Category: Federal Politics

Leadership Lost.

by Peter Lowry

Canadians climb mountains seeking leadership. We have seen the problems at all levels. In our communities, in our provinces and across our country, we feel the same frustrations.

But resolutions are few. The byelection in Toronto is our most recent failure. The joker running Queen’s Park is a constant reminder of our failures. And then there is the ongoing sense of failure in Ottawa. Let’s take them one at a time. We will attempt to hold back the tears. Ottawa is quiet this week, so let’s start there.

Has the prime minister flown off for another world conference? In Iceland? If that guy could collect frequent flyer points, he would be a millionaire all over again. The truth is that Justin Trudeau does not need us. Do we need him? I make no secret that I think of him as but an actor on the world stage.

The first time I ever met the younger Trudeau, I got the impression that he had a switch somewhere on his body that he turned on and off. Comparing notes with the wife on our experience at that first meeting, we both agreed he was more like his mother than his father. Trudeau the younger is no intellectual. Capable, scheming, tireless, maybe, but smart, not so much.

When he and his new cabinet danced through the sunlit Rideau Park in 2015, we cheered him on. We had little expectation of his elitism. We could hardly understand him when he dis-avowed so many liberals with life experience in liberalism in the Canadian Senate.

He angered us when he just used the old liberal party as his personal automated teller machine (ATM). He did not need you to canvas for the party if you did not have a smart telephone to log the supporters.

But for all our complaints, the other major parties are no better off. Jagmeet Singh swamped the new democrats with Sikh sign-ups and took the NDP downhill.

The weasel from Calgary with the French name is a conundrum for the conservatives. He is more libertarian than conservative. He uses the Ottawa convoy types and the foolish youth who buy into his offer of some unspecified ‘Freedom.’ He has little concern for truth. He seems to have been mentored by Donald Trump. He is a demagogue with simplistic solutions.

And Canadians are worried about where better leadership will come from.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Justin Shuffle.

by Peter Lowry

The other day writer Althia Raj wrote an opinion piece in the Toronto Star about a possible cabinet shuffle by Justin Trudeau. I was pleased to see the research that she had done on the subject but it she did not seem to go far enough. I think the shuffle needs to start at the top. It is Justin that needs to retire.

But I hardly think the Trudeau cabinet just needs some tweaking. To survive, it needs a major overhaul. Canadians want change. They are dissatisfied with all three major party leaders. Nor do they seem enamoured to the leaders of the splinter parties. There is little sense in switching the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

It is a credit to Althia Raj’s intelligence that she agrees with me that deputy prime minister, Cynthia Freeland, has about run her course. I think Freeland wants to see a good resolution in Ukraine before going back to her own keyboard. Writers such as Freeland are few and far between.

But the rest of the cabinet need to look to their options before the voters do it for them. I disagree with Raj’s suggestion that Stephen Guilbeault is solid in environment. How he can stay in that role after the bitumen starts flowing down the revamped Trans Mountain pipeline to the Pacific Ocean? It leaves me wondering just what kind of environment he and the prime minister want.

At the same time, I will agree with Ms. Raj that Mélanie Joly presents an excellent face for Canada in foreign affairs.

But the sooner that former Toronto police chief Bill Blair is out of cabinet the better I will feel about voting liberal. Carolyn Bennett has served long and well but Toronto needs younger members from Toronto in cabinet to speak for the city.

Oddly enough, I feel sad about the perceived performance of Marco Mendicino. That is a capable guy who has been getting no good advice regarding his communication skills. He needs some serious tutoring in using microphones and appearing on camera. There is no harm in looking at how a little shit like Pierre Poilievre makes use of those skills and doing the same as he did: learn.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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More Please Sir.

by Peter Lowry

What a wonderful idea. We hear that Meta is getting out of the news business. It has something to do with the passing of a bill in Canada that says people who use other people’s news should pay for it. I approve of that.

I would object to it if it in any way interfered with the distribution of news by reputable sources. The guy who feeds the pig, is entitled to the pork.

And besides, I am sick and tired of the dreadful news-type stuff on Microsoft’s Bing.

You cannot mix advertisements—disguised to look like editorial—into legitimate news items and maintain any faith in your credibility. I do not even trust Bing for searching. It took me a few hours the other day but I finally forced Bing out of my computer and married Firefox to Google and got back to normal searches. Bing fought me every step of the way. It was like killing a family pet. They look at you with big soft eyes and ask: Why are you doing this to me? And they dig in deeper.

But I ask you, “What is a company such as Microsoft doing in the news business? And who would believe that the latest news from Hollywood matters a damn?”

Mind you, if you want to keep tabs on Donald Trump, that would be one source.

It was my own fault. I caused the problems with Bing. It was on the computer when I bought it. Why, I’m not sure. I got more than enough surprises searching on Bing.

Bing has a mind of its own. It seemed to be like a mentally ill artificial intelligence (AI). One time doing a background search on Justin Trudeau, Bing brought up a faux site of Justin Trudeau supporting a cryptocurrency scam. That was a stopper. I certainly wasn’t in Kansas any more! That would be so out of character for Justin, that you were wondering what you were doing in this land of Oz. As soon as you read that people were investing a fixed amount to get these great results, you knew it had to be phony.

I was once running a company and I wanted it to sue Microsoft. The board had always been behind me until then. They were so in awe of Microsoft that they said ‘No.’

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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When Byelections Prove Nothing.

by Peter Lowry

There you go Mr. Trudeau. You have your reading on the voting intentions of Canadians. The byelections in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba proved, once again, that some ridings tend to vote consistently for one party.

I hardly think NDG-Westmount in Montreal has ever voted anything but liberal since Justin’s father won the riding. Yet young Trudeau’s friend Anna Gainey, who helped Justin destroy the liberal party, had to face criticism for the federal government support of those bigots and their language laws in Quebec City and still won the riding easily.

There was a similar situation in Ontario’s Oxford riding. The first time I was in that riding back when Bob Nixon was liberal leader in Ontario, he explained to me that Oxford has the best cared for roads in the province because it always votes conservative. And it did this time, despite conservative leader Poilievre parachuting into the riding, one of his better workers.

And the reports from Manitoba’s two riding byelections came to the same conclusion. The city of Winnipeg voters most often vote liberal and the rural citizens tend to vote conservative. Well, it’s the same old, same old.

But Trudeau should take no encouragement from the status quo. I really don’t like the chances the liberals are taking with Trudeau in the driver’s seat. He needs to look around for a potential replacement. That is the type of reset the liberal party needs. Sure, we need to rebuild the party. We also need to redefine its direction. I can’t believe that Poilievre is making laissez faire sound reasonable to some people. It is not just his lies and his diatribes.

The other day I was discussing with a friend who likes to talk politics, the similarities of Poilievre’s approach to the truth as much like Donald Trump in the United States and Adolph Hitler’s speeches to the German people back in the 1930s. He looked at me seriously and asked if I was old enough to have been there. Oddly enough, I do remember as a young child hearing this person screaming in a guttural language on a radio broadcast and learning during the Second World War that the screamer was Adolph Hitler. To this day, I do not like people who preach falsehoods and are stupid enough to think people believe them.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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Windfall Profits and Taxes.

by Peter Lowry

Why are all the grocery stores bragging about their higher profits? And why is the government not taxing those excessive profits at a higher rate? It wouldn’t do anything to help the consumer, but she would at least have the satisfaction that the grocery chains aren’t gaining as much by their mistreatment of the consumer.

The parliamentary standing committee on agriculture and agri-food weaseled out on recommending an all-encompassing ‘windfall tax’ when the competition bureau finds evidence, by suggesting that it only be for the grocery chains. There needs to be a windfall profits tax on all industries that are profiteering because of the world-wide inflationary pressures. They could start with the big oil companies that raise their prices long before increased crude oil prices hit their refineries.

I sometimes wonder why companies believe they are entitled to a profit. Nobody guarantees them a profit. A profit should be for successes. A profit should be for when you innovate and do something well. A profit should be for when you are doing something worthwhile. Copying what your competitors charge doesn’t say much for you or your company.

Obviously, the passing of entrepreneurial companies from the founder to the idiot child is a very bad idea. It is irresponsible. When you think about it, you realize that the practice dates back to the era of Nero in the Roman Empire. You would think humans would learn a few things over thousands of years.

The point is that when the entrepreneur gets the credit for the success of a company, it is really the employees who built the business. The person fronting for the company can be as dumb as Elon Musk. It takes more than a single person to build a Tesla. And turning him loose with Twitter is a really stupid idea.

I have always been a believer in employee ownership of companies. Shares should always be part of the compensation for your work. The only concern I have is how employees will treat those shares in their will. Maybe they should become worthless when the recipient dies. Maybe I should keep thinking on it.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

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Bell blames the Bureaucrats.

by Peter Lowry

You would think that once in a while Bell would blame their failures on their own incompetence. This is a company that bought CTV thinking it was just another way to make money. Their failures in this enterprise have been loud and often. The Bell Board neither understands the complexity nor the fast-moving nature of sports broadcasting, television show production, news gathering and news distribution. It was not realistic to expect a company deeply involved in telephone, Internet and television signal distribution to be that versatile or expert.

And lately, I would question their competence in their core business. For a company that has more than a hundred years of signal transmission knowledge, my personal experience is that they are more incompetent every day. Let me tell you of my personal Odessey with Bell Canada over the past year:

Bell is a company that I have always liked. I have had friends who worked for the company and I also worked for Bell for a while when I needed to get away from public relations before retiring. I sold Internet services and telephone services to business.

 When I retired to Barrie, Ontario, I found that I could get Bell telephone service in the condo but had to accept Rogers for television service. When I decided to move out of the condo into our present place, Rogers had the key to the cable connections and offered me their complete suite of services for just $195 per month. I went back to Bell, who had just installed fiber-optic connections on the street.

I liked Bell’s Fibe for television and Internet and despite their raising the Internet rates every chance they got, we settled down to peace, harmony and only a few glitches in the Fibe service. That was until the middle of last year, and a series of problems arose. What happened was that I got my usual monthly bill and there would be charges on it for sports channels, news channels and other options that I had never ordered and in which, neither my wife or I were interested. I would call Bell and politely ask that the charges be removed from my bill. And Bell cooperated, graciously, at first. Another problem that puzzled me was that the recording feature of Bell Fibe was acting strange. It would record some of the shows I wanted but would record some things I would never bother to record.

After more than six months of calls to Bell about this, they started to be less friendly. I was accused of a few things that I had not even considered. I was told I was a liar, a troublemaker and that I would be happier with a different supplier. I decided to turn the problem over to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom Service.

If you ever consider using this federal agency, you might be surprised to hear that I don’t think they read my complaint. They just sent it to Bell Canada and nothing has been heard of the complaint after three months.

As a last resort, I complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, pointing out that Bell Canada is harassing me over their technical problem. I would take the advice from one Bell manager, that I take my business elsewhere but I found all the resellers of Fibe service go to the same rates as Bell, or higher, after they have you in their clutches. I even said to Rogers that they could have me but they informed me that the cable in my older apartment building had deteriorated to the point that there was no way to deliver cable to me without rewiring the apartment building.

I am learning to enjoy reading, all over again.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

Parting with Poilievre’s Perfidy.

by Peter Lowry

They are not going to have former conservative leader Erin O’Toole MP to kick around any more. He gave his farewell speech to parliament the other day. Let’s face it, the conservative party of Canada is going to hell in a handbasket—as the expression goes. And O’Toole doesn’t want to go down with the ship. You could just see the current leader, MP Pierre Poilievre, who could not wait to get home and report this offence to his mirror.

O’Toole’s message was clear. He was warning his party that they are responsible for the decline of democracy in Canada. He complained of the divisiveness, the deliberate polarization and living off the ‘Likes’ they could get on-line. It was definitely a farewell and “F— you” speech.

Despite the criticism, Poilievre was seemingly polite in publicly acknowledging O’Toole’s service to his country and his party. The two men shook hands and gave each other a hug.

O’Toole’s time as leader of the conservatives was very different from what we are seeing today under Poilievre. O’Toole earned the enmity of many MPs and politicos in the conservative party by using the right wing of the party to get him the secondary votes that helped him win the leadership in 2022. When he reverted to a more middle-of-the-road conservatism after winning the leadership, the knives came out.

What O’Toole did that really did him in though, was his standing alone in his private television studio during the election and divulging his view on where the party should be going. It was this venue as well as his inability to equate the vaccination mandates and putting a price on carbon that guaranteed his ouster. He fought the fight for a while and finally caved in.

It is hard to believe that a party that had just gone through two party leaders chosen by ranked balloting, who could not sustain their leadership against the different philosophies of their party members. You would think they would learn. And what is worse other parties are also following them with ranked ballot fiascos.

But I also think that any party that would support a leader who knowingly ignores global warming, would rather stretch the truth and spend all his (or her) time denigrating the current government and its leader rather than make any positive efforts, is failing to serve Canadians.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

Tea Leaves and Chrystia Freeland.

by Peter Lowry

Reading a future in politics for finance minister and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland is challenging. She is a strong individual but I think her career in politics is about over. She is not a leader. It is not her style. She is an activist.

Freeland’s focus seems to be above the political. Two of her major accomplishments for Canada have been the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union and the revised North American Free Trade Agreement, now known as the Canada—United States—Mexico Agreement (CUMA). CETA is still in the approval stages in Europe but is already about 98 per cent effective in practice thanks to her work on the proposal launched by the conservative government of Stephen Harper. One of her more interesting tactics when dealing with the Europeans was to walk out of the discussions. It seemed to pay off.

It would never have worked when dealing with President Donald Trump in the United States over CUMA. Trump was so irrational that nobody seemed to know how to deal with him. It was like agreeing to a pact with a disturbed child. And we had no sooner signed off on the deal than Trump dumped it with Canada over aluminum and soft-wood lumber. That took a long time to be straightened out.

Judging by her career before politics, you would expect Ms. Freeland to have been happy to age in the role of journalist, editor and observer of things political both domestic and foreign. Her ability with languages is impressive. She speaks English, French, Italian, Russian and Ukrainian. As an author, she is acclaimed for her insights into the financial world. You could almost say that her support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia is a conflict of interest but the truth is that most Canadians seem to agree with her.

As an activist, Chrystia Freeland still has much to contribute to the dealings with the outcome of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. I have no idea where we would find an honestly neutral third party to try to launch an armistice and a conclusion to this evil conflict. I do know that Ukraine will still need our support and encouragement. It is not just the Ukrainian diaspora across Canada for I am sure all of us in Canada can see the need.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

Pierre Poilievre Proposes.

by Peter Lowry

If it was up to the leader of the opposition in Ottawa, we would throw all mass murderers in maximum security prisons. He also wants to have a bill passed through parliament dictating that this should be the law. No doubt many Canadians would agree with him. And maybe that is why he called a news conference to tell the media about this important thing he thinks he is going to do.

But despite the fact that Mr. Poilievre seems to know very little about our prison system, you would think he would have a former criminal lawyer in his conservative caucus. He could have asked some advice from someone who knew the system and how it works.

And no, you cannot lock the felon up and throw away the key. As disgusted and angry as you might be with someone, they are still a human. Justice is not revenge. The judge’s duty is done when the person is found guilty of the crime(s) and a sentence has been pronounced. From that point the miscreant becomes the responsibility of the prison system. And nobody, for a moment, considers getting even for what the criminal has done.

To add carelessness to stupidity, Mr. Poilievre complains that prime minister Trudeau has done nothing about the current Bernardo conflab. Mr. Trudeau has done nothing because he has gone on a secret trip to the Ukraine to communicate with his counterpart in Kiyv. If Mr. Poilievre had the good sense to swear to the secrecy of information he is supplied, he might have been told where Mr. Trudeau had gone.

But I also remember the hew and cry that took place after Paul Bernardo’s wife, Karla Homolka, was released after serving just 12 years for the murder of the two Ontario school girls. Her shorter sentence was as result of a plea bargain that made it a much shorter trial for her disgusting husband and sending him off to prison for life as a “dangerous offender.”

It is supposed that just where they would incarcerate Paul Bernardo would be left up to the prison system. I suppose if he ever wandered off from his prison, there would be heads falling in the prison department. I am sure they are taking adequate provisions to ensure that does not happen.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]

Resigning is Always an Option.

by Peter Lowry

It was not realistic to expect David Johnston to resign as special rapporteur. It was always an option and I considered what it would imply once the conservatives made him their primary target to get at Justin Trudeau. I honestly expected the former governor general to be made of stronger stuff.

It probably set off a tantrum in the prime minister’s office before he headed to Kiyv. Otherwise, we would have heard more than that intergovernmental affairs minister Dominic LeBlanc has been tasked as the fixer. Trudeau only brings in his boyhood friend Dominic when it might be difficult for him to stay cool. Though I must admit, it would have been fun to be a fly on the wall in the PMO for the blow-up.

You have to admit though that Johnston must have reached the point that he said, “Let the young fool fight his own bloody battles.” When you are in your 80s, you learn to let the younger people do the fighting.

But I think this entire farce is losing traction with the public. Nobody seems to know the difference between the different types of inquiries and hearings. I really think Johnston has confused Canadians. He wanted public hearings to let them vent over the perceived political interference by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He really did not want to get into any depth of public examination of Canada’s questionable intelligence efforts.

It has struck me that American president Biden, who is well briefed on the Canadian situation, might be warning off our Five Eyes allies about those limitations of our intelligence systems. He has already had meetings with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak in Washington and with the Australian PM in California.

What I think is more serious in this situation is that the leader of the opposition in parliament should be automatically cleared at a high level of security and read in on regular briefings from our intelligence agencies. Hit and miss memos do not do the job. If Pierre Poilievre wants to be taken seriously as an alternative prime minister, he has to take his responsibilities seriously. His job as leader of the opposition is not just to launch a constant stream of specious attacks on the government party and on the prime minister.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to:

[email protected]