Federal Politics – Page 60 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Where have all the leaders gone?

March 1, 2020 by Peter Lowry

You get the feeling that we are talking about a ghost. Everybody is looking for leadership. Nobody has seen it. Talking to a friend about it, he said the problem is that there are too many rowboat people and not enough canoeists. He explained it as most people row a boat facing where they have been. Canoeists on the other hand, face where they are going. We just need more canoeists.

Look at the pitiful state of our national political parties. The only ones that even matter are the liberals, conservatives, new democrats and the greens. Two of the parties are looking for leaders and the other two should. The conservatives reached their cut-off date this past week and who do you think that choice will excite? The greens are still arguing about how to manage a contest and they might not have one.

The NDP are in the worst shape. The party lost a third of its caucus in the last election because of the lack of leadership, lack of direction and its inability to raise adequate funds for a national campaign.

But the most serious lack of leadership is in the liberal party. Justin Trudeau is certainly not his father. And he is not a leader. A leader brings clarity to direction and nobody has a clue as to where we are going with Justin. And it is a lot more than our environmental direction that is concerning.

The PM was talking reconciliation with our native peoples four years ago and look how far have we come with that?

How many prime ministers get to spend billions on a pipeline that nobody wants except the greedy who do not care about the environment.

Trudeau is a hypocrite. He claims support for feminists and you might want to check with Jody Raybould-Wilson MP on that one. He enjoys travels to meetings of world leaders but what has been his contribution at those international conflabs?

Trudeau has been tearing down the liberal party as he and his underlings pester registered liberals for money. The party has been crying out for leadership.

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The end of an era.

February 29, 2020 by Peter Lowry

We were unlikely novitiates in the liberal party of the 1960s. I honestly do not remember where or when we met. Yet I do remember the launching pads of our friendship over the years. Hon. David P. Smith was an impulsive, fun-loving and caring guy. He died on February 26.

A key memory was his first municipal campaign in the 1970s. I had been out and when I arrived home, the wife came out, told me I had people waiting for me in the living room and went to have coffee with a neighbour. It was two guys named Smith: David and his campaign manager, Larry Smith. And prominently displayed on a sofa was the worst election sign I had ever seen.

“Peter, I’m gonna run for alderman in Ward 11. Isn’t that a great sign? With that introduction and that sign, I think I was struck dumb. Then, in the classic line from the movie The Candidate, he asked, “What do we do now?” It was 21 years later that prime minister Jean Chrétien would facetiously complain that Smitty had let him down by not winning all of Ontario’s 99 seats. He lost just one. (Barrie, the area I live in today.)

The only municipal election David lost was when he overreached in a crowded field and went for the Toronto mayor’s job. It was one of the rare times he annoyed me. At his opening campaign meeting around a huge boardroom table at a downtown law firm, people were introducing themselves. They were all lawyers. When it was my turn, David broke in and said I was his good luck charm and he always won when I was involved. If you have ever been in a political campaign run by lawyers, you would understand why I did not return. David lost.

He was much more contrite a couple years later when the Joe Clark conservatives fell and he called me to ask if he could run in my riding. I said sure, the liberals in the riding liked him and he had an easy win.

I was laughing along with prime minister Pierre Trudeau a few years later, when Pierre made him minister of tourism. David was the world’s most avid tourist. Not even I could help David when the Mulroney conservatives won the next election.

David was among the last appointees to really earn that Senate seat. He stepped into the national director role for the liberal party as our friend Keith Davey slipped away into the fog of Alzheimer. David was a dedicated liberal. He will be missed.

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Planes, Trains and Ski-Doos.

February 22, 2020 by Peter Lowry

There is no more of an icon of business to Canadians than Bombardier. The company had its beginnings in 1935, with the snow coach designed by mechanic Joseph-Armand Bombardier. Since then, the company has experienced all the thrills and frights of a seemingly endless roller coaster ride of acquisitions, spin-offs and fire sales of entire divisions. And do not forget the generous government funds, to periodically rescue the company. Still, in the past five years, the company is reported to have lost 50 per cent of its value.

Bombardier today is a maker of private jets. One model is currently the largest of all corporate jet aircraft. The company has enough orders in hand to stay in business for the next two years. Then it might have to look for the next corporate saviour.

Corporate jets are a very volatile market. It has its feasts and famines. Most corporate jet manufacturers are also in the much more stable military aircraft business. The military is always in the market.

But Canada lost out on the military market in 1959 when the irascible prime minister John Diefenbaker said the Avro Arrow cost too much. He put 50,000 Canadians out of work. He made a bonanza of talent available to high technology firms in the U.S. Canada lost more than the fastest, long-range fighter aircraft in the world at the time but we chased away many of the technologists who were building it.

I was thinking of this when bemoaning the lack of high-speed trains in Canada. Despite the complaints about the high-speed Amtrak trains for the U.S. and the delays with the Toronto streetcars, Bombardier was the company that could give Canada the leap ahead into high-speed/green-energy train service across Canada.

This is the project that Canada needs to bring it into the 21^st Century. It is the project that can pull this country back together. All we need are some politicians with guts and vision.

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Reading compliments into comments.

February 20, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It was not until about the third rereading of a complaint the other day that I recognized the compliments in it. And I am pleased to report that most of the comments on Babel-on-the-Bay are complimentary. Though not always.

When you write a daily commentary on the topic of politics, I must admit that there are some days that the hot cup of coffee does not warm you to the subject. And a daily effort can be demanding. The other day, on the subject of The land the law forgot, the complaints were heated.

The most interesting was one from a gentleman in Toronto who described himself as a Canadian Senior Citizen. Since it did not contain any scatological words, I will pass some of the comments on to you. I will let you judge.

The first sentence was that this was “Very likely the most disappointing post (from me)” he has ever read.

I will take that as a compliment. My regular readers are precious to me. I am not writing to piss them off but to, hopefully, inform and entertain.

He further tells me that my post was “Shallow, uninformed, biased…even lazy.” Which he found “quite surprising.” So do I.

I think I had best plead guilty to the ‘lazy.’ These are not supposed to be learned tomes. They are intended to be brief and breezy, easily digested, comments on the state of our politics.

I was also appalled that this senior citizen should accuse the RCMP of having snipers on Wet’suwet’en territory. This story appears to have originated in the United Kingdom and has no credibility. And, as far as I know, the only rifles in the Mounties’ arsenals are carbines with which they might hit the broad side of a barn from less than 10 metres.

But I stand behind my comments in The land the law forgot. There is considerable depth behind those few comments and a deep concern for our native peoples. I fault the politicians, who say much and do little.

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The land the law forgot.

February 18, 2020 by Peter Lowry

We have heard the prime minister say more than a few times that Canada is a country of law. What does not seem clear is the question of applying these laws to Canada’s native population. Are they not given the protection of our laws? Are they allowed to cherry pick the laws they like and the laws they do not think apply to them?

And one thing we know for sure is that there is no ‘Divine Right’ of hereditary chiefs. These people have a position only if their tribe gives it to them. They have no position in dealing with legal matters with outsiders. And they are not above the law.

And how do you expect the rest of Canada’s population to respect the law if natives are immune to it?

The situation has gone past ridiculous. We even have stupid non-native Canadians supporting them. The other day, we saw some ignorant people bring supplies to the Mohawks blocking rail lines in Ontario. It is a bad time of year for these particular Mohawks to carry out their traditional importing business across Lake Ontario.

When you think of the time and trouble those pipeline people took to negotiate a deal with the elected band councils in B.C. and the natives can, with impunity, trespass and block the normal course of commerce in other parts of Canada, there is something wrong.

Mr. Trudeau should realize that this is very, very wrong. He should be allowed to take some time to do his foreign affairs thing while his cabinet do their jobs in his absence. Instead those wimps in his cabinet are having so-so conversations with people who are breaking the law. Where was his vaunted deputy prime minister when we needed her?

Canadian history is not particularly crowded with Indian wars such as they had in the United States. The only real punch-up we had was with the Métis on the Prairies. All I know is that we try to respect Canada’s aboriginals and we hardly get much love in return.

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Have they ever lied to you before?

February 15, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Teck Resources, the Vancouver-based company that wants to dig the largest open pit tar sands mine in Canada, tells us that the enterprise wants to be “carbon neutral” by 2050. I am sorry, but if you cannot meet emissions targets by next year, I am not interested. And who said companies do not lie, anyway?

Hands up everybody who expects to be here and keep them honest when they miss being carbon neutral in 30 years? There might be a little less of this planet left to live on by then.

When you consider that Teck Resources has said that the mine will cause four million tonnes of carbon pollution per year, making it carbon neutral would take a complete shutdown of operations.

And yet Teck says that by using cleaner power sources and electric vehicles, it can make a start toward a more carbon-free extraction of this seriously polluting material with which to make ersatz crude oil.

It reminds me of the promises conservative politicians make about balancing their budgets. They always explain that their efficiencies in office will enable them to give voters all kinds of tax cuts. And then, once in office, they create even larger deficits than before because some other party beat them to the efficiencies. You know these people are lying, but people can be gullible.

Teck Resources CEO Don Lindsay is quoted in a news release provided to Canadian Press: “Climate change is a global challenge that our company and our industry need to contribute to solving.” It makes you wonder just when they are going to do that.

But what was really priceless in the news release was the statement that if the federal cabinet gives the company the go-ahead later this month, it does not mean the company will go ahead with the project. It still needs guaranteed access to expanded pipelines, promises of better bitumen pricing and some other company to share the $20 billion price tag for the project.

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Our aboriginals need better PR.

February 14, 2020 by Peter Lowry

In a career in public relations work, I have never seen a group screw themselves so badly as Canada’s aboriginals. I have worked with them in fighting forest fires in our north. I have worked with them politically in downtown Toronto. I helped to launch the first, badly needed, native centre in Winnipeg. I spent months among the Cold Lake Nations of Northern Alberta. They deserve our respect and better treatment than they get from our governments.

But they have never shown the simple common sense to take out their pique on the people responsible for specific problems. To piss off white men who cannot help you in the process is just plain stupid. You want their help, not their anger.

Start in British Columbia for the current screw-up. An elected band council made a deal with some pipeline people. Legally, the elected council has that authority. It gets a little confused when the hereditary chiefs of the tribe decide they do not like the elected council’s deal and they barricade the pipeline people. The hereditary group do not care about white men’s courts, they just try to block the project on their hereditary land.

It is unlikely that these hereditary chiefs can even tell you what might be sent through the pipeline or how it might or might not benefit their people. They are just opposed. Dealing with them is difficult.

And then other aboriginal groups in disparate parts of the country have been feeling left out and they jump into action in support of the B.C. tribe that they might never have met or know. They have the fun of screwing up the white man’s trains. They start with the ones that carry many thousands of people every day between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. And then there are the freight trains that carry millions of dollars worth of goods every day in support of the Canadian economy. Now they are really getting even with the white man. And this white man is tired of it.

We need to get the courts involved and make some of these tribes pay the piper. Yes, they have rights. And with rights come responsibilities.

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A debutante ball for John Baird?

February 11, 2020 by Peter Lowry

It is difficult to explain what kind of an event this will be. It has always been evident that John Baird wanted to make some kind of a statement in his lifetime. Nobody really believed it was his final act when he left the Harper cabinet. He always seemed to want to do more. He has seemed to be struggling ever since to make a statement.

It all made sense when he agreed to do the West Block show on Global Television on Sunday. If he is not studying the field for a run at the conservative leadership, why was he there? He knew all the right moves and he made them. Like a debutante, he is responding to the calling.

Look at his friend Jason Kenney. Kenney went west and found a calling. He is now the much-quoted premier of Alberta—the thorn in Justin Trudeau’s backside.

I always wrote of Jason Kenney and John Baird as Stephen Harper’s Bobbsey Twins. Those two just belonged on the same page. At the time, they were two 40-something bachelors who had made politics their careers. They both know how to manipulate that mean streak that runs through Canada’s conservative party to-day.

What impressed me most is that John Baird did not go after Trudeau’s new foreign affairs minister, François-Philippe Champagne. He said that he felt the Trudeau minister was doing a good job in John’s old portfolio and there was no need to criticize him for his handling of a difficult task, at a difficult time.

And that might be the tone that the conservatives across Canada are looking for in their next leader. They appear tired of the constant attack mode of their party at both the federal and provincial levels.

Even Jason Kenney has changed his tone a bit lately. It might be that the prime minister has been keeping his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, between them. Anything that can ward off the constant attacks from the west is helpful.

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It costs less than a house and you feel welcome.

February 7, 2020 by Peter Lowry

Huh? Sorry, I might have dozed off there. I was dreaming of running to be the leader of the Green Party of Canada. I will just have to run a “Go Fund Me” page for the $50,000. entry fee. It sure is a lot cheaper than the conservatives. They want $300,000 up front in that race.

But cheapness is not the only enticement. This vehicle has only been driven by a single elected leader. Elizabeth May drove it with great skill and determination. She took it from the ranting and roaring on training wheels stage into the hallowed halls of parliament.

But she had a hell of a time getting the party into lock step behind her. These people have to learn some discipline. They have to learn about the realities of power. And they have to realize that actual actions outweigh fuzzy objectives. They also need to learn to synchronize their social media postings.

My first problem might be the party’s vetting committee. Getting by these worthies (no matter whom they might be!) could be a challenge. Their secret is they are secret and their deliberations are secret and their decisions are secret. And, frankly, they should stay secret and go away. These people have never realized that the public want politicos who are open, transparent, honest and never beat their spouse.

The idea of having these exorbitant entry fees is to discourage charlatans and thrill seekers from running for the publicity or just the heck of it. It is also necessary for you to show off your skills as a person who knows how to separate the wealthy from their ill-gained loonies. Just why the leader should also be the chief fund-raiser is left unsaid.

What does not seem to worry any of the possible candidates is party policy. They all seem to be in tune with Green is good. As for the rest of it, they are all over the map.

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Can the Tory race get more boring?

February 5, 2020 by Peter Lowry

This is ridiculous. So far, this is not a race, it is more like a baby crawl. The conservative party of Canada, midwifed by Stephen Harper at the turn of the century, has fallen on hard times. And, so far, only one of the two candidates has ponied up his $300,000 fee for the privilege of contesting for the party leadership.

But look what the race has to offer. They are Mr. Bland and Mr. Blander. They are white bread loaves on a multi-grain shelf. In a country going forward, the conservatives are reaching back to the past.

It was over 20 years ago that Peter MacKay served up the Progressive Conservative Party of the past to the ravages of Harper and his hard-nosed western posse of Reform. As Jean Charest discovered recently this is not his PC party of the 1990s. He looked, he saw, he fled.

The apparatchiks of the conservative hegemony—with the greed of its westerners, the narrow focus of the social conservatives and the ‘quid pro quo’ of its financiers—tried to keep Pierre Poilievre in the race for some balance. They failed. Poilievre is a westerner who had come east to where his name made it easier to get elected. He now found himself caught between easterners—like a weasel between two hamsters. They could have smothered him.

And did we mention Erin O’Toole MP? He is not to be disturbed at the moment. He is beating the bushes for the angels his campaign needs to compete. It is no small step.

But what the conservatives really need is leadership. The only thing the party can possibly offer its supporters is a path to power. Without someone capable of producing that result, this leadership race is just another race to nowhere.

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