Federal Politics – Page 77 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Don’t send a cop to do a marketing job.

April 24, 2019 by Peter Lowry

There are sins of commission as well as omission that can be laid on prime minister Justin Trudeau. The silliest was his choice of cannabis tsar. The very fact that illegal pot is winning the marketing war tells us that having a cop do the marketing planning was a lost cause.

We always need to remember that the illegal marijuana you can buy in back alleys across the country is there because our ballyhooed red coats and various police forces could not stop it. The only justification for legalizing marijuana that ever made any sense to me was to stop the criminals from profiting from it.

Let’s be serious here. Smoking anything is bad for you. It is carcinogenic. Why do you want to risk lung cancer?

Eating the cannabis is an alternative. I hate to mention it but brownies can be fattening.

I am all in favour of medical marijuana. If it helps, it should be free.

But what the hell does a former cop like MP Bill Blair know about marketing pot? How would he have any concept of the needs of an efficient distribution system? In Ontario we have this silly, ill-planned boutique system of marketing that makes a mountain out of a molehill—if it every comes together.

If I had a say, I would have made a deal with Shoppers Drug Mart (Pharmaprix in Quebec). That would just leave you with the street vendors as competition. You could probably eliminate most of the competition in time by stressing the purity of the controlled product. After all, when was the supply of the criminal element ever tested by government laboratories?

As a knowledgeable street vendor once told me, “You know, they call this stuff ‘shit’ for a reason.”

-30-

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

Together, we can.

April 22, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Prime minister Trudeau asked for party unity last week. He was at the Ontario liberal gathering in Mississauga. It was a friendly crowd. He told them that liberals fighting each other only helps the conservatives. I cannot argue that but before agreeing with him, Justin needs to learn to listen to his party.

This was the first time, to my knowledge, that he even admitted that liberals cross Canada have been concerned and disturbed by the SNC-Lavalin affair. Many of us listened with growing dismay to the presentations before the parliamentary justice committee by former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, principal secretary Gerald Butts and privy council clerk Michael Wernick.

What liberals did not see during the months absorbed by this case, was leadership from the leader of the liberal party. “Where’s the wimp?” was the concern.

Our liberal party was being trampled. The opposition were having a field day of scorn. The news media were bugling ‘Boots and Saddles’ as they smelled blood.

And where was Justin Trudeau? He was telling (or sending instructions to) the liberal members of the parliamentary committee to stonewall the other parties. He never really answered any questions in the House. He demoted justice minister Wilson-Raybould.

To add to his problems, he usurped the role of caucus in determining who can be a member of caucus and the role of the party in choosing its representatives. If nothing else, he could have listened to the party. These people are his friends. They had questions. They were in the dark. They had the right to know what the hell was going on.

And was MP Jane Philpott just collateral damage? Or was she supposedly the Wicked Witch of the East who was under Dorothy’s house when it landed in Oz?

During this fiasco, all the concerned liberals across Canada got were urgent pleas for money from the party. What we needed was to see some contrition from the leader.

If Andrew Scheer is prime minister of Canada at the end of October, it is on your head Justin.

-30-

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

Political Pipe-Dreams.

April 21, 2019 by Peter Lowry

While the rest of North America were out on an Easter egg hunt this morning, Albertans were out beating the bushes looking for the pipeline that their politicians have been foolishly promising them. This could be one of those blue-sky political promises on the same track as a chicken in every pot.

And why should anyone believe it is going to happen? Albertans have already been informed that the federal government has delayed the decisions on this pipeline until June of this year. When you have been stalled for years, what is another month?

This Trans Mountain pipeline has been a good news-bad news story from the beginning. It is an old pipeline that was built long before anyone thought of using a pipeline to send bitumen from the tar sands over the Rockies. The plan was that the previous owners, American-owned Kinder Morgan, would twin the old crude oil pipeline and almost quadruple the capacity of the pipeline for diluted bitumen by adding heaters and high pressure to the two lines.

Obviously, the Kinder Morgan people had studied the possibilities and had made a few stabs at getting the twinning started but quickly found themselves mired in environmental challenges and protests from aboriginal groups. The answer was a quick sale and the federal government became the surprise buyer.

At $4.5 billion, the pipeline was no bargain. Estimates peg the twinning and equipping the pipeline to handle the bitumen will cost anywhere from $7 billion to more than $9 billion.

It might seem odd that a politician such as Justin Trudeau—who persists in claiming he is an environmentalist—would promote a pipeline for the output from the tar sands that is destroying the environment of Northern Alberta and will create three times the carbon pollution of regular crude when converted into an ersatz crude oil. And Albertans will give the liberal prime minister no thanks for it!

-30-

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

Where’s Jagmeet Singh?

April 20, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Somebody needs to check the potholes on the Yellow Brick Road. Could NPP leader Jagmeet Singh have fallen into one of them? If it was not the daily feed of twits on his Twitter account from the NDPer’s office, we could assume he might be on holiday somewhere.

Mind you, he and the wife do need a holiday. To spend your honeymoon getting your husband elected to parliament is a challenge to any new wife. Day in, day out political campaigning does little for a marriage.

And it is not as though the NDP leader is having much impact on the pollsters or the public or the news media or his caucus in Ottawa. Basically, Jagmeet Singh is nowhere. As they say, he has been tried in the balance, and found wanting. He is basically a very wanting guy.

It is kind of like his twits from his office on Twitter. The past three days, we have seen standard NDP boiler-plate smoke on housing, (inadequate), workers’ rights (serious) and climate change (this is bad). Buried in this material was a note that he might currently be in Nanaimo, on beautiful Vancouver Island.

With close to six months remaining before the October 21 poll date set for this year, you hardly need pollsters to tell you that not all Canadians are pleased with the performance of the liberal government.

But the problem is not so much that the voters are pissed with the present government as where those votes might go. The liberals have to hope that those votes they have lost are scattered around the various parties. If too many of those votes go to the conservatives, Justin Trudeau could be a one term prime minister. Seeing that the Green party is up about three points over their usual inflated vote at this stage, that might be part of the answer to a weak NDP.

And the conservatives, under ‘Chuckles’ Scheer, are not necessarily polling in majority territory. There is a lot of shaking out to do before what ever happens in October happens. The only prediction I might make at this stage is that Green leader Elizabeth May might have a small caucus to brag about come October. At this stage, we could be headed for a minority government—the same thing that happened to Justin’s father in 1972.

-30-

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

Not just a pocket to be picked.

April 19, 2019 by Peter Lowry

The chickens came home to roost faster than expected. While I have been forecasting dire consequences as Justin Trudeau downgraded the liberal party to a fan club, we are starting to see the problems.

Chatting with an active liberal just the other day, he told me that he was annoyed at his local liberal organization. Here it is six months before an election and his party is showing no signs of life. When he contacted his local electoral district president, the chap told him he was not even listed on the party’s computerized lists. As a loyal canvasser for the party and a regular contributor, the chap had every reason to be annoyed. “I’m not just a pocket to be picked,” was his comment.

Justin Trudeau has never recognized that there is a balance needed with fund raising and party activity. This liberal I was talking to was like many of us over the years. We were involved. We were a recognized and valued part of the party. We worked tirelessly at getting our chosen candidate elected. We took a vocal role in the development of party policy. We took responsibility for choosing candidates who could work with our parliamentary caucus

In our thinking, the leader of the party was responsible for the elected members but he reported to the party as a whole. When they changed the rules for all parties back in the 1990s, they said that the leader of the party had to sign off on each candidate. That did not mean that we wanted the leader to choose our candidate.

Since then all parties seem to think they should be run by their leader. Even the supposedly democratic NDP has a leader now who thinks he has the authority to kick an MP out of the party caucus.

Recently, liberals thought it might have been smart for Justin Trudeau to pass that right to his caucus instead of taking the blame for the ejection of MPs Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. The inexperienced Justin Trudeau piled his errors higher and deeper throughout the entire SNC-Lavalin affair. If he had been paying attention to his caucus during that time, he either lacked good advice or ignored it.

But I am pleased to say that there are probably still many liberals ready and willing to get to work and help make sure our country does not give up on the liberal party in the fall.

-30-

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

Chuckles checks conservative campaigns.

April 16, 2019 by Peter Lowry

You would expect that one of these days, conservative leader Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer will have to take the training wheels off his federal election campaign. He was out on the hustings with Jason Kenney in Alberta last week and little new came from either conservative.

The signature complaint we have heard from Chuckles and his four most strident provincial conservative leaders—Ford in Ontario, Pallister in Manitoba, Moe in Saskatchewan and Kenney in Alberta—is that federal carbon taxes are bad. And the conservatives always forget to mention that the liberals plan to return this money on Canadians’ income tax each year.

In Alberta, Kenney links the name ‘Trudeau’ with the National Energy Program of almost 40 years ago. He also talks about the Notley-Trudeau team as the one-two punch of failed government in conservative eyes. All this does is create an even stronger conclusion that these provincial and federal conservatives are global-warming deniers and their campaigns are based on ignorance.

As the world’s ice caps and glaziers melt and oceans rise, deniers have less land to stand on. And the growing violence of the weather patterns is just another indication of the need to cut back on spewing of carbon into the atmosphere.

But what might be positive in the conservative platform for this October is not clear at all. Chuckles says he is going to balance the books for the federal government within two years of being elected. That would be an amazing and probably very drastic promise to keep.

The most unusual promise from Chuckles is to give tax credits to people who send their children to private schools. Why anyone who can afford to send their children to private schools needs a tax credit for it is a question that needs to be asked?

It is important to know that Chuckles has always been a social conservative and yet he denies that he would support their more radical positions such as on abortion or LGBT issues. Which just means he is a person who does not stand up for his convictions. Some prime minister he would make!

-30-

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

Secularism is not the new religion.

April 9, 2019 by Peter Lowry

An interesting opinion piece by a seasoned Toronto Star reporter the other day posited that Quebec views on diversity differ from the rest of Canada. Frankly I think that is B.S. That seems to be the story the rest of Canada uses to excuse the Catholic bigotry that is gradually fading in Quebec. And luckily, it is fading in the same way as the Loyal Orange Lodge has lost standing in Ontario and across Canada.

Yes, I am old enough to remember King Billy parading on Toronto streets in his finery on a sway-backed milk-wagon horse. The scattered onlookers in what used to be Orange Toronto never could match the Santa Claus parade for numbers.

But while the degree of influence the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society holds over Quebec’s Fête Nationale every June 24 might have waned in the major population centres, it still influences the small-town politicians.

It is similar to the influence of the Ontario Landowners Association that cuts a conservative swath through that province’s farm-dominated ridings from Ottawa to Windsor. They are a throwback to an era long gone where the person who hewed arable land out of the forest and scrub could hold domain over it.

But do not forget the Bible Hour of Bill Aberhart, the Baptist who founded Social Credit and brought Alberta through the Great Depression. And do not forget it was Earnest Manning who carried on for Aberhart and promoted the strict Calvanism that permeates Alberta rural politics to this day. It is also why it is hard to imagine a Judas schemer such as Jason Kenney causing a serious challenge to Alberta’s Rachel Notley for the job of premier.

When you look at Canada in its diversities, geographies, influences and beliefs, many throw up their hands and say this is an impossible country to govern. And yet it remains a country of many successes. It has shown itself strong in war and strong in peacekeeping. It exists between two more powerful nations to the north and south and works to maintain civility with both.

Canada is a beacon to the world. We should keep it shining bright and clear for all to see.

-30-

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

Quit bitching and drink your Kool-Aid.

April 8, 2019 by Peter Lowry

We hear that there is no federal liberal party. Instead, we are told it is the Trudeau cult. The only thing is that, before we drink our Kool-Aid, we need to check to see whose idea this was anyway.

It was nine years ago that the MP from Papineau electoral district in Montreal started his campaign to win the liberal leadership. It was easier than he expected. After the experience of the party with three lacklustre leaders since the Jean Chrétien era ended, liberals needed hope and the voters were tired of Harper’s conservatives. We revelled in sunny days. Everyone wanted a selfie with the young Trudeau.

He electrified Canada’s youth and encouraged our seniors. We saw vitality and the acceptance of challenge. The opposition in parliament were left leaderless and in a funk. He excited foreign leaders and was welcomed at world councils. He took leadership in environmentalism. He made sure women were in positions of power. He proclaimed his feminism. The 21^st Century belonged to Justin Trudeau.

And Trudeau’s mob grew and expanded. The opposition chose housekeepers over action figures for leaders. They saw the coming election as hopeless for their narrow views of Canada’s needs.

Nobody seemed to note this commentary that was vainly signalling its growing concerns for this party and its leadership. It was not all sunny days. Justin Trudeau’s elitism was showing. His lack of depth on the issues concerning. His promises were stumbling to become law.

Where were the believers of true liberalism? It was the Ontario liberals who were vanquished first. They were squashed. Their leader at the time, surrendered before the votes were even cast. And now there are few sunny days forecast for the summer and fall of 2019.

But never ever call the liberal party a lynch mob. You need never malign so many caring Canadians. You can accuse the prime minister and some of his cabinet of having failed us. That is fair.

But the ideal of liberalism does not change. The rational of individual rights and freedoms are the backbone of this country. How many of the peoples of nations around the world envy the freedoms of Canadians? Those are worth fighting for.

-30-

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

Tip-toe through these tulips (Part 2).

April 7, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Was it spite? The story of Jody Wilson-Raybould and her side-kick Jane Philpott has yet to be fathomed. What benefits them? They both had so much to offer. Wilson-Raybould was the first woman of aboriginal ancestry to serve in the cabinet. Her people needed her wisdom in that role. They deserve action, dignity, justice, recognition and reconciliation. It takes someone who has spent years in aboriginal councils to truly understand their needs.

In Ontario, we all watched last year as the irresponsible rage of the voters decimated the liberal caucus at Queen’s Park. Instead of good government, we elected an incompetent blowhard and his mealy-mouthed conservative followers. Why? We could certainly see it coming. It was like the voters in the United States who elected Donald Trump. “Take that you fools!” The voters burnt their bridges. They enjoyed a pyrrhic victory. May they enjoy their hell.

And here we are, watching the federal liberals bleed the votes they need in October. Does Justin Trudeau think all will be forgiven by then? The bleeding started even before he went to do his dress-up routine in Bollywood. He embarrassed Canadians.

Trudeau proved a poor leader. Many men interpret his self-declared feminism as weakness. Too many promises proved hollow. He had promised election reform without any background information. He introduced a weak and unsatisfactory assisted-suicide bill. He aided Canada’s nuclear families and forgot the seniors. He talked about an undefined middle class for whom he cared.

He preached environmentalism and then bought a pipeline to ship highly polluting tar sands bitumen to foreign parts, who are free to pollute as they wish.

Trudeau has seriously damaged the liberal brand. This was at a time when he needed the strength of the brand in the Atlantic provinces. He needed depth in Quebec. He can only split vote-rich Ontario. And the trip across the west is a downhill run for liberals all the way. He stands in the bottom of the hole he has dug for himself and his party, looking at a small piece of blue sky.

-30-

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

Tip-toe through these tulips.

April 6, 2019 by Peter Lowry

This is a story about women of a certain age and how a man has to tip-toe carefully to explain or be maligned and castigated as sexist. It is just, by now, we should all be tired of the sexist claptrap surrounding the ongoing one-act play of Jody Wilson-Raybould. Yes, the prime minister was wrong. He dropped the ball.

But Justin Trudeau is a wimp. Do you really believe that Wilson-Raybould did not know that when she set out on her mission to destroy him? The problem between the prime minister and his justice minister needed to be settled in the confidentiality of cabinet, not out on the street like common drunken brawlers.

And it was hardly a fair fight. I think the prime minister was blind-sided. Gerry Butts and the clerk of the privy council tried to protect him and got caught in the threshing machine of the Ottawa media.

The only thing we really want to know is ‘Why?’ I have carefully brought up the subject with a number of women of similar age. They have raised their children. They might perceive their earlier sexuality as slipping away. Similar to Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, they are successful in their profession and they are seeking that further elusive something else. They do not know what it is.

Is it a legacy, the notoriety, another mountain climbed, or the thrill of the kill by the huntress?

All I know is that it is a bad example for those young people who were in parliament to hear from the PM the other day. Who the hell told them they can turn their backs on the prime minister of Canada? Those young women need to understand that nobody demands your respect for the person but you should never ever disrespect the office.

In retrospect, in years to come, Wilson-Raybould will likely rue her legacy as the one who brought down a prime minister. So much more of likely benefit to her and her peoples was possible.

To be continued…

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