Federal Politics – Page 87 – Babel-on-the-Bay

The troubled trials of Trudeau and Trump.

August 21, 2018 by Peter Lowry

It’s embarrassing. Our prime minister cannot handle Donald Trump. We might as well admit it. It is doing less and less good to keep hoping Justin Trudeau will grow into the job. He does not have the gonads of his father. He lacks the wit and gumption to put the American president in his place.

And he is hardly solving the problem with our half-pint foreign affairs minister. Her problems with the Saudis are a perfect example of our failed foreign affairs situation. If Trudeau had the American president under control, do you think the Saudis would have the nerve to complain about her?

If Trudeau could manage Trump do you think we would be undergoing all this crap about the North American Free Trade Agreement? Do you think Mexico would dare negotiate separately—not having Canada at the table—if Trudeau was managing the file properly? Donald Trump is going around saying Canada has some unfair advantage. That is nothing but horse manure and we are letting him get away with it.

Canada has all its foreign affairs resources going around telling American underlings that President Trump might be incorrect. What needs to happen is that some one has to take Donald Trump to the woodshed. It is like the way President Johnson addressed Prime Minister Pearson about his speech at Temple University in 1965. Better that a friend shouts at you, instead of someone who really dislikes you.

The problem is that Canada’s relations with the United States of America are at their lowest point in over 150 years. And this is not what the saner members of either congregation want. And president Trump has been the cause. He has to clean up his act.

And what is really annoying about this situation is that the Conservatives and the NDP are all encouraging the PM to be a wus! Why? Do they also lack the intestinal fortitude?

What nobody seems to understand north of the U.S. border is that Trump is laughing at us. This guy negotiates by telling lies. He bluffs his way through life. If nobody calls his bluffs, he wins.

Some people think Trump is a bully. That is true.

But inside every bully is a coward. Donald Trump is a coward. He needs to be treated accordingly. And Trudeau better get off the dime or we will get somebody else to do it.

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“The shape of things to come”

August 20, 2018 by Peter Lowry

Writer H.G. Wells would be astounded by the possible changes in the Canadian political landscape over the coming year. Events commencing this year will culminate in the federal election planned for 2019. And it is each piece of the puzzle as it unfolds that foretells the future.

This year, we have already had the shock of the unexpected. On New Year’s Day nobody would have predicted the ascension of Doug Ford as premier of Canada’s largest province. Nor did we expect the whimsical nature of some of the Ford government’s immediate actions. Ontario has opted for the unpredictable.

Quebec and Alberta are the next major concerns. Premier Couillard’s liberals in Quebec seem to suffering the same regime exhaustion as the Wynne liberals in Ontario. Will he also surrender before the campaign has even run its course? His dictatorial decisions on candidates are already a puzzle. It is a constant amazement that liberal organizations so reliant on democracy for their existence, fail to practice it.

I never thought I would be rooting for a New Democrat but what can you do when the alternative in Alberta is a sleaze such as Jason Kenney and his united right? Mind you if they can ever find someone in Alberta who can convince Albertans to leave that awful tar sands stuff in the ground, I am for that person.

But that is unlikely. The person who is causing the most problems about the tar sands is pipeline king Justin Trudeau. Who would predict that the prime minister would buy the old and decrepit Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline. Now he wants to spend far more billions of taxpayers’ money twinning and upgrading the line so that it can pump almost four times the diluted bitumen to Burrard Inlet on the B.C. coast.

And that will be the key election in 2019. It will have ‘Chuckles’ Scheer of the conservatives (who is pro-pipeline) and liberal leader Justin Trudeau (also pro-pipeline) challenged by Jagmeet Singh of the NDP (who is anti-pipeline when he is not in Alberta).

Liberals across Canada are faced with the hypocrisy of their leader. He started in 2015 as the poster boy for saving the environment. Now he wants to send the tar sands gunk to countries around the world so that they can help pollute our world environment.

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Of foolish people who shun the past.

August 17, 2018 by Peter Lowry

There is far too much of this rewriting of history going on today. Why should anyone be concerned that Canada’s first prime minister was a drunk? Or was it his attitude towards our aboriginal people—that he shared with many others of the time? Why are some silly people now trying to hide him?

And do you really think that calling our aboriginal peoples “indigenous” will make them “from here?” So, their ancestors came to North America a thousand years or so before any Europeans? So, what? The land is plenty for us all to share.

But we keep hearing of people who insist on removing statues and rewriting history. They are the ones who need to get a life.

There is a picture of Sir John on my den wall as I write. He gives me inspiration. For Canada of 150 years ago, John A. was a progressive guy. He saw this country with ties of steel rails stretching from sea to sea. He saw Canada’s potential for greatness—and he (quite) frequently raised a glass of whisky to wish it well.

There is another picture on my wall of a distant relation—Oliver Mowat. Cousin Oliver was premier of Ontario in 1893 when the picture appeared on the front page of the Saturday Globe. The headline story was about Ontario’s Grand Old Man. He served a total of 24 years as premier of the province before serving in the federal cabinet of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

History tells us that cousin Oliver was the biggest problem in Sir John A.’s path back in the beginnings of Canada. He fought for provincial rights in defining federal and provincial rights. He is the cause of still today, our federal and provincial politicians taking their arguments to the supreme court.

Environment minister Catherine McKenna recently asked the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to come up with an easy answer to people who want to remove statues and other recognition of people who at one time contributed to Canada. It does seem odd that a politician needs to ask an antiquities board how to handle small-minded people?

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Musing on Maxime’s Maxims.

August 15, 2018 by Peter Lowry

Maxime Bernier MP does not endear himself. It is not so much his conservatism as his libertarianism. I have met some pretty far right Quebec politicians before but Bernier likes to use his ideas for shock and awe. It gets him lots of media coverage—not all good.

Bernier rides the razor’s edge of racism. He is definitely tribal but he sees no future in being tied to the Parti Québécois. The left-wing péquistes have little appeal. Even the conservative comers in the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) are not far enough to the right for him. He has national ambitions anyway.

If it were not for the foolish system of voting in that last federal conservative party race, he might be leader of the conservative party of Canada today. Instead the system drilled the party down to mediocrity in multiple ballots and they got ‘Chuckles’ Scheer of Saskatchewan instead.

It is that mediocrity in leadership that has saved Bernier from being bounced from the party. Instead of sending the loudmouth to Coventry, Scheer just freed him to spread discontent among the party. Just one more wrong step for Scheer at a time when Justin Trudeau is becoming more vulnerable.

Bernier’s latest faux pas is to accuse prime minister Trudeau of “radical multiculturalism”—whatever the hell that is? It seems Bernier is concerned that the PM is encouraging a lot of smaller tribes instead of the more traditional English-French tribes. Since Bernier and Trudeau are on equal footing with the English-French tribes, it looks like Bernier does not want anyone else in the running.

Bernier complained the other day about these “little tribes” created by Trudeau are causing division. He seems to see them as failing to accept North American values. He complains that they do not immediately appreciate our freedoms and are less eager to accept our openness and tolerance.

I do not know where Bernier grew up but I grew up in Toronto and I watched many of my friends’ immigrant parents struggle with what some saw as the licentious nature of our society. It was tough for them and all we could do for them was to be understanding and recognize why they felt as they did.

To-day, we look at the second and third generation of those families and we see the value that they brought to this country. We are long past Maxime Bernier’s English-French divide. He needs to look around.

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Disciplining the diplomacy of diplomats.

August 12, 2018 by Peter Lowry

She might be a bit smaller in stature but foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland is head-over-heels ahead of a conservative predecessor John Baird. Baird was something of an embarrassment throughout his tenure during the Harper era. And if Freeland knew enough to stay away from Twitter, we could give her even higher marks.

Who does she think she is; Donald Trump?

Freeland recently used Twitter to piss off the Saudis. How stupid could that be? What the hell does she think is the reason for countries having access to diplomatic channels?

Twitter is for children and show-offs. Twitter is for bad jokes. Twitter is for people who need to get a life. It is not a channel for diplomats.

If you really want to tell those Wahhabi Sunnis in Riyadh what you think of them, tell them to their face. A true Wahhabi knows that you are an infidel scorned by Allah and even worse, to them, you are just a woman. Why should those Bedouins give a damn what you think?

Your strength, as a diplomat, is in the country you represent. And you are representing a country that is recognized and respected around the world for its progressiveness in technology, in human rights, in respecting the ecology and its democracy.

And, it is why they will listen to you. If it is Canada speaking to them, they will listen. Their country might be barely out of the 19^th century but they do understand our arguments in favour of human rights. Both countries gain by us training many of their medical specialists. And there are other areas of mutual interest.

This does not include our sell-through of American armoured vehicles. The fiction of those vehicles as Canadian is one that neither nation needs.

Admittedly, it is diplomacy that helps keep the world’s economics running smoothly.

And we should never forget that a very important venue for diplomacy is just down the road in New York. It is the United Nations. If you are worried about the Saudis threatening the peace in the middle east, take you concerns to the United Nations. Those diplomats enjoy a good squabble.

But never forget that it was the Brits who brought the Saudis out of the middle ages about 100 years ago. They are still a couple centuries behind. If we keep the proper diplomatic pressure on them, they just might listen.

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Can Singh sing a new song in Burnaby?

August 9, 2018 by Peter Lowry

It is now confirmed that new democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh will try for a seat in the House of Commons this fall. The facts are that the guy has not drawn a salary for over a year now. He has gotten married and he might need a couple new bespoke suits. He could have possibly run in Montreal in Tom Mulcair’s old seat of Outremont or a formerly conservative-held seat in Grenville-Dundas-Thousand Islands in Ontario, but he has decided the safest seat is in South-Burnaby in British Columbia.

But while that might be the safest seat for an NDP, Singh had to finally come out against the Trans Mountain pipeline. It was the end of sitting on the fence between premier John Horgan’s BC NDP and premier Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP.

South-Burnaby voters will likely have a clear choice. No liberal has been selected yet but whoever runs for the government party will be standing on Justin Trudeau’s shoulders. The greens and conservatives might as well stand back and let the liberals and NDP have at it! This will be a referendum on the newly government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline. The $7 to $11 billion enhancement project is designed to bring more of the Alberta tar sands products to Burnaby for loading on ocean tankers.

The only reason Kennedy Stewart is not representing the seat is that he is in the running for mayor of Vancouver. In Vancouver, they do not have party politics in the traditional Canadian manner. The current election pits the progressives against the combined conservatives and right-wing liberals.

My bet is on Stewart for mayor of that wonderful city.

South-Burnaby is considered to be one of the most ethnically diverse electoral districts in Canada, competing with many ridings in Toronto for that distinction. Prime minister Trudeau remains very strong in ethnically diverse areas and that alone could make this by-election a toss-up.

The one thing that Singh might not be prepared for in this situation is to lose. And he could. The ethnic make-up of the electoral district is only listed as 16 per cent south Asian and Sikhs are only a part of that group. It will be an interesting test of Singh’s appeal to other ethnic groups. Singh will also be considered an eastern carpetbagger who will not have any long-term interest in the people there.

Jagmeet Singh might be biting off too much.

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Dougie doesn’t do distress.

August 2, 2018 by Peter Lowry

At the end of April this year, a truck was driven down Yonge Street in north Toronto on a quest to murder. The driver succeeded in killing 10 people and injuring 14. Mayor John Tory was there on the scene soonest, Premier Kathleen Wynne came. NDP leader Andrea Horwath came. The prime minister of Canada came. Doug Ford, the man running for premier of Ontario on the slogan ‘For the People,’ was too busy campaigning.

And then we had the random shootings in Greektown on Toronto Danforth. Mayor Tory was there soonest. As premier, Doug Ford read a statement to the legislature. And since the prime minister was coming at the time of the funerals, the premier showed up for a vigil.

This is one of the toughest parts of the politician’s job. It requires that fine balance between showing your concern and appearing to be taking advantage of it for the exposure. Mayor John Tory does it well. Maybe it is because he gets more fires and shootings and other types of disasters in a large city. He also has the constant down-in-the-mouth expression of a St. Bernard. He was born to be a first responder.

But Doug Ford does not do concern well. He lacks empathy. He is too self-centred to feel for others. No doubt he has to let his staff pick the timing, prepare his off-the-cuff remarks and tell him how to dress and how to look. It is not in his DNA.

But nobody wants that brash loud-mouth at quiet moments of contemplation anyway. Doug Ford’s problem is that he only has an on-off switch. There is no volume control.

Ford’s attitude seems to permeate the entire conservative caucus at Queen’s Park. They applaud the brashness of their leader. They appear to revel in their party’s ignorance of climate change. They share the myopia when it comes to the growing demand for gun controls. And at a time of increasingly horrendous criminal attacks on complete strangers, they concur on the throttling back of funds for mental health solutions.

At a time of growing need for better government, Ontario has opted for ignorance. When better solutions should be sought to growing needs in fields of provincial jurisdiction, Ontario voters have chosen comic-book heroes. This is not a time to be proud of what we have done.

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Patching the health care problems.

July 26, 2018 by Peter Lowry

With former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins helping the federal government and Doug Ford tearing into the make-do solutions in Ontario, we might be in more trouble in adding pharmacare to health care than we thought possible. We already know that Doug Ford’s argument for a patchwork solution is unworkable but just where Hoskins and the feds are headed also has a question mark on it.

As health minister for Ontario over the past four years, Hoskins has always had a frazzled look about him. He seemed to have no idea what to do about the increasingly onerous demands of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) specialists who seemed to think their fees should be unlimited. And these demands by the specialists were being made while people outside the large cities in Ontario were increasingly desperate for general practitioners to come and provide coverage in their community.

I always assumed that those speeches the health minister made in support of a national pharmacare program were also being delivered to his Ontario cabinet colleagues. His problem was that former premier Wynne never saw a good program that she could not chop up into chewable chunks.

But Wynne’s stepping-stone steps for Ontario are down the tubes now as Doug Ford is set on teaching us all to pay our own way. Ford is determined even to the extent of taking back pharmaceutical coverage from anyone under 25 who has a health plan on their own or through a parent with coverage through their company, union or organization.

If Ontario’s new premier thinks his plans will save anybody money, he is definitely confused. Unless there is a single buyer of pharmaceuticals for the province (or all of Canada), there will never be any control. And to even suggest that insurance companies selling health plans, with pharmaceutical coverage included, are not motivated by profit, is delusional.

Ontario has had enough of the Doug Ford-Mike Harris approach to health care. Seniors were promised by Wynne that they would have the $100 per year plus the up to $6 co-pay per script ended after January 1, 2019. That will obviously not be happening. Even though the co-pay approach was a serious amount for those taking a range of drugs each day. They will be lucky if the Ford government does not increase it.

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Shoring up Alberta’s Energy Exploiters.

July 25, 2018 by Peter Lowry

For a while there, we were under the impression that the prime minister was the only one allowed to speak for Alberta’s tar sands. It was all on behalf of the almighty buck. Maybe he thought finance minister Bill Morneau would contribute but that guy is weak when trying to explain anything financial.

While Trudeau did not take the opportunity in his recent cabinet shuffle to do anything about Morneau, he did bring in some help for the tar sands apologists. He has moved Edmonton MP, Amarjeet Sohi from infrastructure to natural resources. That is the department that will take responsibility for the now government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline.

As a secular Sikh, Sohi is something of a hero to the Canadian Sikh community because of his incarceration for almost two years by the Indian government for his struggle in Bihar helping poor tenant farmers. On returning to Canada, he supported himself as an Edmonton bus driver until winning a seat on city council and launching his political career.

While some claim that the appointment is to give the MP better exposure and a leg up in the election next year, he seems quite genuine in his conviction that the expanded pipeline over the Rockies is good for Alberta.

Of course, if you only judge the pipeline on its economic value to Alberta, the economy of the province would certainly benefit. Bear in mind that the extremes of environmental damage are there for all to see in Alberta. The vast areas of tailing ponds alone tell the story of the destruction of the environment that is involved in bringing the bitumen to the pipeline head.

But the real hypocrisy of those promoting the exploitation of the tar sands is the pollution of the world environment that is being encouraged by sending the bitumen off shore. Processing of bitumen into ersatz crude oil produces more than three times the carbon footprint of normal crude oil processing. And the tons of bitumen slag left in piles at the refineries is almost pure carbon. If Alberta processed all the bitumen that it has in the tar sands, the province would become unable to sustain life as we know it today.

And how proud are Canadians of all the trouble our government is taking just to ship the pollution problems to third world countries?

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Embittered and Embarrassed.

July 22, 2018 by Peter Lowry

Nobody wants to talk politics anymore. I hear that some people are even refusing to watch television news or (God forbid) read a newspaper. It is like the phenomenon on the left coast years ago when another Social Credit regime would win a majority in the B.C. legislature. The next day you could not find anyone who would admit to voting for them.

Oh well, it only makes life more difficult for us political pontificators. And yet that thin slice of the populace who read and nod sagely or turn red and angry at our musings will occasionally take the trouble to concur or tear into us as an acknowledgement of our pained efforts.

But it is becoming increasingly difficult to take the pulse of voters when the sources are conflicted by their own actions. It seems that otherwise sensible people are embarrassed as all get out about voting for a certifiable idiot.

The problem is that they willingly acknowledge the perfidy of their action. They just do not want to explain it. They know their rationale is specious and they have no excuse.

It was like accepting an invitation to lunch and, after arriving with an appetite, finding out that your hostess is a vegan. This is one situation that you do not want to face. I, for one, consider my position at the head of the food chain to be an honourable rationale to enjoy red meat. You really do not want to hear the hostess’ reasons for her strange behaviour. Nor is it wise for you to try to explain your preferences.

Politics presents the same kind of impasse. You can hardly help it though if someone else keeps bringing up political questions. What can be doubly annoying is that you get blamed. I, honestly, do not put anyone up to it.

What people do not understand is that I am politely interested in their thinking. It is like figuring out just which of the candidate’s incredibly stupid promises, really turned them on? Those words “incredible” and “stupid” should not be used. I have tried to ask politely but then they just look at me with a pained expression.

I guess some people think of politics as a necessary evil like the regular bowel movement. If you just keep on flushing, it will soon go away.

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