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Category: Federal Politics

You want my vote Mr. O’Toole?

August 24, 2021August 23, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Frankly, I don’t think you want my vote, Erin. I’m just not your kind of guy. The CBC’s Compass calculator says I am somewhere out to the left of the new democrats. I normally vote liberal because of my very strong belief in our individual rights.

But there is always a first-time for everything. It would not be fair to make demands of the leaders of the other major parties and not give you a chance.

First and foremost, I am not going to vote for any political party that supports the twinning of the TransMountain pipeline to Burrard Inlet. Anyone who gives a damn about where this planet is headed because of global warming has to recognize the idiocy of shipping Alberta bitumen anywhere.

Your second problem with me is that nobody can solve the daycare need across the country with a tax credit. If you don’t work at creating the daycare spaces needed in every province, what is the point of a tax credit? It works the same with long-term care facilities. If there are not enough available beds and facilities, what the hell good is a tax credit?

I’m sorry Erin, but BS cannot replace good sense. Slogans do not work. Nobody trusts them. You can hardly go around the country promising a million jobs without explaining how you are going to do it. You might like to think of yourself as “The Man with the Plan.” Yet Canadians have little understanding or awareness of what that plan includes.

And before you do that, I am afraid you are going to have to do some house cleaning. You have an answer for the social conservatives who demand that you stop abortions. What you are not doing is blocking the anti-vaxxers among your candidates. The human rights answer does not work if an anti-vaxxer comes to my door seeking a conservative vote. You are hardly a supporter of human rights if you fail to protect us from the uncaring.

If these anti-vaxxers keep us in wave after wave of Covid-19 variations, what hope do we have? And, in case you never knew it, elections are about hope.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

You want my vote Mr. Trudeau?

August 23, 2021August 22, 2021 by Peter Lowry

To win this Canadian’s vote, Justin, you have to stop the twinning of the TransMountain pipeline. That will be the only way Canadians can trust you on the question of climate change.

It is not as though you are getting any votes in Alberta for wasting billions of dollars and endangering the fisheries and whales off Vancouver.  Surely, you realize that there are more potential seats for liberals at stake in British Columbia than there are in Alberta.

And why would you want to be the agent of doom with that highly polluting bitumen from Alberta? It hardly matters where in the world you find to refine it into ersatz crude oil. The pollution from it will just destroy our planet faster than it already is being destroyed.

While we are at it, Canada has to do something that can stifle the rate of inflation in this country. There are too many pressure points causing inflation and our politicians have to come up with some positive answers. A good example of the inflation problem is housing. If people think the they can make millions just rolling over supposedly principal residences, we need some barriers. If you have owned, and lived in a house, for over 20 years, you are entitled to the nominal increase in value. Less time than that, the home owner has to start paying taxes on the windfall.

And what about the companies that did nothing to help but earned outrageous profits during the pandemic. I think pandemic profits should be taxed for what they are. It is called exploitation. Better the Canadian people get some of that money back than just pay higher bonuses to undeserving executives.

And by the way, thank you very much for your efforts on behalf of Canada’s aboriginal and Métis peoples. Now you need to listen to them and find out what they want. If they are reasonable, you can do it. If they are not reasonable, you can tell them “No.” It might have been their ancestors’ land at one point but now it belongs to all of us. We all have to learn to share and protect our land.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

O’Toole’s Hero.

August 22, 2021August 21, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Having heard it many times does not make something true. Suggesting that conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s hero is the guy in England with the bad haircut seems ludicrous. Brit PM Boris Johnson is the least appealing person you can imagine any savvy politician wanting to emulate.

As it stands, the voters in the United Kingdom have yet to realize what a disaster they have wrought. They are now in worse shape than they were before Brexit. They are now the destitute bums standing on the street corners of Europe with hand- lettered signs stating the obvious of their condition.

And if Canadians elected an O’Toole conservative government, they would be in worse shape.

Take a look at the inflation rates that are starting to really worry Canadians. What do you think a conservative government would do to alleviate that situation? Have you been shopping in your favourite grocery store recently? Did you read about the rising profits those stores are making at your expense?

And what about those bastards in the oil business? You are now paying them 30 per cent more for gasoline. Why? Because the government lets them. And that snowballs and raises the prices of almost anything you buy.

Do you really think a conservative government will stick their finger in the dike to stem the money flow into the pockets of the rich?

Do you really think the conservative party is your friend? The only friends the conservatives acknowledge are the very rich and the businesses that feed them more donations so they can continue to lie to you.

And these federal conservatives are hardly the kindly father-figures of past progressive conservatives. Sorry, our friend, former premier Bill Davis of Brampton, Ontario, is dead. When you start to see the “shit-storm of social-media postings” promised by conservative communications advisers Topham Guerin, you will see what we mean. They did the job in the U.K. for Boris Johnson. Let’s see how Canadians react?

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

“Wasn’t that a party?”

August 21, 2021August 20, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It seems as though, about now, that prime minister Justin Trudeau is wishing he had a political party behind him. It seems he worked so hard to trash the liberal party back in those salad years following his 2015 sunny days. Was it his ego that told him he did not need liberals and their whiny ways?

The Irish Rovers had a song about it in the 1980s. They blamed the whiskey and maybe the gin. Justin Trudeau was sober and determined to trash the liberal party of Canada as soon as he could. He dumped the liberal senators in parliament. He told card-carrying liberals that they were no longer members but suckers who could send him money. If a long-time liberal did not get hundreds of begging e-mails a year, you did not feel you were important.

It was really too bad that Trudeau the Younger did not understand the message in 2019. “You dumped the party buster. Reap the consequences!”

As a liberal, you used to feel you belonged to something. You kicked in five or more dollars to your party every month and you were treated with respect. Go to Ottawa for a visit and you were a guest of your MP. Your MP would come home to your riding and hold a report meeting. A liberal could ask questions and get answers.

And regional and national party meetings were open affairs. You rubbed elbows with cabinet members, senators and MPs. You had honest arguments about party policy. There were hotly contested elections of party officials. You searched hard for the right candidate for your riding and could bask in the glory when your candidate won the right in an open contest to represent you.

When the election bell was rung, you were there, shoulder to shoulder with your candidate. As a party member you had a stake in this election. It was you and your fellow liberals who made the difference.

As a former liberal, I resent the appointed liberal candidate in my electoral district. What the hell does someone in Justin Trudeau’s office know about what my riding needs? You blew it Justin!

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

You’d send anti-vaxxers to Ottawa?

August 20, 2021August 19, 2021 by Peter Lowry

What the hell are the media people thinking? One of the most critical questions to ask any candidate in this federal election is “What is your vaccine status? We have certainly had enough BS from Doug Ford in Ontario. We hardly need the same from the federal conservatives.

If there was one predominant need in Canada, it is for a feeling of normalcy. This is a time of year for making love in the moonlight. It is a time for barbeques and walks in the parks. If politicians want to run around making foolish promises, let them. They are part of the Canadian scenery.

But we have to get ourselves out of this pandemic. If that means we bridge someone’s supposedly God-given right to refuse to be vaccinated, so be it. Our survival on this poor planet depends on people being able to learn, to work, to play, to create a safe and secure world for our children and theirs.

Anyone who is healthy and able to be vaccinated should be. Nobody has the right to spread sickness and death. If they insist, let them go to Florida and die a gruesome death with the rest of the idiots down there. Those of us who got in line for our vaccines have earned the tight to a safer environment—no anti-vaxxers need interfere.

You would think that any candidate asking to participate in their party’s campaign would be asked the simple question: Have you been vaccinated for the coronavirus? And don’t you dare send an anti-vaxxer to my door to ask for my vote. That would be the height of stupidity.

And the human rights people can also get stuffed. I have a right to protect myself from any variants of covid. What do I have to do? Should I post a sign saying ‘Knock at your own risk?’ Or do I stipulate that anti-vaxxers will be shot on sight? I hope that it would be legal to shoot those who are challenging our right to a safe and secure society.

And I really don’t care if the conservatives are telling their anti-vaxxer candidates to get tested every day. Who is checking to make sure they are doing what they are told?

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

What Fool O’Toole?

August 19, 2021August 18, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The other day, our comment on conservative leader Erin O’Toole was that “he was a failure to launch.” He had a launch, of sorts, the following day. We watched aghast. It can only be concluded that his communications advisors, speech writers, policy advisors and image consultants were in serious conflict.

Canadians should not expect too much from the conservatives, but what we got by way of an introduction to the O’Toole campaign was embarrassing. We have not seen anything so lame since 2000 and Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day arrived for his first news conference on a jet ski.

Start with the muscle-beach policy book cover. What idiot suggested that a dowdy, middle-aged leader such as O’Toole should try to pose like a latter-day Charles Atlas? Not even Adobe Photoshop can rescue that picture. And what fool suggested the crossed-arms pose? The crossed arms is an angry and aggressive pose and no politician can afford that kind of exposure when it is particularly disliked by women.

But the copywriter who wrote “The man with the plan” must have been impressed with the failed American sitcom on CBS. And the, obviously male, experts who dictated that plan to replace the liberal daycare program with tax benefits should have realized that they were helping the rich, not the poor. They fail to understand what the liberals seem to comprehend. The provinces have to start by creating the needed daycare spaces.

And if O’Toole is going to use that dark, cold and dreary set for his entire campaign, the conservatives should leave him in it, lock the door and consider it his mausoleum.

The contrast between the Trudeau family outing that day and the stand-alone pitch of the conservative leader was disquieting. Whatever did the conservative brain-trust have in mind? O’Toole would have done better to use the family kitchen for a set. It might have humanized the poor man.

Even the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, in Montreal at the time, realized that he needed some people on the set that day to make it look like he was in Canada. Poor O’Toole could be coming to us from the moon.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Pollsters are Poor Prophets.

August 18, 2021August 17, 2021 by Peter Lowry

The important thing to remember is that polls are a picture from yesterday. They cannot forecast the future. And we live in volatile, rapidly changing times. We are struggling to leave a pandemic behind us. We are wary of what global warming has in store for us. We are looking for leadership in the difficult future we are facing.

This is by way of introducing the Toronto Star’s new election tool. They are going to have a new computer model analyzing pollsters’ products to tell us about the 2021 election. The editors think they are “decoding the signal” or some other catchy phrase like that.

What it appears they are doing is inputting all the various polls into a computer program that applies a weighting scale to the various polling techniques and then aggregates them into a seat count. Which is very similar to what Éric Grenier of the CBC does in his Poll Tracker.

I remember years ago, before the advent of personal computers, filling page after page of computations trying to balance polling results with known Statistics Canada demographics. Overall, I think we did a fair job.

What really intrigues me about the Toronto Star’s approach is the trust the newspaper is putting in political scientists. These people are using a theory of probability, known as a Bayesian model, to correct perceived bias in the polling results of the various firms. The obvious problem with this is when the polling firm does its own corrections. How would the second firm know that the poll has already been corrected? That would tend to over-correct.

What no pollster has been able to correct is the tendency of some people to lie to pollsters. For example, I do not always lie. If I recognize the firm doing the polling, I might decide to tell the truth for a change. Mind you, I hate the automated calls and I always tell them something different.

But it all comes down to the age-old need for political parties to get out their vote. No computer model can accurately count the lethargic. With the voting lists distributed to each political party via computer, you can hardly escape the attention of the parties to whom you made promises. If you get more than two offers of a ride to the polling station, you know they have been paying attention.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The question of leadership.

August 17, 2021August 16, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It sometimes happens that the Toronto Star gets something right. On August 13, the largest newspaper in Canada used its front page for an editorial asking: ‘Show us leadership.’ If there was one word that asks for Canada’s greatest need in this time, it is ‘Leadership.’ The provinces and our federal government are desperate for leadership.

The federal election on September 20 is hardly the answer. It reminds you so much of Sir Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel: “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.”

To be fair, I think this election will do much to clear the air and underline the need for new leadership. Justin Trudeau is hardly the answer. He does not even understand the leadership of his father. Sometimes his father could be caustic and insulting to Canadians but, in balance, his leadership was critical to his times. He understood rights and freedoms. He understood the needs of the individual. He laughed at the collectives, and frustrated the mean and selfish. He often used intellect when humanitarianism was needed.

We have had no leadership since. We had the politics of cant over need. Slogans instead of policy.

It is not that Trudeau the Younger does not have his moments. His popping out of Rideau Cottage to discuss Covid-19 was a fortuitous calmer of the pandemic. His feminism had poor follow-through, his environmentalism was conflicted, his appointments elitist and some of his promises ill-considered. He got a C-plus on his report card.

But failure is not in the cards. Nobody has done better.

Erin O’Toole of the conservatives has been ‘a failure to launch’ on Canada’s political scene. He does not seem to know what to say and when to say it.

And you can hardly count on the pockets of Sikhs in British Columbia and Ontario to rescue Jagmeet Singh of the new democrats from oblivion. The Greens have ruled themselves out and the Bloc are just troublemakers.

The most likely scenario is to suffer Justin Trudeau’s minority for a couple more years and let all three of the major parties search their souls for some leadership. Who knows what the tides of time will bring?

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The Book is Open.

August 16, 2021August 15, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is too bad that when individual sports betting is to be allowed in Ontario, I cannot run a legal book on the federal election. I could make a potful of money on all the sucker bets available.

I could get started with all the idiots running around loose bleating that they do not want an election. So what? All they need to do is pay attention. Listen to the politicians and then vote. What is their problem with that?

But I could make the most money on the fools who are going to vote as their parents did and their grandparents before that. There are conservative, liberal and new democrat voters out there who will never change. They are mired in our country’s past. They do not look into the future.

And good luck with the greens. That party practices self immolation as though it is the only alternative.

It is not as bad as Maxime Bernier’s private party. You have to be an extremist to join that ‘People’s Party’ club.

It is not as though we are forgetting the Bloc Québécois. Think of them as that ambulance that follows the horses around the track, outside the rail. They are there just as scavengers, to pick up the pieces.

For openers in a book, you have to post a ‘morning line.’ These are the opening odds that you should be able to get from your favourite bookie:

Liberal Majority Government – 5 to 4 (a 4-dollar bet can win you $5)

Liberal Minority Government – Even Money (a dollar bet can win a dollar)

Conservative Majority —              7 to 1 (a dollar bet can win you $7)

Conservative Minority —              4 to 1 (a dollar bet can win you $4)

NDP Majority —                           25 to 1 (a dollar bet can win you $25)

NDP Minority —                           12 to 1 (a dollar bet can win you $12)

Green Minority —                         50 to 1 (a dollar bet can win you $50)

Bloc Québécois Minority —          100 to 1 (a dollar bet can win you $100)

People’s Party —                           Don’t waste your money.

Always remember though that the odds can fluctuate throughout the campaign. Leaders sometimes say the right things and sometimes say the wrong things.

Best you ignore the polls and hold your bets until after Labour Day.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

Religion on the Run.

August 15, 2021August 14, 2021 by Peter Lowry

That old adage about never discussing religion or politics is not observed in my home. It is my belief, in our increasingly secular society, that religion and politics are two subjects of special concern. Both are at a junction. They interact with each other and both clerics and politicians use each other’s tools to proselytize. In some ways they are symbiotic. They feed off of each other. Both use each other despite their denials. Both are in troubled times.

Religion can be intrusive in our daily lives. In Canada we see the Hassidic with his dreadlocks, the Sikh with turban and beard of the five Ks of the tenth guru, the Bedouin with her hijab, the horse and buggy of the Amish, each submitting to the rigours of the past with little recompense for change, fashion or technology. They are all part of the pageantry that is Canada.

Politics plays lip service to religion and the religious return the hypocrisy. Religion is in sharp decline while politics is increasingly in disrepute. We seem to find more and more fault with leaders of morality and of state. Frankly, they have failed us for too long. Their scripts of religion have become hollow and faith a fantasy. Why can the religion of Muhammed promise houri to the man of faith while Christians offer nothing but to sit at the right hand of the son of God? Frankly, the fiction of Christian purgatory sounds more inviting.

But it is like the hollow promises of desperate politicians. It is not the promises they keep that matter as much as their corrupt philosophies. Would you really sit still for a politician who promised you laissez-faire administration where there would be no regulations of business and no checking of what few rules are left? Instead, this politician tells you that his opponent is a thief and he is going to establish law and order. Have you ever asked an NDP what they would really do if they formed a government? Or asked a liberal what liberalism stands for?

I have always been fascinated with the rationale that people will attach to their religious beliefs or political support. You should ask people serious questions about this. It might open your eyes to what you might believe and help support.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

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