Category: Municipal Politics

The Weakness of Democracy.

by Peter Lowry

Nobody ever said that democracy is perfect. It is just expected to be better than any of the alternatives. After more than a few years of trying to understand democracy, as we practice it in Canada, I find it frustrating that people do not give it the thoughts and inspection it needs to serve us all better. A good example of the problems is what is happening in regard to the byelection in Toronto next Monday for a replacement mayor.

It is important to note that this byelection is not for a temporary position. It is for the next three years. It is at a time when Toronto faces serious problems. The city is tying itself in knots with its successes. It is becoming an unaffordable place for people. It is a city built for motorized delivery systems, where the streets are clogged with personal automobiles and systems for moving people have become too expensive and too politicized.

It is a city needing compassion. The homeless are unwanted and largely ignored. We live in a climate where you have to house the indigent. We need permanent housing, not just emergency solutions at the time. The bright lights of the city attract them. We have to accommodate them. And yet we continue to hurt them.

And how does this mesh with our democracy? According to the overly broadcast polling, we will elect someone ill-inclined to help solve the problems. In city council and in parliament, Olivia Chow has proved she is but a nebbish, taking, not giving on city council or in parliament. She practices a harsh socialism, without compassion.

Maybe there are just too many in the race for the byelection to really understand the potential of some of the candidates. There are only two though who bring some expertise to the problems facing the city council. In an effective democracy, inquiring minds would be searching out these two candidates and getting out and supporting one or the other.

And the critical need is leadership. Which of the two is capable of leading city council over the next three years? I give you Ana Bailão and Mitzie Hunter. They both have the skills needed, though Mitzie Hunter is the more experienced politician. If you really want to do something worthwhile next Monday vote for one of them.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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They are all Super Mayors.

by Peter Lowry

The idea of Barrie’s mayor being given undemocratic powers by the province is hilarious. In a poll to determine the least competent mayor in Ontario, our mayor might be, at least, a close runner-up. This is the guy the local conservatives sent to Ottawa as an MP by some 86 votes, and only stayed for one term. Maybe he found it difficult to find the parliament in Ottawa when the house was sitting. Maybe it was because they didn’t give him anything important to do.

It is damn lucky that this guy is permanently out-voted on city council by his conservative peers. The very thought of him having any power to do anything is frightening. This is the guy who supported Maxime Bernier to be leader of the federal conservatives. He came back to Barrie and, I guess, nobody seemed to want to rush to give him a job, so he ran for mayor. And won, because people knew his name.

He was following a mayor who actually did some hard work for the past 12 years. The mayor ran for the Ontario liberals last year and got creamed. Last I heard, he was working for the regional council up in Muskoka, probably helping them keep Muskoka for tourists.

One of the reasons you have to laugh at all this super mayor business is that the key words in the provincial announcement are “To support us.” In other words, you get to have these super powers as long as you do what you are told. Municipalities in Ontario are not only creatures of the provincial government but now they are enslaved to it. A friend, who loves chatting about politics, speculated that this might be all very well for the Tories but what if an NDP government follows them at Queen’s Park? And all those conservative mayors start rebelling.

Never forget we have this fiction in Ontario that there is no party politics at the municipal or school board levels. That is crap. All parties tend to select people who have gone through the starter stages of politics with school boards and local councils. This is to determine if they are the stuff for higher office. Even Doug Ford had to start at Toronto city council to determine if he could survive at the provincial level. Mind you, even our mayor in Barrie could pass on a few political tips to Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Like the Shot Fired on Fort Sumter.

by Peter Lowry

There was no way the peace would last. Surely the late Hazel McCallion must have warned her replacement, Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, about that pissant Patrick Brown in Brampton. Mayor Brown of Brampton gave fair warning at the opening of the province’s plan for Peel that he would contest any nickel Brampton might potentially lose in dividing up Peel County assets.

The sneaky Brampton mayor went for the jugular of premier Ford’s promise of 113,000 homes in the area in the next eight years. At Brown’s timely called news conference, he claimed he doesn’t know who is going to pay for the upgrading of the sewage capacity. He added that he has 9,000 housing units already on hold because of the lack of clarity on the sewage funding.

Brown’s point in this, and it seems a fair point, is that the so-called Hazel McCallion Act makes no mention of who is paying for what in the new arrangement of Peel County. These decisions are supposed to be made by the five-person transition team that has yet to be appointed by the province.

For mayor Bonnie Crombie in Mississauga, Brown is creating all kinds of headaches. Crombie has long been a cheerleader for the different components of Peel going their own way. As it stands at present, each of the three municipalities and the county have their own responsibilities and taxation structure. What is supposed to emerge in less than two years is three new free-standing municipalities, each happily doing their own thing.

That is not so simple when the Peel Police look after Brampton and Mississauga, Water being supplied to Brampton by Mississauga and the list of confused services goes on.

If I thought for a moment that premier Ford was devious, I would have guessed he did this to keep Bonnie Crombie in municipal politics instead of contesting the Ontario liberal leadership and going after his job. I think he is afraid of her.

But he could have saved the province a lot of headaches and combined costs by simply amalgamating Brampton with Mississauga. Instead of two cities with all the costs that implies and about three-quarters of a million population each, Ontario could have one new city of one and a half million. That might change Bonnie Crombie’s direction.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Chowing Down.

by Peter Lowry

There is no sadder thought to consider than Toronto with a mayor named Olivia Chow. And the fault would be blamed by some on the first-past-the-post voting. I deny that. It just serves to prove that you should not have first-past-the-post voting without run-off elections. How can you accept anyone as mayor of Canada’s largest city with less than 30 per cent of the vote.

And that can happen. Olivia Chow was never a good councilor. What makes anyone want her as mayor? Do Torontonians really want the pollsters and robot phone calls to tell them who to choose? Toronto needs a chief executive. That is not the role for this widow in her sixties. It is not just that time has past her by. She has never had any training or preparation for the role.

The reason that John Tory was so good at being mayor was because he had been training for the role for a lifetime. Toronto needs someone who can lead a very mixed and contentious council and do the right things. They should stop arguing about bicycles and deal with the economics of a large and dynamic city.

They have got to stop the extension of rules and build homes. They need geared to income housing. They need safe beds for the homeless. The city cannot wait for bumblers. It cannot wait for handouts from senior governments. It needs clear cut action. It needs leadership.

And it is not because Chow is a woman. There are two other women in the top seven and both of them have far more training for the role of mayor than Chow.  One of them is Ana Bailão, a former councilor and John Tory’s lead in housing. She has far more of the experience needed than Chow. The other is former MPP Mitzie Hunter who actually has experience in running Toronto housing. This is another very impressive woman with the experience to get the Toronto mayor’s job done over the next three years. And there are four men who think they are qualified but that might only be in the mind of Premier Doug Ford.

Advance polls are already open. Be sure to vote by June 26. But think first. Toronto does not need incompetence in the mayor’s chair at this critical time.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Moon, June and By-elections.

by Peter Lowry

It might not rhyme but there is nothing more exciting than a bunch of by-elections. And June is my favourite month for them. Warm, sunny weather gets the political canvassers moving. It’s a super month for getting out the vote. And we’ve got a great mix: four federal by-elections and a big city mayoralty.

And nobody is sneering at the Toronto mayoralty. Where else would you get over 100 candidates. (I think it is just a rumour that one of the candidates is a dog.) When you figure that the Toronto mayor gets paid close to $200,000 per year, you would think there would be more citizens who would want the job.

But we have four federal by-elections a week before the Toronto event. And you don’t often have a pissed-off conservative retiree out stumping for a liberal successor. That is in Oxford riding in Ontario. It is just another misstep by leader Poilievre putting his candidate into the once considered safe conservative seat.

That would be the same as the liberals feeling insecure in the absolutely safe liberal NDG-Westmount riding in Montreal that has been occupied by MP Marc Garneau for the past 15 years. It is an honourable retirement for Marc. Another liberal is expected to replace him.

And that little worm Poilievre has more to worry about than just Oxford in Ontario. The late Jim Carr’s riding of Winnipeg-South-Centre, despite some high jinks to do with an enlarged number of names on the ballot, is expected to stay liberal.

It is former conservative MP Candice Bergen’s Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar that might bite Pierre on the bum. Peoples’ Party leader Maxime Bernier is working his little heart out to win that riding. A really down and dirty fight between Bernier’s extreme right-wing peoples’ party and the conservatives could split the right and elect a NDP or even a liberal.

The only race where the NDP are even at play is in the Toronto mayoralty. And it has little to do with party politics. There is this six or seven-person clump of candidates that has only one NDP facing off with a bunch of conservatives and a liberal. The problem is that more prospective voters know the NDP candidate’s name. It is this name recognition that is confusing the pollsters. They think that if they report that a has-been like Chow is in the lead frequently enough, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Personally, I always like to surprise the pollsters.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Follow Polls at Your Peril.

by Peter Lowry

Reading political polls is a trap but we all do it. Polls are never that accurate. Polls can mislead us. Polls are always old news. At their best, they report history. Not only do some people consider pollsters intrusive, but people often lie to them.

The worst type of polls are the robotic ones—they are the type where a recorded voice asks you to press one for candidate “X” and two for candidate “Y” etc. You can never prove to me that the kids in that household don’t answer the home telephone. They hardly want to tie up that phone by giving it to a parent, so they obligingly press a few guesses for the pollster.

But how ever the dirty was done, pollsters wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time on tweaking polls for the news media. I never shared my polls for my candidates with the news media and I really don’t know what the current arrangements are with the pollsters for the free advertising.

I am expecting, with some trepidation, the first scam artist who sets up a phony political poll that enables the scammer to get you to press more than a few numbers and you find that you have bought a few acres of a swamp. I hope at that point our lackadaisical telecom regulators will put an end to robotic telephone calls.

The real purpose of this opinion piece was to comment on the polls in Toronto in regards to the upcoming mayoralty race. I think if we are going to have over 100 candidates in an election or by-election, there should be some sort of preliminary process that allows the voters to choose the debaters instead of letting the pollsters make the decision.

So far, the polls have conclusively convinced us that the NDP candidate has the best name recognition among the 102 candidates for mayor. Olivia Chow is very lucky to have no serious NDP competition but there are certainly candidates with better credentials than Chow. And there is lots of time for a loser such as Chow to drop to third again as she did last time that she ran, nine years ago. She came third behind two conservative candidates. John Tory and Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Toronto: Neither Broke, Nor Broken.

by Peter Lowry

I find this campaign for the mayoralty in Toronto on June 26 to be quite boring. It reminds me of the old song: “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before.” It is an old Helen Forrest number she did with Harry James in the heyday of Swing. It is part of the wife’s repertoire of Swing era songs and I have heard her sing it many times.

First of all, Toronto is not broken, neither financially nor in the operational sense. To say that is to give up. This city has opportunities yet unknown. It needs rental housing, transit, ever-growing and necessary networks of storm and sanitary sewers. It needs firm and judicious hands on its policing. It needs compassionate understanding of the homeless. Sure, the city needs constant repairs to infrastructure and new infrastructure for tomorrow. It desperately needs geared-to-income housing. And all of this seems to be needed at the same time.

Confusion and chaos are hardly unique to Toronto. I have driven in just about every major city in Canada as well as in the United States from Boston to Los Angeles and from Miami to Seattle. I was in Boston a couple times during what they called ‘The Big Dig” and I later tried the solution it offered. The difference was amazing. Toronto’s closing down Queen Street from York to Victoria for two years is a serious inconvenience but the outcome should be worth it.

One thing I always admired about John Tory as mayor is that he can keep a lot of balls in the air. I keep watching for that ability among those with a potential to replace Tory. The former police chief is a non-starter. Olivia Chow is too old, too out of the running and of no consequence. Josh Matlow is too shrill. Ana Bailão seems to lack the understanding of the suburbs. Brad Bradford is too close to the premier. I must admit that the mixed background of Mitzie Hunter looks better every day.

Nobody is going to fix all of Toronto’s problems overnight. Even the very controlled administrations in Chicago and New York go from one panic to another. Los Angeles really is one great big freeway. And nobody wants the problems of Miami.

Voters in this Toronto by-election have to care about their city. It will be the most important decision they will make before the provincial election in June of 2026.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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A Progressive Mayor for Toronto.

by Peter Lowry

There is only one real progressive in the top ten candidates for mayor of Toronto on June 26. I base this on looking at the candidates who have shown themselves to be progressive in their thinking and their actions while working in the interests of people and while in politics. Maybe I am too rigid in my assessment of others but they are the same standards that I expect of myself.

Some people tend to identify with progressives when it is convenient. And in the same way, I do not assume that membership in the new democratic party entitles one to angel wings. I have now spent more than 60 years in the liberal party and must admit there are damn few of us who have earned the right to call ourselves progressive. Politicians such as Lloyd Axworthy in Winnipeg or the late Herb Grey from Windsor are few and far between. It was not that I did not respect some of the less progressive. There are those who will listen. There are those who appreciate a better way. And there are those who seek the easiest way.

Take Josh Matlow for example. He seems to go with the flow. He can call himself progressive but we have seen no actions to prove it. He was part of the team with John Tory which means he was less progressive. I also like John Tory. He not only listens but puts himself out for people. It does not make him progressive. Tory used those super powers offered by the premier only once. It was like a teenager trying out his dad’s car for the first time. Super powers are not so super if you need the permission of a parent to use them.

I have followed the career of Olivia Chow for many years as she made her way up the broken ladder of the new democrats. I particularly disliked her representation of the Toronto Islands when that part of the city was in her downtown ward. The islands belong to all Torontonians. They are part of our heritage. Her attitude was hardly progressive.

I also think she leans too heavily on the mystique of Jack Layton. It was a lovely funeral but politically motivated. Stephen Harper got more out of that state funeral than the NDPers recognized. Even for the dead, Harper showed his dislike of people.

And, oh yes, if you really want a progressive mayor in Toronto, the only possible winner for you is Mitzie Hunter. She is the progressive candidate. She knows housing, she knows where the cash controls are in Queen’s Park and Ottawa.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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The Midwifery of Premier Ford.

by Peter Lowry

It sometimes appears that Ontario premier Ford has a long-held hate for Ontario cities. It reflects on his experiences as a councillor in Toronto during the final days of brother Rob Ford’s life and mayoralty. The crack-cocaine smoking younger brother taught brother Doug about municipal politics and turned him loose before all the lessons were learned and tested. And the oddities of fate could never again repeat the steps that took the older brother into the premier’s office at Queen’s Park.

But in that position of power, Doug Ford continues to baffle us all with his un-studied, erratic manipulations of the municipal scene in Ontario. His latest has given Peel Region of Ontario less than two years to disassemble the solutions of the last 50 years in the fastest growing region of Ontario. One commentator on provincial politics in the Toronto Star questioned recently whether Ford was acting as a divorce broker or a municipal midwife?

Peel Region has had a confused gestation and Doug Ford has more than confused its future. It is though he was the midwife who dropped the child on its head before swaddling it and dumping the problems on the three new municipalities.

Bear in mind that Peel Region is the old County of Toronto with its many sleepy small towns west of the city of Toronto. When those small towns woke to their rapid growth as parts of Peel Region, they fought back. Those were well-established and affluent towns down by the lake that were the new base of the City of Mississauga. They picked a winner when they got behind Streetsville’s Hazel McCallion. She built a unique and quickly identified downtown Mississauga as an aggressive and street-smart mayor.

Brampton was the other city of the region and it originally lived off provincial benevolence such as the Ontario Provincial Police regional facilities. The years of Brampton’s Bill Davis as premier of Ontario hardly held Brampton’s growth back. Brampton soon won the accolades as the fastest growing municipality in the fastest growing region.

While I still tend to question Doug ford’s motivation in his changing Peel Region, it is more obvious that Brampton and Mississauga combined would make a major contribution to Ontario and Canada. A Mississauga of more that 1.4 million people has more leverage and is more practical than two cities of about 700,000 each.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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‘What Fools These Mortals Be.’

by Peter Lowry

It hardly needs William Shakespeare to know how foolish we can be. All you have to do is follow the bouncing ball from Queen’s Park in Toronto. If you ever believe you can trust anything you hear from Ontario premier Doug Ford, you are just another damn fool. I still cannot understand why anyone would believe anything that would come out of his mouth.

And to add insult, he has used the name of the late mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion, on the provincial bill that will separate Brampton and Caledon from the City of Mississauga. Sure, Hazel was always eager to see Mississauga out of the trap of supporting Brampton and Caledon but who are these conservatives on the ‘transition board’ the premier is going to appoint to do the separation surgery? They have less than two years to get the job done.

The only possible way to save a nickel on this Peel-less arrangement is to merge Brampton into Mississauga. That would leave Caledon out in the cold but it would be the least serious financial problem for the province. With luck and good management at the helm in the new enlarged City of Mississauga, there would be some major cost savings. And this would be substantially more than the Brampton Mayor’s salary.

Mississauga would not have to recompense Brampton for water services. The Peel regional police headquarters is already in Mississauga and it can probably serve the enlarged city quite satisfactorily. The loudest arguments you would hear would be from old timers in Brampton who will not like the name change. You would have to explain to them patiently that the Mississauga aboriginal tribes predated the Flower City of Brampton by many centuries.

And let’s face it, there is the tradition of merging in the area. While Hazel McCallion fought hard against her Town of Streetsville being merged into Mississauga in 1974, she accepted the situation and ran to represent her town on the new council. She soon proved to both council and the voters in Mississauga that she could run their city.

This might not be the case with Brampton’s mayor Patrick Brown.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]