Federal Politics – Page 80 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Jagmeet’s winning honeymoon.

February 26, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Burnaby South electoral district is not your typical first choice for honeymooners. It is no resort. The electoral district is not even middle class, includes migrants from many countries and probably more like many of the heavily ethnic areas of Toronto than of any other Canadian city. Yet it is where Jagmeet Singh and his princess have spent the last couple months to win the federal by-election called by prime minister Trudeau.

With a turn-out of 29 per cent of voters, it was a classic by-election situation. The NDP worked hard and brought out their vote.

For British Columbia, it was a confused and concerning race. With both conservatives and liberals supporting the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline, many of their supporters sat on their hands. Where the protest was serious was the ability of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party to garner just over ten per cent of the vote with what was denounced as a racist campaign.

Married last year in a colorful Sikh ceremony in Mexico, Jagmeet Singh and Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu have been meeting the voters in Burnaby since he decided this is the electoral district he wanted to send him to Ottawa. The attractive Gurkiran is a fashion designer and seems to be not far from her husband’s side since they set up housekeeping in Burnaby.

But Jagmeet is heading for a brief stint in Ottawa as leader of the new democrats. And then, the entire exercise begins again for the October general election. Whether he can duplicate the win again in October is very much the question.

In the east, we went to bed last night having little awareness of how the B.C. by-election was going. The by-elections in Outremont in Montreal and York Simcoe were open and shut, easy to predict. No surprises there. As precursors of the federal election to come, the three by-elections told us little. It was a loss of one seat for the NDP and the gain of one seat for the liberals. And Maxime Bernier’s new party was just an also-ran.

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Senior civil servant says something silly.

February 24, 2019 by Peter Lowry

The crazies are behind door ‘C’ and we turn them loose at our peril. And it is certainly not the role of Canada’s senior civil servant to open that door. To even suggest that somebody might be shot in this country, in this year of elections, is tantamount to an invitation.

Maybe he had to say something that foolish to get the attention and felt that it was needed in the circumstances. I doubt it.

One of the things that has been bothering Canadians is the growing use of firearms by people totally unequipped to handle them responsibly. The politicians make the appropriate clucks over the problem but never do squat to really address the problems. Nobody who takes hunting seriously takes a large magazine, automatic pistol or assault rifle hunting.

Canadians are damn lucky that their fellow citizens are generally law-abiding and responsible but it takes only one crazy loose with a gun and deaths and crushing injuries can follow.

And never, ever suggest a target. The only place we want people to shoot guns is in a properly laid out and safe firing range.

That being said, I do appreciate how Canada’s Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, was open and blunt in his appearance before the Commons Justice Committee. He is concerned about Canadians losing “faith in the institutions of governance in this country.” And they are.

It should also be said that Michael Wernick’s appearance before the Commons committee went a long way towards clearing some of the confusion caused by events of recent weeks. I feel no shame that I was puzzled by the situation. Lots of very knowledgeable people were having problems digesting this SNC-Lavalin mess and when you realize it took ten years just to reach this state, you wondered if we would ever understand. Hearing Jody Wilson-Raybould’s side of this current confusion might also help.

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Who quits for no reason?

February 22, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Being principal secretary to the prime minister is no flunky appointment. It is a position of high trust and higher pay. I have known various people in the role, both liberal and conservative, over the years. From the time that Marc LaLonde kidded some of us insiders that all he wanted to be was an ‘éminence gris’ and his friend Pierre Trudeau asked him to be his principal secretary, to the surprise resignation of Justin Trudeau’s friend Gerald Butts the other day, nobody has made a lasting career of the job.

The difference was that Marc’s experience with the Privy Council Office was invaluable to Pierre Trudeau in penetrating the layers of the government power structure in 1968. It took time, but they wrested the power from the bureaucrats and gave it to the cabinet members.

In selecting Butts as principal secretary, Justin Trudeau had a friend at his back but not much help. Their talents were similar instead of complementary. You are better to have someone in that job who is yin to your yang.

As obvious as it was in the 2015 election, that the troika of Butts, Telford and Trudeau running the liberal campaign were novices, the outcome was easily forecast. It was theirs for the taking. It was a time for change. There were some foolish promises and failed promises.

But the honeymoon is over. The realities of office are more than selfies and fun in the sun. It is time when there were some adult hands at the helm. You cannot be a conservationist and a pipeline owner. You cannot be a feminist and demote a competent woman. You cannot pretend to offer olive branches and try to destroy minor opposition. You cannot just brush off promises made, promises broken.

You cannot turn the liberal party into your personal fund pool and expect them to also man the barricades when you need a ground game. You cannot promise democracy and act as an autocrat.

At a time when we need competent leadership, there is so little from which to choose.

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Potholes on the Yellow Brick Road.

February 20, 2019 by Peter Lowry

It’s the time of year in Canada. The roller-coaster of ice and snow, melting and freezing, leaves even a yellow brick road a minefield of broken and missing bricks. Dorothy and Toto and their three friends have to watch where they step.

With the Cowardly Lion (Justin Trudeau) more familiar with riding on elephants in costume, being transported in the helicopters of rich family friends and the convenience of government jets, he seems more prone to falling into the larger potholes. One of the first to be tripped up, he has fallen into one that could require Quebec’s giant engineering firm of SNC-Lavalin to repair.

It really makes us all wonder at the seeming inability of the prime minister and his wunderkinds of the PMO to handle this current tempest with his former justice minister and, more recently, former veterans’ minister. To stretch the problem this long and to keep feeding us piecemeal snippets of information about the debacle does not seem appropriate to 2019.

The good news/bad news yesterday was the resignation of the prime minister’s principal secretary Gerald Butts. He and the prime minister think alike. They both lack some basic political instincts. Neither understood that the win in 2015 was not theirs. It was a gift from an used up Stephen Harper. Measure Butts’ replacement by his or her political smarts. That is what is needed.

But where is the Scarecrow (Jagmeet Singh)? The poor chap is in the midst of a life and death struggle to take a seat in the House of Commons. He is far from his home grounds of Brampton and at a complete loss to tell you how he is doing. The liberals might as well give him the bum’s rush because the NDP caucus in Ottawa will demand his resignation as leader if he loses in Burnaby South. Oh well, February 25 will tell the tale.

But it is the Tin Woodman (Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer) who is the enigma, who can benefit the most from the confusion of the others. He is but a buffer for the parochial concerns of his friends, Doug Ford in Ontario and Jason Kenney in Alberta. Provided, of course, Jason can defeat ‘Rachel Notley’s party’ in the spring elections in Alberta.

What we are sensing in these early stages is anger and annoyance with all political parties. The Cowardly Lion needs more than to be brave. He needs to learn to be a leader. The Tin Woodman needs more than a heart. He needs to learn to connect with people and offer positive directions. And the Scarecrow needs more than brains. He needs to realize that his politics have to stand apart from his religion.

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Who is running this circus?

February 19, 2019 by Peter Lowry

It is usually best to stay away from political situations that you do not understand. While we have gone around the the rings in this circus a few times, we still do not know much. It really is too bad that we do not have a leader who can explain.

We are talking about SNC-Lavalin, the Quebec-based world-wide engineering firm. When you are doing multi-billion construction jobs, it pays to have a firm such as SNC-Lavalin on board.

All we know is that it has something to do with an incident in Libya ten years ago. The Quebec firm was said to be involved in something illegal back then. It seems that the firm can pay a fine and be forgiven if the federal minister of justice thinks it appropriate. Otherwise, they still pay the fine but they are also cut off from federal contracts for the next ten years because of the conviction. That could destroy the multi-billion-dollar firm by cutting it off from billions in contracts.

The most open politician in this squabble is Quebec premier Legault. He has made it very clear that he wants the firm to be forgiven its indiscretion. He sees nothing wrong with the prime minister’s office telling the justice minister to get in line. And most of the talking heads in Quebec seem to be agreeing as none in that province want to see SNC-Lavalin go under.

The situation is quite different out west where the former justice minister is from. Jody Wilson-Raybould has further complicated things by resigning from cabinet and hiring a senior constitutional lawyer to advise her on the conflicts of interest involved with cabinet ministers and the prime minister’s office.

The prime minister is no longer making nice over the situation and he appears to be as frustrated as everyone else about what is going on. As things stand today, nobody is happy about it. The public is confused. The liberal MPs are closing ranks with the prime minister and the opposition is baying like hounds with a scent. We can only hope that it is just Jody Wilson-Raybould’s ‘new freedom’ perfume!

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Busted.

February 15, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Oh, the shame of it. My last contribution to the Liberal Party of Canada was June 16, 2016. And the party has asked me if this is a mistake? Hopefully nobody has told Justin. He would be so disappointed with me.

Luckily, I expect that only the computer knows that I made my last contribution to the party the month after its meeting in Winnipeg that canceled all memberships to the party. I had been faithfully making the same contribution every month but my membership was canceled. We were all supposed to be happy liberal supporters. I disagreed and canceled my payments.

That was a bold move for the guy who did the first fund-raising effort among the party faithful in the 1960s. I remember having 70,000 letters sitting on the boardroom table at the party’s Toronto office ready for mailing in Ontario. The party treasurer stopped in and looked at the huge stacks. He clucked, shook his head and said, “This is not going to work, Peter.” were his kind words.

The truth is my letter did not get much money but it was a start. The party had to become more self-supporting or always be beholden to its corporate benefactors.

Of course, the Internet helped. The ability to beg and plead with hundreds of thousands of people for peanut prices was first realized by the federal conservatives. And their members seem to have more money than liberal supporters. The conservatives either write better begging letters or have richer retainers. Luckily, it does not necessarily translate to votes.

But today’s liberal supporters are no slouches. They seem to respond to the pitiful pleas of the liberal party. They always tell you that a few more loonies from everyone will make all the difference.

I remember one time the president of the party and I were setting up chairs for a meeting. (Somebody has to do it!) We sat down to rest for a minute and he admitted to me that it would be easier for him to just send money but it is getting more and more people involved that helps us get out our vote during elections. I wish he had told Justin Trudeau about that involvement.

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‘Chuckles’ checks campaign conditions.

February 13, 2019 by Peter Lowry

With the new democratic leader Jagmeet Singh tied up in a do-or-die by-election in Vancouver and the prime minister under steady fire on the SNC-Lavalin debacle, the conservative leader is out testing fault-lines for the coming election in the Fall. While Andrew ‘Chuckles’ Scheer is not particularly glib, he seems to have hired some better writers.

In a test flight of fancy in Fredericton the other night, he got off the line that a liberal carbon tax is “a tax on commuters and a free pass for polluters.” For pure, lyrical political B.S., you have to put a mark on the wall for ‘Chuckles’ on that one.

The liberal plan, as this writer understands it, is that the federal government is collecting money from people who make carbon producing products such as gas for your automobile and they will give you a credit on your income tax for your share of this bonanza. Of course, Imperial Oil et al will promptly charge the bill from the government to you at the gas pump. If you are lucky, the government gives you your money back.

This money that has gone on the merry-go-round of carbon tax to taxpayers’ dividend will also improve the volumes and velocity of the money supply. Economists like to analyze things like that.

Mind you, ‘Chuckles’ says that job number one, if he ends up in the prime minister’s office, is to cancel such carbon pricing. For some reason, he thinks it is an imposition on “hard-working families.”

It was at this point that he gave a shout-out to New Brunswick’s new conservative premier Blaine Higgs, who was in the audience. He welcomed the premier to the good fight against carbon taxes.

‘Chuckles’ also tried a few lines on Trudeau and the new NAFTA. Other than failing the dairy farmers, it was not all that clear what he was complaining about. He needs to work on that one. Maybe one of his aides could read both versions for him and tell him what has changed.

It was a good start for ‘Chuckles’ in New Brunswick. He has no MPs from the province in his caucus and prospects are not that great for this Fall. He started there because he needs the practice.

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The snake to the right.

February 11, 2019 by Peter Lowry

There are times when we have compared politics to the game of Snakes and Ladders. The political edition is deadlier than the children’s game you remember. Just ask former liberal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould about the ride when you slide down one of those snakes?

But right now, we are looking to the right of the game board where former conservative MP Maxime Bernier is trying to get into the game. To the consternation of conservative leader ‘Chuckles’ Scheer, Bernier is sucking the crazies from the conservative play list. The alt-right in Canada have been looking for a political home. They are not among your more lovable next-door neighbours but they do get out to vote.

Bernier might deny that he wants their vote but it was his obvious starting point when he blew off the foolishness of supporting ‘Chuckles’ as conservative leader. His People’s Party of Canada has to be built from the extremist libertarians, neo-Nazis, bigots, white supremist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-multicultural dissidents. If Donald Trump can put together a winning coalition among similar such groups in the United States of America, Maxime Bernier figures he can do it in Canada.

Mind you, Bernier is a product of the fading bigotry and tribalism that is the last stronghold of the Catholic Church and the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society in Quebec. The occasional pseudo nationalist outburst in the West is just a reaction to the parochial nature of disagreements with Ottawa over the years, promoted by mean and small-minded western politicians.

But it is in Quebec and the West where the core of Bernier’s party is being built. It is amusing to watch ‘Chuckles’ gnash his teeth over it. It is not the seats in parliament that Bernier might win, but the seats in parliament that Bernier can keep the conservatives from winning, that is concerning for ‘Chuckles’ and his conservatives.

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A shadow from the right.

February 10, 2019 by Peter Lowry

On behalf of the Right Honourable Clarence Decatur Howe, I object. There were many assumptions made about the man when he was alive and many more after his passing. My problem is with what the C.D. Howe Institute does in his name. He does not deserve the presentations of the political right wing that bear his name today.

Howe was never a true politician. He was a man of his times. He was from neither the left or right of the political spectrum. In many ways, he failed as a politician and achieved as a great Canadian.

C.D., as he was known, came into politics in the Great Depression as he needed a job and the country needed a businessman to help correct the problems the depression had created. He was a bull in a china shop in parliament. He just got the job done.

This is the man who got Canadian National Railways back on track. He established the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC-Radio Canada). This is the guy who gave the country a national airline, Air Canada (as Trans-Canada Airlines at the time).

Where C.D. really proved his worth to Canada was in the Second World War. They called him ‘Minister of Everything.’ He put the country on a war footing and never looked back. He organized business people who knew production into dollar-per-year volunteers in the war effort. He might have tread on a few toes during the war but he and the Mackenzie King government did the job required and changed Canada forever.

But there was also the assumption that C.D. was doing this as a businessman. That is a misconception. At no time, in the years C.D. served his adopted country, did he do it for just business reasons. He did it for the country. He always acknowledged the supremacy of parliament. He was a liberal of his day. He was probably more of a neoliberal than we would tolerate today

C.D. Howe was talented and tenacious, tough and thorough. I hardly think he would be pleased that his shadow of effectiveness lives on in the hands of the right wing in the institute named after him. Reading the recent shadow budget for Canada produced for the Institute, it reads as though written by careless conservative ideologues. It lacks compassion, it lacks vision and it is a disservice to a great Canadian.

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The meaning of Milton.

February 5, 2019 by Peter Lowry

Watch out Lisa Raitt. The liberals are coming. As conservative MP for Milton electoral district, Lisa Raitt has a long, hard fight ahead of her to try to hold on to the riding this coming Fall. Milton is not only a change riding but it is a win needed to meet liberal hopes for a majority government after October 21.

And if Lisa Raitt had been in that hall in Milton the other day and watched that crowd of more than a thousand there to see the prime minister, she would be worried. Few were her supporters. These people not only showed approval for the liberal prime minister but they also showed the changing demographics of Canada.

This is why Milton was on the schedule for prime minister Trudeau’s series of town hall meetings in warming up for the coming election. With an increase of close to 30,000 new voters since the last election, no party can take Milton for granted.

Raitt can expect little loyalty. Her reputation as a tough politician is well earned but her overreach for the party leadership in 2017 earned her little recognition from the voters. And her connections with the harbour boards of both Toronto and Hamilton identify her as more of an outsider than a local product.

And her liberal opponent, Adam van Koeverden, an Olympic medal winner for Canada, has strong area connections. If he is connecting with the young people in the riding and builds the canvas teams that will be needed, he could have the winning combination.

I can remember doing some canvassing in the area of Milton electoral district that was in the north part of Burlington some 20 years ago when a good friend was the candidate. That part of the riding was mostly new homes at that time but you could still see the farmers’ fields that have been built upon since.

The voters were open and friendly. Canvassing there was fun. You learned a lot if you took the time to listen. While my friend lost to the conservative instincts of the older parts of Halton County at that time, I fully expect the area newcomers will be making the decision this election year.

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