Category: Municipal Politics

The Last Christmas Card.

by Peter Lowry

The wife and I were surprised and pleased by the number of season’s greetings we received this December. This damn Covid-19 is not wiping out our entire generation. What we expect to be the last card for this year arrived while we were having breakfast on December 30. (Yes, we get mail delivery to our door.) As the crow flies, the distance that card travelled would be measured in metres. We live just a couple blocks from Barrie city hall and this card was from the Barrie mayor.

It was appropriate, as at the time, we were discussing the political prospects for Mayor Tory of Toronto. We agreed that John Tory had done a fine job for Toronto and merited a third four-year term. Despite Mayor Tory being a conservative, I think he is the first mayor of the amalgamated city of 6.8 million, who really understands the city and the kind of mayor it needs.

John Tory has been a voice of compassion and reason throughout the last two years. He has been everywhere in the city and has helped it handle the problems of close living during a pandemic.

And I wish I could say that for the mayor of Barrie. It is typical of Mayor Lehman in Barrie (a city of 156,000) that his Christmas card would arrive six days after Christmas. And despite living so close to city hall, the last time I think I talked to the mayor was four years ago when he had no trouble running for a third term. I did hear him on a local radio station recently about some problem with the pandemic but his voice was so muffled, the station should have been embarrassed by the sound quality.

And Jeff Lehman is a liberal. At least, he was when I helped him win the mayoralty 11 years ago. He was the ideal candidate. He drove at door-knocking like an old-time Fuller Brush man. He was tireless.

If only he had brought that same level of energy to the mayor’s job, there is no telling how far this city would have come through his three terms. He can blame it on the majority of conservative party adherents on council if he wishes, but as John Tory has proved in Toronto, leadership matters.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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There’s got to be a pony.

by Peter Lowry

Here it is Christmas Day and I am still looking for a pony in all the piles of political poop we have endured in 2021. Maybe it has been a year when people who insist on writing about things political need to get a life.

I would be smart to use the wife’s approach to news. We always watch the evening TV news together. The wife starts out by commenting on the fashion sense of the newscasters. Before we have heard the latest Covid statistics, she is criticizing the men’s ties or the suit jackets they might have slept in. And the blouses and dresses on the women can be criticized or complimented, depending on her mood.

And if you think she is a distraction from the TV, you should see what happens when she gets the newspaper ahead of me. What I get, along with my morning coffee, is an annotated newspaper with penned question marks and underlining of editing errors or things confusing.

But we are having a slight disagreement on what to do about the Toronto Star. The Star is, once again, raising the price for home delivery out here in the boonies, and delivering less. The new publishers are getting fewer writers to pump out more words but I have seen small town weeklies that give you more news. We are thinking that we could get a larger breakfast table and each have our own i-pad with the Internet newspaper of our choice. I cannot decide between the Economist and the New York Times. The wife is threatening to switch to the electronic version of the Toronto Sun. We might have to compromise.

She is probably expecting something exciting for a major anniversary next year. When that event arrives, we will be in the thick of a provincial election. That is something to look forward to.

My main hope for next year is that this pandemic will be over and we can start to live a normal life again. And that would certainly contribute much to a Happy New Year.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Brampton Brown Battles Bigotry.

by Peter Lowry

We just heard that Brampton mayor Patrick Brown has waded into the war with Quebec over their Law 21. That is the law that the provincial bigots in the Quebec City assembly passed against the wearing of religious symbols. Brown’s remarks are part of the mounting effort to force federal politicians to oppose the Quebec law in the courts.

Brampton Brown, who used to be Barrie Brown, has stuck his oar into the controversy probably to test his potential comeback to the federal political scene. At the very least, he is shoring up his hold on his present job in Brampton with its large number of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. With the World Sikh Organization, one of the parties fighting the Quebec law, Brown is at least ready to take on anyone with thoughts of replacing him as mayor of Brampton.

We learned about his stand through the unusual route of Althia Raj, who normally reports these days on events in Ottawa for the Toronto Star. She tells us that prime minister Justin Trudeau is still straddling the fence on the issue until the Supreme Court gets involved.

The only federal party leader who has had a change of heart is Jagmeet Singh of the new democrats. Mind you, the involvement of the World Sikh Organization might have had something to do with Singh’s conversion. As a turban-wearing, kirpan-bearing Sikh and a follower of the Tenth Guru, Jagmeet could hardly stick to his previous provincial-rights stand.

There are some conservatives also pushing at Erin O’Toole to turn his back on the Legault government in Quebec. That might be a tough fight as Legault’s CAQ in Quebec is the closest party to conservative in that province.

The Quebec law is a non-starter in the rest of Canada. When you consider that the wearing of crosses, or turbans, or yarmulkas or versions of the hijab are just a fashion statement in a pluralist society and very few care. You have to admit, Canada is quite a diverse society and we are better for it.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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And a Man Named Mel.

by Peter Lowry

In a life in politics, you deal with many a municipal politician. I expect the dorkiest I ever had to deal with was a little guy named Mel Lastman. Mel was an entrepreneur in business and in politics. He was a showman. He dealt with political controversy as though it was a marketing problem. He was a conservative without the philosophy. He was a politician who liked people. He died the other day at 88.

Mel sold himself short when he first ran in North York. At a time of shifting alliances in Toronto and its surrounding boroughs, he ran to be one of the four controllers in North York. Many of us liberals in North York were amused by his campaign but he had strong name recognition because of his furniture and appliances stores. The old hands at North York city hall and Metropolitan Toronto gave him a rough time. It made him more determined. The next election, he ran for mayor in North York and was unstoppable.

It is easy to admit that it was always fun to deal with Mel. He had the only city hall office that I had been in that had its own telephone booth. He was a bit quirky. I thought of his office as Mel’s Cabinet of Curios.

But he was also very fair. As a ratepayer president for my community, I always considered Mel the last resort. We shared a lot of platforms together for various events and elections. He was always unfailingly jovial and interested in what I had to say.

Once there was a dust-up over some proposed high-rise apartments and Mel stepped in to mediate. I knew darn well that he was a good buddy of the developer and that the only sensible solution was to get the most out of the deal for my community as possible. That meant taking a middle of the road position and I can tell you from experience that going out into the middle of the road in politics gets you run over.

I think Mel made his mistake when he took the leap from North York to the cloistered clamshell of Toronto’s city hall because of the forced amalgamation to the larger city. He had moved out of his comfort zone. He was too old and I think he missed his telephone booth. Mel Lastman was one of a kind.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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Carry on John.

by Peter Lowry

Despite having sat on many boards over the years and chaired a few—and this includes business boards as well as charitable and political and (the very worst) condominium boards, I have never been paid a cent for my efforts. I thought it was all done for free. Sure, I know that there are honoraria for outside business directors but when you are also an employee, it is part of the job.

But lately we have been hearing about annual honoraria in the category of $100,000 and up. And we are wondering why?

Why would Toronto mayor, John Tory, be paid $100,000 per year by Rogers?

Many of us were aware that Tory had worked for Rogers in previous years. Until the Toronto Star dropped the bomb on us the other morning, we might not have known he is still being paid by Rogers. The Star tells us he is paid for being an advisor to the family trust that runs Rogers. No doubt the Star’s minions at city hall are busy searching the voting records to see how many times the mayor should have, or did, declare a conflict of interest.

I would expect that a person of Tory’s integrity would have bent over backwards to avoid any complaint or possible conflict.

With this present term, Tory will complete eight years as mayor of Toronto. And despite his conservative party background and leanings, I was delighted to support his initial candidacy. He might be old school, but he is one of the good guys.

In the past eight years, John Tory has earned our trust. He has been an outstanding mayor in a rapidly growing and complex city and in troubled times. He has been there for the city, for its people and has been relentless in serving their needs. He has been a mayor in the style of a Hazel McCallion of Mississauga, a Naheed Nenshi of Calgary, though not quite as acerbic as the famous Charlotte Whitton of Ottawa.

More than anything else, John Tory has been there for Torontonians in the face of a 100-year pandemic. He has provided leadership, confidence and good sense for millions. He has done the job.

And we can view his annual stipend from Rogers as just part of his pension. He deserves it for what he has to put up with. And if he wants a third term as mayor, the only answer is: Carry on John!

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

What’s in a Name?

by Peter Lowry

Now they have done it. The lame brains on Toronto city council are actually discussing changing street names because of real or imagined transgressions in the past. All I know is that Peter Street in Toronto is a fine name for a street. I have no idea who it was named after and I don’t care. It’s a keeper.

But John Street is another matter. There have been some disreputable John’s over the years. I had a brother named John. It would probably be nice to honour him, though his first wife might disagree. She is a nice lady, check with her.

Some of my other brothers could be appropriate street names. George Street in Toronto was a fashionable address some hundred or so years ago. Since then, the downtown street has fallen into disrepute. Maybe the city fathers and mothers could find a nice street in Rosedale or Lawrence Park more befitting my late brother George. He was a great and much-loved guy but he would be embarrassed having St. George Street named for him.

Two more brothers, who live in the United States, already have nice Toronto streets bearing their names. I noticed in checking one of the streets, that a house there was for sale for two-and-a-half million. That is not much considering today’s prices but much more than in the Wellesley and Sherbourne area where we lived as kids.

Maybe Toronto should solve the whole stupid naming business by numbering the streets. That way, north-south streets could have the even numbers, east-west streets would have the odd numbers and roads that curved or ran diagonally could be named crescents or avenues and could be named after former mayors and councillors. That way everyone would be happy except for some people on avenues.

I remember when the city confiscated homes and ran Dundas Street East through, for the people out at the Beach. The new Dundas replaced some of the old street names in Toronto’s east end and a few vocal locals were mad about the change. They thought most people considered Dundas a sleazy street in the downtown area of the city. I thought they were bigoted. Dundas Street, at that time, had the best Chinese restaurants in the city, where the street ran through Chinatown.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

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Brampton’s mayor is not Barrie’s best!

by Peter Lowry

As outsiders, Barrie residents might not know as much about politics in Brampton but we sure know the mayor. In a straight trade for Brampton’s former mayor for Patrick Brown, we know we would have got the best of the deal. The one thing for sure is that in a head-to-head race against the incumbent mayor in his home town, Patrick knew he would be lucky to get 25 per cent of the vote.

And it is not as though the Brampton mayoralty is what Patrick wanted. He was at loose-ends, after resigning (under duress) from the leadership of Ontario’s provincial conservatives. He had noted that the now to-be-elected chair of Peel position was up for grabs and that job looked like it would pay as much as $200,000 per year. It was akin to being super-mayor of Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga. Patrick went for the brass ring.

That was until the new conservative leader Doug Ford heard about his plans and cancelled the election for chair in Peel. Patrick took a quick look at the mayoralty situation in Brampton—since that was where his base vote to win the Peel chair was located anyway. Patrick’s strength is hardly in his looks, sartorial elegance or pleasing personality. He is a student of politics and some people think of him as a fair-to-middling retail politician. (A retail politician is one that can sell the folks back home but never has reason to raise hand or head in parliament.)

Patrick’s punch in Brampton is the 44 per cent of people there with roots in the Indian subcontinent. All he had to do was promise to convert most of Brampton’s parks into cricket fields. The years of the British Raj in the subcontinent had developed an inordinate love of cricket. And when only about 35 per cent of municipal voters bother to vote, Patrick’s ploy prevailed.

Not that the road has been smooth since. Patrick is just as confused by the pandemic as any other inept politician. He gets his licks by pointing out the paucity of hospitals in Brampton, trying to manipulate his city councilors and interfering with Brampton’s human relations. Barrie doesn’t miss him.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Those pesky preferential ballots.

by Peter Lowry

It is always good to hear from loyal readers. And from some readers who enjoy arguing. One of the frequent arguments is over different types of voting. In more than 4,000 commentaries posted in Babel-on-the-Bay over the past ten years, I get the most comments about this aspect of our Canadian politics. The archived Democracy Papers on voting systems, from 2007, still draw daily interest from countries around the world.

One of my regular readers is true to his home town of London, Ontario. He wrote the other day to tell me, once again, how well preferential voting works for that city.

As much as I like and admire Ontario’s London and have visited the city many times on business, political activities and to see friends, I hardly think the city has had enough experience with preferential voting.

Let me explain a situation where preferential voting at the municipal level would have been a disaster. This is real: We had a situation in the mayoralty race in a city of similar size to London. The candidates included the incumbent mayor, a recently defeated member of the legislature, a previous, likeable mayor, two councillors hoping for a crack at the mayoralty and three other candidates in the ‘also ran’ category. The reality in that race was that nobody had much chance of getting 50 per cent of the vote.

The danger under preferential voting was that the candidate with the most second choice votes would be the winner.

The candidate I was helping was one of the councillors. He lacked the experience of the other four serious contenders. His campaign chair asked me to run the ground game for him. This involved analyzing areas of high turn-out to send the candidate to canvas, selecting polls for canvassers and for literature drops and then recording results for election day action, as well as analyzing the reports.

After a hot summer of canvassing, I knew my candidate would win handily under first-past-the-post rules. He did with 39 per cent of the vote.

But under preferential voting, my candidate might have lost. The former, likeable, mayor would have gathered most of the second-choice votes. If he had run a stronger campaign, under preferential voting, he would have been more of a threat to my candidate.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Pondering the politics of the potty.

by Peter Lowry

There are issues that people will step up to and there are issues that cause them to smirk and back away. I was reading a very intelligent story the other day about the politics of the toilet and the need for our politicians to grow backbones. To quote a current television commercial about toilet paper: “Everybody does it.” And our politicians have to recognize it.

But it happens at the most elemental level of politics that people are unwilling to face the issue. I took a problem to my city’s mayor over two years ago and it still has not been fixed. I worked hard to get that guy elected ten years ago and he is in the middle of his third term in the mayor’s chair. And yet, he cannot handle the need for public toilets in a city of around 150,000 and summer visitors in the tens of thousands.

I have checked out venues around the world for people to meet, to congregate, to be entertained and to enjoy food and I have always walked away from facilities with inadequate or inconvenient washroom facilities for the numbers expected. It is part of looking after your guests.

Well, I can tell you now: Do not come to Barrie, Ontario if you cannot say no to your basic human need to go to the toilet.

I told the mayor that my barber was frequently requested to provide toilet facilities to desperate people from across the street at the GO Train terminus. Since there are no Go Train employees working in that location, they think that toilets are unnecessary. The provincially run commuter train and bus service expects people to wait for trains and busses but there are no toilets at that terminal. They have a ghost station on the property, the historic Allandale Station, that cost the citizens of Barrie considerable money to restore, but nobody has ever thought to restore its old washrooms or use it for any other purpose.

Frankly, the mayor and council in Barrie have shown no backbone at all. They pretend they do not pee or poop like anybody else!

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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry

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

Breaking Faith with Canadians.

by Peter Lowry

Before people started accepting news in free form as whatever was trending on social media, we were encouraging business and government to work together. We called it by various names such as business-government partnerships but the essential component was the need to understand that the ultimate beneficiary was supposed to be the Canadian public.

In the late 1980s, one of the more remarkable examples of this partnership was SkyDome in Toronto, where the Blue Jays came to play baseball. At a shared public-private cost of around $600 million, few people really understood the benefits to the people of Toronto, of Ontario or Canada.

For one, it put more lustre for Toronto on the world map. It generated billions in tourism. It drove a steady stream of rebuilding to that part of Canada’s largest city. It helped bring Toronto to life. At least it did until ignorant provincial politicians paid off the debt of about $400 million and sold the building to private interests, including Labatt Breweries, for $151 million. Which seemed like quite a bargain despite the continued financial problems of the time. Labatt’s solution was to sell SkyDome in 2004 to Rogers Communications for $25 million.

But the death knell of any landmark is when you try to give it a new and commercial name. It is still our SkyDome, to us old time baseball fans.

But would you believe that these people who got SkyDome for a song, are now talking about tearing it down. They think they can build another smaller baseball park, with natural grass, nearby.

This new park would be further ‘enhanced,’ according to the proponents with new condominiums and office towers to improve the revenues from the property.

Luckily, the land that SkyDome sits on is not part of the deal for which these schemers paid so little. The lands are leased from a federal government-owned company that specify the only use for these old railway lands is for a ball park and entertainment facility. We might be lucky if this agency says ‘No’ to this new plan.

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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry

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