Category: Municipal Politics

Brown Out.

by Peter Lowry

Yes, we are aware that the Ontario government is concerned about the supply of electricity to the province. The question is: Can we get the Brown Out we need? We are talking here about the beautiful city of Brampton. Can we get that Brown out?

Just four years ago, Patrick Brown was scurrying around Ontario looking for a new political hole to crawl into. The former city councillor from Barrie, the former MP from Simcoe County, the former MP from Barrie, and former leader of the Ontario conservatives and former MPP has not had much experience at holding a real job.

The Ontario conservatives refused to let him run for his old job again. He tried for the new job as chair of Peel County in 2018 but the new conservative leader, Doug Ford, nixed that idea. Brown’s solution was to run for mayor in the city of Brampton, the second largest city in Peel County. Despite some confusing excursions into federal politics over the past four years, Patrick Brown’s name is on the ballot again this year in Brampton. And this year there is some fierce competition for the job.

I met Patrick in Barrie when he first ran for federal politics in 2006. I did not like him then. To me, he represented the sleaziest aspect of politics. I have met politicians of all stripes in 60 years of politics. I have always been repulsed by those who made a career of it. I hardly see the point of people under 30 seeking political office. There have been very few who have proved worthy.

Brown’s reputation was already there to see. He was considered a retail politician. He told you what he thought you wanted to hear. He played the game on the edges of legality. He found out you cannot charge a trip to the United Nations as an MP when all you are going to New York for is to run in a marathon. How much time his staff spent on his promotional fund raising for charity was always in question. More than once I came close to demanding an audit on some of his claimed expenses in various campaigns. I resented the government expense charges for his trips to India to build his contacts among the south Asian diaspora in Canada.

And there was no surprise that he swamped the Ontario conservative party’s membership with temporary sign-ups among that south Asian diaspora to win the Ontario leadership. He seemed to have limitless funds available, as I was told paying party membership was optional. He obviously got caught when he tried similar tricks for the federal party.

But it’s up to the voters in Brampton to turf Brown out in this election. Please.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The Demeaning of Democracy.

by Peter Lowry

Setting sights on local politics the other day, was a severe disappointment. I was fooled by the democracy Barrie enjoyed with the mayor we had for the past 12 years. I helped Jeff Leman get elected 12 years ago but I guess he didn’t think this has-been was needed when he tried to move up to provincial politics earlier this year. He lost.

I think, if he understood the situation in his electoral district better, he might have won. He took on Doug Ford’s minister of justice without targeting his opponent’s weaknesses. There were no shoo-ins for liberals in that election.

But back to the mayoralty. I did not go to the only candidate meeting near me the other day because it was a small venue and would be crowded. And there were to be no questions. What kind of a political meeting is that?

I read about the meeting in the local digital newspaper the next day. There are two local conservatives running head-to-head for the mayor’s spot in this civic election. Of the seven candidates, three seem to be getting some strong support. Long-time Barrie reporter, Bob Bruton gave over most of his report to Ward 10 councillor, Mike McCann, former conservative MP Alex Nuttall and deputy mayor Barry Ward. Watching Nuttall and Ward when both were on city council was never an exciting event. I have not seen enough of Mike McCann to form an opinion.

Nuttall was just a one-time MP. His support for libertarian Maxime Bernier against Andrew Scheer must have convinced him to quit. It was obvious that he was out of his depth in the nation’s capital. He appeared to make no contribution. With the narrowness of his win in 2014, he obviously did no want to waste the effort in the next election.

Thinking back to Alex Nuttall’s performance when he was a Barrie councillor was also an exercise in uselessness. I never saw where he made a positive contribution in that role either.

Sure, it is easy to come up with the right promises. Mind you, Nuttall takes them all from the conservative handbook. He says he is going to do all the right things while keeping the tax rate down. That is really a promise to do nothing.

Most of the progressives in town tell me they are going along with Barry Ward. They figure he will screw up things the least.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Battles of Brampton’s Brown.

by Peter Lowry

There is not much excitement forecast for the upcoming municipal elections in Ontario on October 24. The exception is likely to be the mayoralty in Brampton. The current mayor, Patrick Brown, has decided to run for re-election and a fierce fight is brewing. He is hardly your usual conservative mayor.

Brampton is a city passing 700,000 in population with more than 40 per cent of the population having ties to the Indian Sub-continent. Brown, who is from Barrie, Ontario and a former member of parliament for Simcoe County electoral districts has ties to this south Asian contingent of voters. One of his promises to the Sikh community, to first get elected mayor of Brampton, was to convert more of Brampton’s beautiful parks into cricket pitches.

It was his ties to this south Asian diaspora that led Brown from federal politics to Ontario politics. He swamped the membership of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party with south Asian sign-ups and, for a while, was leader of the Ontario conservatives. There was considerable agreement when he stepped down from the provincial leadership and sought solace in municipal politics—first in Peel County and then, selectively, in Brampton.

Brown really knows very little about anything other than politics. He had no trouble defeating the incumbent mayor in Brampton. It provided him with a comfortable catbird seat from which to keep his name alive through the media. He bode his time and jumped into the federal conservative leadership. That adventure was a story on its own. He only signed up 100,000 new (and probably temporary) conservatives. He also got himself ejected from the race.

But Brown is back in Brampton running again for mayor. This time, Brown is facing five other challengers for the mayoralty. Three of the opponents have Sikh names.

The most interesting of Brown’s opponents is Nikki Kaur (Kaur means princess in Punjabi). Ms. Kaur is a lawyer and an employee of the municipality who was fired and then re-instated. She is supported by people such as Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, former liberal premier Dalton, McGinty and conservative apparatchik Nick Kouvalis, who is also helping run John Tory’s mayoralty campaign in Toronto.

It could spell continued bad times for Brown.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Use It or Lose It.

by Peter Lowry

Have you ever noticed that a building site is acquired, plans go through municipal council, everything is ready and for the next two years, nothing has happened. There are many excuses for the lack of action and many reasons it can be to the developer’s advantage. It is why Toronto mayor John Tory has said he will ask the Ontario government for a ‘use it or lose it’ law as part of the super-mayor appointment.

There are many pairs of eyes warily watching this possibility. They are mostly from ratepayer groups who want to keep their neighbourhoods restricted to single-family dwellings. They want to keep house prices up and density down. It is selfish, anti-social and greedy. I always figured that people who did not want to live in a high-density city environment could find plenty of room for their picket fence and acre of lawn to mow, out in the country. They could also learn to enjoy the commute.

As a one-time ratepayers’ association president in Toronto, I watched the toadying of councillors, the machinations of developers and the gullibility of home owners, and I did not like it.

One time when my group learned about two proposed apartment towers near our community, I invited the developer to come to one of our meetings and tell us about the project. He was so surprised at a ratepayers group inviting him that he even brought his lawyer.

While I enjoyed his presentation and thought the proposal beneficial to the community, some of the hard-nosed in the group where out for blood. I kept quiet about my feelings on the subject.

To keep the usual story short, we soon had mayor Mel Lastman (of North York at the time) involved. Mel did his usual flimflamming and we soon had two of the tallest apartment towers in North York just down the road.

Surprisingly, John Tory is the only mayoralty candidate I know of who could get away with such an anti-developer and anti-ratepayer proposal. The ratepayers are not going to realize the danger in the super-mayor proposal in time and the developers will have no choice anyway.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Ford’s Missing Ingredient.

by Peter Lowry

Some days, you wish that Ontario premier Doug Ford knew what he is doing. As premier, he is busy rearranging Ontario’s municipal politics. It shows how much harm a little knowledge can cause. He is trying to create a strong mayor system for Ontario’s larger cities without much understanding of what is needed.

The simplest way to explain the problem is that for a strong mayor system to work, you have to have political party support. It is the very rare situation where a really strong mayor can hold together a council without either a political party endorsement or a personal popularity that is equivalent to a strong party endorsement.

Toronto has had a quasi-political system for years. We have had mayors from all major parties. Most progressive mayor’s have had the support of other progressives. The current mayor, John Tory has been effective at pulling together support from the suburban right wing. Despite nobody wearing party name tags, Toronto has moved along—sluggishly—but with persuasion.

The least effective example of Toronto mayors was Doug Ford’s younger brother Rob. A right-wing populist, Rob was a loose cannon. As a background to Doug Ford’s strong mayor plan, Rob was the last person who could have made it work.

The person who could have made it work was David Crombie, Toronto’s ‘Tiny, Perfect Mayor.’ David won the mayoralty as head of a bunch of reformers in 1972. I had always enjoyed arguing politics with him until his little mob in city hall tried to stifle development, rather than to control it properly. What helped David win the mayoralty was the liberal party being honest about its participation in municipal politics. A lot of liberals lost that year. David was elected as a federal conservative MP in 1978 and I have not spoken to him since.

To elect a strong mayor, such as Ford envisages, will not work unless the mayor can get a majority of the council behind him or her. The easiest way to make that work is to invite the major political parties to run candidates for the mayor and councillor seats on city council. And that is about to happen?

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Home Town Haunting.

by Peter Lowry

Barrie is beset by bad decisions this summer. The city lost a good mayor when Jeff Lehman decided to finally make the move to Queen’s Park. Poor timing on his part. He was left adrift and defeated by weak liberal leadership.

I was there to help, if he had thought to ask me. We have different views of what leadership means. He needed to recognize the needs of the people in the rural areas of our electoral district. Taking on an incumbent is far trickier than a fresh field.

But the major cause for concern is Lehman’s lack of planning for the future, particularly in filling the mayor’s chair. Who wants their legacy smeared by leaving their job to the town fool?

And that is one of the possibilities looking at the early registrations. First to file was boy wonder, former councillor, former MP, Alex Nuttall. Nuttall was a disciple of Patrick Brown—the former Barrie councillor, former MP, former leader of the Ontario conservatives and currently mayor of Brampton. It was Nuttall who moved into Patrick Brown’s proposed riding of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte. He came within 86 votes of losing and he was hardly gracious at the recount.

It took him one term in Ottawa, to know he was out of his depth. His one contribution during that period was to work for Maxime Bernier who almost beat Andrew Scheer for the leadership of the conservatives—and went on to found the extremist People’s Party of Canada. To further prove he had no political smarts, Nuttall was a worker for Peter Mackay’s run for the leadership in 2020.

I admit that I have never liked Alex Nuttall. He was a confused and negative influence on city council. He was a useless member of parliament. His fighting against Barrie having a safe consumption site when he was in Ottawa was based on ignorance. He contributed less in Ottawa than the mice that run over the MP’s feet in their offices.

But I am going to have to pay attention in my own town as we head for this fall’s municipal elections. There is a city here that needs protection from ghosts of the past.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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There is no joy in Brampton.

by Peter Lowry

Something smells in Brampton, Ontario, and it is not the roses that the city is famous for. Patrick Brown has returned to confuse and compound. A lost boy, Patrick clings to Brampton as his life raft in a stormy sea.

The former city councillor and Member of Parliament for Barrie, Ontario never has been tuned into the Brampton mysteries. He never understood the understated humour of former premier of Ontario Bill Davis. Bill was always proud of being from Brampton. It is a small town with grand ambitions.

It is not a Barrie, wrapped around a beautiful bay. It is not a Barrie, well-served with a major hospital and community college with links to major universities. It is not a Barrie with a hard-working city council. It is not a Barrie with its year-round tourism attractions. It is not a Barrie where a political Patrick Brown honed his skills as a retail politician.

A retail politician such as Patrick was never countenanced in Brampton. Retail politicians sell themselves. The brand is immaterial. A retail politician is a user. People are used and then discarded. Aides, are flattered and then floored when unknown. Voters are only a seasonal target.

Brown’s success as a retail politician was greatly expanded when fellow MP Jason Kenney explained to him the key to the ethnic diasporas of Canada. Kenney arranged for his young acolyte to make the long pilgrimages to India and Pakistan to make the connections to the Canadian diaspora from the Sub-Continent. It was how he swamped the membership in the Ontario progressive conservatives to win the leadership of Ontario’s conservatives. It was how he connected to more than 100,000 temporary sign-ups to the conservative party of Canada. It was what won him the Brampton stage four years ago.

But there is little honour in being a retail politician. You are kept busy keeping too many balls in the air. Mistakes can be made. Rules can be broken. And members of Brampton city council started to understand the callowness and selfishness of this gate crasher in the mayor’s chair. Patrick Brown just might have struck out this time. It might be time for him to get a real job.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Coming to Hamilton.

by Peter Lowry

Most of us probably think of Hamilton as the lunch-pail city of Ontario. Maybe we do but it doesn’t deserve a lunch-pail mayor such as former MPP Andrea Horwath. The city deserves better.

It is probably because I have always admired Hamilton. You can hardly drive over the Burlington Skyway and not be impressed by the vast and busy Hilton Works of Stelco. This is a company that helped build Canada throughout the 20th Century.

Hamilton is a complex city. It is the east end with its homes of workers and of management for the steel plants, the downtown with that rusty steel building as a centrepiece and the mountain homes with shopping plazas as an afterthought. It hardly needs someone as inarticulate as Horwath as its chief salesperson.

We have really seen enough of Ms. Horwath at Queen’s Park.

She was elected to Queen’s Park in 2004 and became leader of the new democrats in 2009. She sat in place for the Wynne liberal years and blew her chance for power against the braggart Ford in 2018. The liberals self immolated that year and Horwath found she was leader of the opposition. It was another opportunity lost.

It was during the pandemic that I was trying to help someone in her town with a problem at a Hamilton hospital. She answered my e-mail about it by saying have the person call her Hamilton office. The person got nothing but busy signals. I tried to call and also got busy signals. It looks busy when you take the phones off the hook.

It looks like Ms. Horwath is following former federal candidate for conservative leader Patrick Brown’s lead. If it looks like you are at a dead end, you can always go back to your municipal roots.

The only problem with that is that Hamilton hardly needs a retiree from Queen’s Park for mayor.

Hamilton needs a mayor like John Tory in Toronto. He is always there. He is out where the people are. He is pro-active. Hamilton needs a champion. Ms. Horwath is no champion.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Conservative Kangaroo Court.

by Peter Lowry

Wow, would it ever speed up the processes through our courts if the conservative party’s minions were running things. I will freely admit that I have absolutely no use for Patrick Brown, former MP, former Ontario PC leader, and former candidate for federal conservative leader. It is simply that I believe if you accuse someone of doing something wrong, you should prove it.

Mr. Brown has broken the rules in the past and I would suspect that he has done it again. As I understand the conservative party rules, a new membership in the party is required to have a personal cheque attached or valid credit card information that is issued in the applicant’s name. I would assume that rule would preclude money orders being used, as you can buy those for Santa Claus. And Patrick Brown should know better.

It seems to me though that the charge that Brown had contravened the election act is much more serious. It should be easy enough to track down that story and find out if it really took place.

What concerns me the most is that the citizens of Brampton might be stuck with Brown in the mayor’s chair for another four years. I am not sure that Brampton deserves that.

There have been repeated reports from Brampton of ruction at city hall. I have no idea what is going on there but it sounds to me that Brown does not know how to work with his council. It has been reported that when he was leader of the Ontario progressive conservative caucus, he had problems with an unruly group of conservatives. City councils are rarely all members of the same political party and you really do have to be a persuasive person to keep them all working in the best interests of their community.

While Patrick Brown has been active in politics since a very young age, he has not learned much about working with others. It seems to me that politicians who get the urge to get into politics later in life, after a successful business career, do a much better job for the local citizens. Brampton might be best to consider alternatives.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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What’s Democratic About It?

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford’s proposals for ‘super mayors’ in Toronto and Ottawa have nothing to do with democracy. What he seems to be trying to do is make sure that the developers keep working with city hall. It is probably the only way that those cities will ever have close to enough affordable housing.

As I understand it so far, the idea is to give the super mayor a veto over any motion by council but council can overrule the mayor with a two-thirds vote. Giving the super mayor control over budgeting as well as department appointments could also be part of the package. Knowing how the progressives and right-wing members break down on council, such a formula in Toronto would give the mayor a virtual control of the current council. While there is not a clear-cut right-left breakdown of council, you do see more left-wing councillors downtown and more right-wing suburban council members.  

While there is general consensus that the more powerful mayor system would be more efficient, that does not mean that more meaningful work would be done. A powerful mayor might be able to negotiate more geared-to-income rental housing being built in the city but the mayor would also need to be motivated to use the power in that direction.

And there is still the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude to geared-to-income in individual wards. No councillor wants to be drawn into battle with his or her voters.

Ideally the super mayor would have the ability to negotiate with developers to include a ratio of geared-to-income in any major project.

It is amusing to realize that a similar super mayor concept was proposed by the McGinty liberal government back in 2008 and David Miller, mayor at that time, thought the system was unnecessary.

Obviously, the imagination of the municipal affairs experts at Queen’s Park have yet to be challenged by this proposition. We will await developments.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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