week.

January has allowed him some travel time and he went to Alberta to meet those he was supposed to challenge. While we agree that knowing the enemy is important, there is no need for him to buy into their BS. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) told him that they are bullishly forecasting $11.6 billion investment in new oil sands production in 2022. This money is on top of the more than $22 billion of new money earmarked for expansion of natural gas and regular oil production.

They should bear in mind that Guilbeault is the guy whose job in the federal cabinet it is to lower the level of greenhouse emissions by 2030 and further to net zero by 2050. Exactly how he is going to do that has quite a few Canadians puzzled.

He explained to the CAPP people that as a federal minister, he has no jurisdiction over provincial resource development other than to set rules to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions.

Where he might have some influence would be if he went back to Ottawa and told the prime minister that he needs to stop the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline. British Columbia is going to need the original pipeline for a few more years to deliver aviation and other processed fuels. What the twinning of the pipeline is for is to accommodate all that diluted bitumen from the tar sands that CAPP wants to sell overseas.

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Desperate for political news.

January 20, 2022January 19, 2022 by Peter Lowry

We are all desperate. We have had an overabundance of Covid-19 news for the past two years. It has not gone away. Even the federal election in October last year failed to take the pandemic off the front pages. And you would think Toronto never had snow before, the way the media got so excited about more than 30 centimetres of the stuff the other day. We are all desperate for something different.

And that is why the good news the other day was in a heading from the Globe and Mail. The Globe headline writer started off saying the following: “NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh supports vaccination,” which I am sure came as no surprise to the 90 per cent of Globe readers who might be aware of Mr. Singh. The head continued on to add: “but is concerned about Quebec’s proposed tax on the unvaccinated.”

Wow, that makes three major party leaders all agreeing on something. Not that they want to do anything about it. Canadians should all be pleased that they are concerned. Mr. O’Toole even included that he was all in favour of respecting provincial jurisdiction. And as for Mr. Trudeau, we all know that he not only respects provincial jurisdiction but he seems afraid of it.

These three spineless politicians do not want to annoy any voters in Quebec. Far be it for them to point out the foolishness of Quebec premier Legault to suggest such an obvious contravention of the Canada Health Act. If this is just his way of trying to frighten anti-vaxxers into getting the jabs, maybe the feds are just giving him a little support.

But a little support is too much when Legault returns their support with insults. Even Mr. O’Toole and his conservatives must wonder about premier Legault’s influence when he was supporting them in the 2021 federal election. They ended up with the same number of Quebec seats in the House of Commons as they held before the election.

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The Best of the Left.

January 19, 2022January 18, 2022 by Peter Lowry

It was sad to learn of the passing of Alexa McDonough the other day. She was one of the three federal new democratic leaders who have earned our respect and admiration over the years. They should be rated as number one, Alexa, number two, Tommy Douglas, and number three, David Lewis. Other than that, it has been a line-up of losers.

I know, I know. I left out Jack Layton. I knew Jack. I enjoyed working against him. I wish I had been in Quebec for the Orange Wave. I have to admit, that was the Jack, I didn’t know.

I was laughing the other day to learn that Jagmeet Singh is taking paternity leave to celebrate his becoming a father. I knew there was something he could achieve if he took off the five Ks of the Tenth Guru.

I was not aware of Alexa when she was leader of the Nova Scotia NDP but she was the perfect solution to the national leadership in 1995. She brought a freshness to the party. She doubled its house of commons representation in the 1997 general election. (They went from 9 seats to 21.)

She also brought a dignity to the house of commons that it so sorely needed. She was missed after retiring from the house in 2008.

Like others I have known over the years, she drifted off into the darkness of Alzheimer’s. I raise a glass in her memory.

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It’s a ‘Tear Down”?

January 17, 2022January 18, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Oh, how easy it is to cast aside our history. Don’t get me wrong but Ottawa is a nice city. That is all that it is. It is just a nice city. It has interesting neighbourhoods, burgeoning suburbs and some bad architecture. It just fails to impress anybody as the capital of Canada.

Queen Victoria never saw Canada but picked Ottawa as the capital. She was told the city was defensible and was on the border of Ontario and Quebec. It was just an old logging centre on the Ottawa River. Today it is home to more than a million and a half Canadians who either ice skate on the Rideau Canal in winter or flee south to get warm.

It was ten years ago that the wife and I drove down to the other capital city, Washington. After many visits to Washington over the years, I wanted to take a tourist bus and see the monuments and the White House. We spent a week, did the tours and were suitably impressed. To see the impressive sights in Ottawa would take a part of an afternoon.

And yet, the other day, Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star had the temerity to suggest that 24 Sussex, residence to Canada’s prime ministers and their families for the past 70 years, be torn down. It might be amusing to agree with the current prime minister’s mother that 24 Sussex is “the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system.” There is no question that it lacks the panache of the White House.

But before the National Capital Commission tears it down, some thought must be given to its functionality. Is it just a residence or is it to be symbolic of this country? After all, is there anywhere in Canada with a serious sign that says: ‘Sir John A. Macdonald slept here’?

When are Canadians going to stop tearing things down and put up something for posterity?

And if we tell the national Capital Commission to build us something emblematic for the prime minister and family, will they come up with something better than an igloo?

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‘Today I’m not doing anything.’

January 14, 2022January 14, 2022 by Peter Lowry

It’s that old Bruno Mars chestnut. It’s called ‘The Lazy Song.’ It was running through my mind as I poured some orange juice around 7 am. The song was trying to lure me back to bed. It was still dark and I had no excuse for being awake and wandering.

Other than the fact I had more than eight hours of shut-eye, the bed was singing the siren song of ‘warm and cosy.’ I have no special plans for today. And there was nothing in the coffee or Toronto Star to get the juices flowing.

The headline on the front page of the Star was a silly story about the prime minister and family’s temporary residence at Rideau Cottage. Why they call a two-story Georgian style brick house a ‘cottage,’ I have no idea. I would expect Justin Trudeau to be surprised that they even call it ‘his fixer-upper.’ It just happens to be that he and his family are temporarily occupying Rideau Cottage while the official residence for prime ministers and their families sits dormant across the road at 24 Sussex Drive.

But it is totally unfair for the Toronto Star to point the finger at the PM and accuse him of being a spend-thrift. The house is the property of the National Capital Commission and the commission controls, and spends (lavishly) on Rideau Hall (the Governor Generals’ digs and office.), Rideau Park, Rideau Cottage and 24 Sussex. Who else would casually spend $189,000 on a new roof for a ‘cottage’ to keep the prime minister’s family warm and dry?

And, by the way, Rideau Park is the grounds where Rideau Hall and Rideau Cottage are located. The National Capital Commission might have recently spent more than a million on fencing, landscaping and paving but, again, the prime minister had no hand on the chequebook.

Mind you, at an annual salary of almost $350,000, the already wealthy prime minister and his family would not have to pitch a tent in the park. It is unlikely that he will be moving back to 24 Sussex. (His family lived there when he was born.) The National Capital Commission has claimed that it will cost over $36 million to repair the official residence.

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Building Better Blogs.

January 11, 2022January 10, 2022 by Peter Lowry

On average, about a third of the daily readers of BabelontheBay.com are referred to the site by an accumulator under the URL ProgressiveBloggers.ca. The site provides a long list of (maybe) progressive Canadian bloggers. It builds a following for us. We get interesting comments from Canada and around the world. We get into side conversations sometimes with other writers.

What the collective offers is an opportunity for Internet users to sample some of Canada’s varied bloggers. And you can be assured; it is certainly a varied bunch. Digging into one recently that was supposedly discussing a subject of interest. The surprise was that the writer seemed not to bother with constructing his writing in logical paragraphs. He had actually written over 800 words in a single paragraph stream-of-conscience diatribe. It was almost impossible to read. And yet, the writer claimed to have been a former teacher with a doctoral degree.

You will notice there is no mention of the writer’s name but the last time I commented on a fellow blogger’s commentary and identified him, he threatened to sue me. Though it was amusing, it was not worth a fuss, I apologized and forgot about it.

The one thing you soon are convinced of as a blogger is that bloggers have to have enormous egos. Why else would anyone stick their neck out in writing commentaries?

But when starting this blog, the intent was to provide you with some tips in case you ever want to write a blog of your own.

The most important tip of all is to not over use ‘I’ or ‘me’ or any personal pronoun. If everything is about you, use Facebook.

And never let anyone tell you a blog has to be at least so many words in length. Use enough words to say what you want to say. And then stop. You are probably not being paid by the word.

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“Regrets, we’ve had a few.”

January 7, 2022January 6, 2022 by Peter Lowry

Talking to Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star late last year, prime minister Justin Trudeau complained about the “casual cynicism” of the left. He said we bugged him. Delacourt quotes Trudeau as saying the “You did nothing” refrain turns people against government altogether.

But that is the public perception and the only answer to that is “Tough.” Mr. Trudeau is the master of his own fate. He should read in the Christian Bible where a leader has been weighed and found wanting. The writing is also on the wall for Justin Trudeau.

He fails to understand that winning elections is having a strong and enthusiastic party behind you. You cannot work to destroy your political party and expect to win majorities. A political party should not be used only as an automated teller machine.

You cannot make rash promises about the last time for first-past-the-post voting and then fail to deliver.

You cannot take the family on a trip to India and embarrass your nation.

You cannot profess to be a feminist and then fail to reconcile with women in your cabinet.

You cannot pass needed legislation about medically-assisted end of life and then have it rejected as inadequate by the courts.

Mr. Trudeau should heed the words of William Shakespeare “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Mr. Trudeau is no environmentalist either. You can hardly save our world in 10, 20 or 30 years. The need for action is now.

Freedom of religion is a basic tenet of our country and Mr. Trudeau cannot merely say “Tsk, tsk” over the bigotry of the Quebec Assembly in denying religious symbols.

He can hardly sell reconciliation to Canada’s aboriginals while he vacations with the family in British Columbia.

Mr. Trudeau’s problems can all be better understood when you realize he is an elitist and lacks political sensitivity. It makes it difficult for him to lead.

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Tribal Politics.

January 6, 2022January 6, 2022 by Peter Lowry

One of the least discussed aspects of politics in Canada is the inherent tribalism. It exists, it impacts societal norms, it influences our politicians and how we vote. The smart politician uses our tribalism against us.

The major example of tribalism in Canada is the politics of Quebec. Some think of the stand-off between English and French speakers in the province as racism but as both English speakers and French speakers are of the same racial mixture as Europeans, the language divide can only be described as tribalism.

The other tribalism is in our cities where some immigrant ethnic groups tend to cloister. Growing up in Toronto, I thought most of our immigrants were Italian. I found out later that we were living in an area favoured by new Canadians from Italy. As I grew up, my exploration of the city grew from walking range to bicycle range. This enabled me to see the drift north from the old Jewish community. And then there was the later growth of the Chinese away from the downtown Chinatown into the north-east and the growing concentration of gay establishments and housing centred on Church and Wellesley Streets.

What I realized as a young man was that within the city, you could see the world. It might have been a smaller version of New York City but it rivalled it in many ways. It was Ed Mirvish from Honest Eds’ who created the theatre district. It was Johnny Lombardi’s grocery store that said this was Little Italy. I don’t know who turned the old used-car Danforth Greek but we all benefitted.

But the ethnic concentrations also created political problems. While I spend time researching and advising the liberal party on the communications needs within the many communities, I was less than pleased with the politicians who thought they could use the various communities to ensure their election. And the most serious problem was the candidates who thought using their own ethnic group to get elected was the right way to go.

I remember standing one day at the front of a large high school auditorium with my candidate for a riding nomination, looking at the audience, and saying: “Where in hell did all those Armenians come from?” Years of good relations with Toronto’s Armenian community went down the tubes when the guy who ran the Armenian Centre decided he wanted to become a politician.

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