Federal Politics – Page 45 – Babel-on-the-Bay

The answer to Justin’s prayer.

February 21, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Just started reading Linda McQuaig’s 2019 book; The Sport & Prey of Capitalists. I have always been a fan of Linda’s. We might lean towards different parties but we seem to think alike. Somewhere in my bookshelves there is a copy of Linda’s earlier book about the quick and the dead. It includes Linda’s very gracious endorsement and encouragement to some of my writing.

But I was not into the second page of the first chapter her new book and I realized she was showing the way to a solution for which I have been searching. The one thing I can be sure of is that the prime minister has never read my committee’s report on public-private partnerships that I did for the federal government in the early 1980s.

Yet Justin Trudeau is searching for capital investment to pull us out of the pandemic slump that can work with government support. Linda makes the point that Trudeau would dearly love to get some of Larry Fink’s Blackrock billions involved in Canadian infrastructure building to help get us out of the covid-19 pandemic slump.

The problem is simple. Blackrock needs profitability and the prime minister needs the low-cost borrowing from today’s banks. This is not an incompatible situation. It could be Canada’s solution if it is ever to have the high-speed electric trains it needs from coast to coast. There are two components—there is the infrastructure which includes bridges, overpasses and land acquisition and which government does best. The other part is putting together the stations, roadbeds, track and rolling stock, which a for-profit operation can do best. If the government does its part, the private sector will find it can do its part and reap substantial profits down the road. The government gets the taxes, the right-of-way return, as well as the many years needed to pay for the infrastructure.

And it would be a far more open and acceptable deal than the shenanigans of Sir John A. Macdonald when Canada built its first national railway. It would certainly beat the Americans relying on private sector funding to build the high-speed train networks that country is planning.

The one thing we are sure of is that if we are ever going to save our planet, we have to stop polluting on our roads and in our skies. We better wake up to the needs very soon.

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They’re pissing on Ted’s legacy.

February 20, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Did you know that a company that started business with giving cheap FM radios to all the advertising agencies in Toronto is today worth billions? The company was the brain child of the late Ted Rogers. He started with a FM radio station that nobody else wanted in the 1960s.

Ted was a nice guy. He was the kind of person that you were inclined to help when he asked for something. After he got his radio station into the black, he thought cable television might be a comer. He branched out. He got our mutual friend, a senator, who was president of the liberal party at the time to pressure me into producing some programming for his free cable channels. Ted was always the entrepreneur. The senator and I laughed about idea but we told Ted, sure.

Luckily, I got some good tips from my brother who was a producer/director for the CBC at the time. I was still surprised by the rudimentary switcher in Ted’s makeshift studio on Adelaide Street. At least it had three black and white cameras, even if I only had two camera operators. We produced some good shows on Canadian politics, with me calling the shots, working that switcher and Ted cycled the taped shows through cable operations across Canada.

Ted’s next venture was cell phones. I traded in my Bell radio telephone for one of his first cell phones in my car. It left me with room in the trunk for luggage when needed. And I had no compunctions about calling on Ted’s people for loan of a telephone bank of cell phones when needed for a political event.

Today, Ted’s empire includes sports venues, broadcast channels, national telephone networks, cabled cities and faceless executives. It has lost the charm and personality of the guy that created it. I have no idea who to call at Rogers today. The company is fronted by a hopeless maze of cold, uncaring call centres that are being phased out because of covid-19. What will replace these call centres, we are not sure. It is now an impersonal, unlikeable company that has lost its charm and is only known for its corporate greed. The family should be ashamed of what they have done to Ted’s legacy.

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Beware Benevolent Business.

February 19, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Business is not often built on benevolence. And no matter how badly business leaders think the government has screwed things up, Canada is not ready for fascism. Yet, Perrin Beatty, chief executive officer of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, says that big business in Canada is ready to step in and show the government how to get us out of the coronavirus pandemic.

The most memorable aspect of Perrin Beatty’s career is that, as a politician, he was in the cabinets of both Joe Clark in 1979 and Kim Campbell in 1993. Other than those two outstanding leadership events in Canadian history, he worked with businessman-cum-politician Brian Mulroney in between. It seems that this might leave a person with a dim view of Canadian politics.

But ever an optimist, Mr. Beatty says big business is ready to step in and fix everything. They will get us all vaccinated and healthy much faster than the current government.

Volunteering to help in this are senior executives of a new biotechnology company in Calgary, Providence Therapeutics, Pfizer Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart (Loblaw?), WestJet and Blackberry. Beatty says that this group will be able to call on other chief executives as needed. Why other business leaders would want to be involved is not explained.

But like the fascists of 1930s Italy, it sounds like these executives would not only get our trains running on time but they would get us all vaccinated. Mind you, what Beatty does not explain is where all these millions of doses of vaccine are from. And, since Pfizer has already let us down on delivery of vaccines, are we supposed to wait until 2022 for the possible Providence Therapeutics product?

I think enough people have had a good laugh about the Canadian Army stepping up to give us all a shot (or two) in the arm. It was like the time the super mayor of Toronto called in the army to dig us out of a snow storm that was deeper than the mayor was tall. We all made fun of going out to play in the snow with the army guys driving Bison armoured personnel carriers. At least, the army did not think it could do a better job than the city politicians.

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Our fearless leaders fix the gun problem.

February 18, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Did you not see the sign as you drove into town that handguns are forbidden? That is part of the announcement that the government is banning assault rifles and municipalities are at liberty to ban hand guns. And does that make sense to you?

Frankly, it is stupid.

Yes, assault rifles should be banned. Automatic weapons do not belong in homes and assault rifles do not belong on hunting trips. No ifs or buts about it. No serious hunter wants their venison salted with high velocity bullets from an AR-15 assault rifle. It is also dangerous for other hunters. A bullet from an AR-15 can be deadly a kilometre from where it was fired.

But any cop, on any street, anywhere in Canada, will tell you that the biggest problem is hand guns. Hand guns are used to commit murder. And, according to the prime minister and his expert on kettling Canadians, hand guns are being left to the by-laws of municipalities—if their province allows it.

This is the most asinine bill that the mixed minds of Justin Trudeau and Bill Blair can come up with! This is not a liberal solution. This is a coward’s way of failing to solve the problem.

The person who smuggles a hand gun across the border from Murder Inc., U.S.A. is as guilty as the fool who pulls the trigger.

When what we need are serious fines for careless collectors, Blair /Trudeau are willing to spend millions of our money to buy their banned weapons from them. Those weapons should be confiscated. The only purpose of assault weapons is to kill as many people as fast as possible.

And leaving municipalities across Canada to ban hand guns is a pitiful joke.

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Waiting for vaccination.

February 17, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It is a stay-at-home vacation.

Using depression medication.

And booze for self-realization.

Gotta get back to civilization.

Need in-person conversation.

The wife came and looked over my shoulder to see what was holding up my commentary for today. She shook her head and said, “I don’t think your readers are ready for that.”

She could be right. I also think people are tired of the ‘Tales of Trump.’ They are annoyed with all politicians who are so useless in a pandemic. They want prime minister Justin Trudeau to get a shave and a haircut. They want conservative leader Erin O’Toole to be honest for a change. They want the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh to grow a pair. They want Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois to work for Canada, not against it. They want green leader Annamie Paul to join a real party and do some good.

It is as though politics in Canada these days is living in a Twilight Zone. We are but pawns betwixt the federal and provincial governments. Newfoundland and Labrador cannot even run an election through a typical winter or a pandemic. Quebec just wants to be different and it is. Ontario has an asshole premier who opens up at wrong times, shuts down at wrong times and is really getting us bunged up. The Prairies are our wild west and we still haven’t got a decent premier if you put the three together. And that leaves beautiful B.C. covering our backside.

And no, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. are not forgotten. I think of them as orphans we adopted years ago and we do not remember why. And do not get me going on trying to make provinces of our northern territories.

Canada has a world-wide reputation that is not always deserved. To those who think we are nice; we are grouchy today. To those who think we are welcoming; do not bet on it. To those who think we are land of opportunity; you better be an old white guy with a million bucks ready to turn into a fortune.

But for me: I am an optimist. I always have hopes that our politicians will rise to the needs of their voters. And how can you not love this lavish land and all its peoples?

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Basic income is not dead.

February 16, 2021 by Peter Lowry

As much as the Toronto Star and others might want to bury the concept of basic income, it is very much alive. When someone puts what they think basic income will cost ahead of other objections, you know they are more interested in their supposed opinion than people. It is a selfish attitude and wrong in so many ways.

What these nay-sayers are telling us is that the needs of individuals in our society are too diverse to be solved with a single social support system. What they are really saying is that they want to continue with the present system that we know does not do the job.

Not since the fictional Oliver Twist asked for more, has anyone really tried to change the strained benevolence of human society. We put our trust in a wide selection of band-aids, that cost more than any single system would cost and yet we know that many of the needy continue to fall through the cracks.

Do you, in your heart, believe that the present mish-mash of services are doing the job? Do you believe that the alternate elections of slightly generous and skin-flint politicians are doing the job?

Frankly, in our society, it takes more than a village to raise a child. It takes compassion and a willingness to get down to where the real needs dwell. You can hardly use band-aids without a basic plan that acknowledges all humanity. It is the very diversity of humans that demands a basic level of support.

It is only when we have assurances of the flotation that keeps everybody’s head above water, that we can effectively address diversity. The simple facts are that we are all different. We need individual solutions. We have to stop throwing the detritus of our society into a place to die. We cannot turn our backs on their being human.

We have to stop treating basic income proposals as a final solution. It is but a step into a finer future for us all.

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Does Singh know why O’Toole’s nice to him?

February 15, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It might have been the annual event celebrating Saint Valentine, but Jagmeet Singh of the new democrats should be suspicious of all the cards he received from conservative MPs. The rationale for all this lovey-dovey, kuchi-koo business from the conservatives could only be that they need Jagmeet and his NDP caucus to support them if they call for an election in the spring.

The Bloc Québécois have already blown them off. The Bloc are hardly likely to encourage an election when Trudeau and his liberals are riding high. And that would probably include the greens and independent MPs.

The election, that could happen in June, could be a desperate attempt by conservative leader Erin O’Toole to save his neck and that of his party before the liberals get too high in the polls.

It could happen. Was it not Trudeau who did the end-run and ask his friend Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, to facilitate getting some life-saving vaccines from India? After all, when India needs to vaccinate 1.3 billion people, you can always slip 20 million or so doses to your buddy in Canada.

The Serum Institute in India is already licensed to produce a billion doses of the U.K.’s AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in cooperation with Oxford University. They are committed to use half of those billion doses in India and the other half to be supplied to low-income countries without the funds to acquire vaccines. There are two other vaccine producing operations in India, so, technically, the doses sent to Canada could come from these producers.

The only problem is that the AstraZeneca vaccine has yet to be approved in Canada. What counts most though is the needles in arms in time for an election and the end of these lock-downs.

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Never upstage your leader.

February 13, 2021 by Peter Lowry

Pierre Poilievre MP appears to have been demoted in the conservative ranks in parliament as it heads toward a possible spring election. Little boy blue might have made the political mistake of upstaging his leader. The member for Carleton, in the Ottawa area, has been having much too much fun as finance critic, attacking the liberal government for its supposedly spendthrift ways.

Poilievre can be nasty, when it comes to critiquing. He seems to be really enjoying himself when he goes in for the metaphoric ‘kill.’ Like a weasel, he might be deceptive in size but still deadly.

And he has taken to the Zoom parliament like a duck to water. He was among the first to appear to have put up the false background filter on Zoom, with professional lighting. This Calgary-born conservative does not miss a trick.

With his hair neatly coifed and wearing an impeccable conservative suit, with a blue tie, Poilievre has been keeping his leader, Erin O’Toole, in the background. It makes the voter wonder just who is the leader here?

It is just too bad that Poilievre comes across to voters as mean and Scrooge-like. It would never do for his leader to take baggage such as that into an election campaign. He needs a potential finance manager such as Ed Fast, MP for Abbotsford in British Columbia. The grandfatherly Fast was a cabinet minister in the last Harper government and would be expected to get a senior portfolio in any future conservative government.

And poor Poilievre has been relegated to carping on the liberal’s failure to produce the industries and jobs that Canadians need for financial recovery after the pandemic—at least in the view of the conservatives. And he will have his work cut out for him as the liberals roll out their multi-billion plan for critically-needed infrastructure roads and bridges and transportation.

What makes his job even tougher is that it seems none of this liberal benevolence will be coming forward until after the election. It leaves Poilievre tilting at windmills.

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The polarization of the provinces.

February 11, 2021 by Peter Lowry

There is some further thinking about the TVOntario program I watched last week on the polarization of Canada. A Quebec participant had others laughing when he made the comment that Canadians really do not like each other. In the same vein, another countered that Canadians are nice, except for Albertans. What everyone was missing was that, while amusing, these comments were not helpful.

While it might be amusing to joke about it, the reality is that this is a time of anger in Canada and we should be careful not to encourage it. We are sweating out a pandemic and there is a level of frustration and angst that is fomenting across the country. There are easily anticipated delays on getting the vaccines that many see as the panacea. We just happen to have some politicians in charge who have been reassuring us that there is hope and they act surprised when people are annoyed about the delays.

Instead of just Babel-on-the-Bay being critical of our naïve politicians, many Canadians are deriding our politicos for their gullibility. There is little point now for being angry at previous conservative governments for letting Canadians sell off assets such as Connaught Laboratories that could have provided us with large-scale production of vaccines. Nor should we expect Justin Trudeau to understand the problems with foreign contracts. And when did we rescind permission for provincial premiers to blame Ottawa for any delays in distribution of life-saving vaccines?

The only politicians we are going to be respecting in the coming year will likely be the ones who do not try to blame others for their failures and false starts and mistakes.

And I think I will continue be critical of those who put ideology ahead of serving people. I will also have harsh things to say about politicians who try to give us the party line instead of honesty. I am a liberal and I do not like having Justin Trudeau destroy my party. Party members are not his personal ATMs. We are people who wanted to support him as leader. He should learn to lead.

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In the cause of Canada.

February 10, 2021 by Peter Lowry

It was an interesting program on Steve Paikin’s Agenda last week that was co-sponsored by TVOntario and the Toronto Star. It was on Canada’s prospects in sustaining its democracy. The thought was that the same pressures that affect American democracy eventually get to Canada.

Well, that thought is likely to be wrong. And when you start with an invalid premise, your conclusions are likely to be slipshod as well.

The United States has already suffered its Incompetent-in-Chief and, in our own way, we are suffering from the same problem. Four years ago, the United States, rejected the old politics and brought in the irresponsible Donald Trump.

At least, the Americans knew they made a mistake. Canadians had opted for the unknown Justin Trudeau, at that time, assuming he might have some of the wisdom of his father. Instead, we got his mother.

But Trudeau’s liberal party was not the only one struggling to find good leadership. Neither the conservatives nor the new democratic parties were coughing up competent leaders.

The American system of government has a way of breeding competent leaders. They have more swimmers in that pool.

The Trump aberration was simply that. It was an aberration created by Americans’ frustration with racial strife, unfettered capitalism, and class differentials. The American melting pot had finally melted. And they quickly found out that Trump was no solution for their democracy.

I wish I could say that Canadian democracy has also found some answers but we seem to have a way to go.

The first thing our parliamentarians need to do is find a way to bring the unfettered prime minister’s office to heel. We have too many unelected people in power in this country. Provincial premiers also have too much power.

Americans can, at least, amend their constitution. So should we.

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