Category: Municipal Politics

Toronto knows how to party.

by Peter Lowry

Hey, knock off the complaints about the party in Toronto for the Raptors team last Monday. With three days notice, the decision was to parade the team from the Exhibition grounds to city hall. The effort involved thousands of city employees and police. And it was a rain or shine event, with no idea at all of the people that would come.

It was a beautiful June day and a couple million showed up for what will remain, for a long time, a unique event in Canadian history.

From the first minute, we saw the aerial shots from helicopters over the exhibition grounds, we knew that all time estimates were wrong. Barricades were a temporary hinderance for crowds of happy people intent on seeing their heroes. The organizers were soon dealing with chaos. It was a credit to their communications systems that they were able to cope.

It has been some time now since I have been involved in the planning and running of large indoor and outdoor events. They were exciting times. They involved long pages of checklists that you would pore over time and time again as your plans had to change. You always hoped that whatever happened looked like it was supposed to happen. And there were the times the worst things happened and suddenly all the people responsible were somewhere else.

But the other day, help was there. The police were doing their jobs. The emergency services people were on the ball. A crowd almost the size of the city’s population had to bring support systems with them. They strained the transportation systems and they tied the downtown traffic in knots. Who knows where they could have put more Johnnies but they would have provided good height to climb on to see the scene.

It was regrettable that some of the city’s gang members forgot this was a celebration and they brought their guns with them. The police were on the job. It was not a really good day for all politicians but a great day for Toronto.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

Kindergarten for conservative candidates.

by Peter Lowry

There is nothing new about politicians who learn their craft while climbing the ladder of politics. Many make a start on school board, get to know the people of their area and wait for the right time to move up to municipal councillor. Municipal council, in turn, can become the incubator popping out fresh young faces to be your next member of the legislative assembly or member of parliament.

While politicians of all flavours can be found on this path, it is most common in Ontario to find they are paid up members of the conservative party. This is where they find their mentors, their funding sources and support for the campaigns to come. No city beats Barrie in this conservatism of its city council.

It was why after being in the city for only a few years, I ran the campaign ground game for a new mayor. He ran against two well-known conservatives and a group of also-rans. He is now on his third term as mayor.

While I like to think that Mayor Jeff Lehman does what he can with a council that wants to defer any contentious issues until they are told what position to take, this city council is not progressive. We have a burgeoning, successful city here despite a council of small city minds. The truth is, the city is run by its senior staff and people learn you best not interfere.

Recently a brash young councillor became annoyed with two former city council members who are now the sitting members of parliament. They are both about what you would expect in a city that allowed the rise of Patrick Brown, from councillor to MP, to leader of the Ontario conservatives. The councillor was angry about white-supremacists joining in on Andrew Scheer’s remarks to some westerners castigating prime minister Trudeau for not building them a pipeline fast enough.

It was hardly a municipal issue and the councillor was out of line using his position to demand an apology to Canadians by the conservatives.

But it was also hardly an issue for council’s ethics commissioner. Nor was it worthy of a threatened law suit from the two MPs.

Mind you, I think I should drop in on council meetings more often. It is obviously becoming more fun.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

Fake news on the opioid front?

by Peter Lowry

We were reading a poster telling us about a community meeting to discuss a proposed safe injection site in the neighbourhood. It invited anyone who wanted more information or had concerns to come to the meeting. We had barely finished reading when a voice behind us said, “It’s all a lie you know.”

It is very strange to hear that. Sure, we have had people tell us that Donald Trump was really a very fine gentleman, just misunderstood. We have even taken time to hear out climate change deniers to try to understand their reasoning better. This was a new one.

But why would anybody want to suggest that the politicians are lying about the deaths of opioid users? This has been in the news for many months. They are panicking about it on the West Coast. The Medical Office of Health in Toronto is deeply concerned. Our emergency measures people in cities such as Barrie, are frustrated and alarmed. And those fools running the Ontario government are cutting back the funding for safe injection sites needed to help stem the tide.

Do those idiots think they are saving money by letting people die?

I was amazed earlier this year when our local conservative MP wrote an item for the local grocery flier wrap about this. He actually questioned the idea of providing clean needles and a place for addicts to take drugs. I figured it was just his way of demonstrating his general incompetence.

Someone whom he respected must have gotten to him and convinced him that he should support safe injection sites. The really good news came later when he announced he would not run again for MP.

I have always been horrified over the years when seeing people heading down the slippery slide into the world of illicit drugs. It is a terrible waste of human life. I see the safe injection sites as an opportunity for knowledgeable workers to connect and maybe save the lives of some of these people. It is certainly worth the small cost.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

Why we are pissed with politicians.

by Peter Lowry

They are even quantifying just how pissed Canadians are with their politicians these days. It makes sense. And interestingly, we see they are happier with their mayors and councillors. These local people are able to generate a 50 per cent approval rate. Provincial and federal politicos do not make it that high.

Greg MacEachern of Washington-based Proof Strategies’ Ottawa and Toronto office has been studying Canadian attitudes and claims that the low-flying politicos these days are the provincial ones across the country. Based on recent vote results, the provincials are probably lucky to be trusted by as many as a third of Canadians. At least the federals are at an average of 40 per cent trust rate.

There is certainly a lot of logic to those figures. The municipal people are close at hand and you can get to talk to them when you are dissatisfied with what they are doing. Besides, it is relatively easy to verify what is being reported by the local news media. And as there are supposedly no political parties involved, you get used to those politicians municipally who fall into right or left- wing categories.

But what is obviously pissing off the populace is the power of the political parties and the secrecy of our federal and provincial cabinets. When these people are planning how to change your life, people get concerned. The politicos are springing changes on them that the people get to pay for—like it or not!

One of the things I have found travelling back and forth across Canada over the years is that trust seems to come with the smaller size of provinces. In PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador, you can get to stop and have a pleasant chat with the premier in passing and nobody thinks anything special about it. The bigger the province, the more self important the politico can be.

The federal government just has better public relations. I go back to the era of both John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson and both were delightful gentlemen with whom to chat. I found I could always get a laugh from Mr. Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau. And you could trust them. We seem to be going downhill since.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

Brown bounces back.

by Peter Lowry

This is not a contrite political Patrick Brown bragging about his comeback from being a nobody. This is a brazen Brown bragging that he has bested the best. Comfortably ensconced in the mayor’s chair in Brampton, Ontario, he has four years to choose his next steps. And he expects CTV television network to pay his passage back to power.

A few days back, January 25, was a sort of anniversary for Brown. He not only resigned as leader of the Ontario conservatives a year ago, he gave up a clear shot at becoming premier of Ontario. What was obvious to all of us Brown baiters at the time was that he had to be brought down. It was either his financial manipulations or under-age women that would do the job.

Personally, I preferred the financial questions but the answers to that route were well hidden. Our best guess was that it was some of his conservative enemies who played the under-age girls card with the help of cronies at CTV News. It turned out that the ploy got him to resign as leader of the Ontario PCs. A vindictive caucus of Tories at Queen’s Park finished the job.

But Brown is as slippery as they come. When Doug Ford and the caucus made it clear that they did not want him at Queen’s Park, he looked around for other roads to redemption. The Peel Region chair was a new opportunity—and look where the Toronto Region chair took Paul Godfrey. And the largely undefined job paid well.

Ford slammed that door shut in an oddly vindictive manner. With only hours to go before the deadline, Brown opted for the mayoralty in Brampton. Not only was incumbent Linda Jeffrey vulnerable but he had a major part of his organization that won the Tory leadership for him based there.

Brown could have also vied for the mayoralty in Barrie but he had little confidence in who was loyal back in his home town. He also remembered the trouncing incumbent Jeff Lehman had dealt his uncle Joe Tascona when Lehman first ran for the Barrie mayoralty.

Brown had bought and paid-for connections with the dominant South Asian community in Brampton and it was this faction that gave him the Brampton mayoralty. Down the road further, who knows what challenges he will tackle?

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

“Keep your enemies closer.”

by Peter Lowry

Born in Chicago in 1901, my mother never did entirely lose the biases of her upbringing. She was something of a traffic hazard the way she drove her walker in the seniors’ residence in downtown Toronto where she spent her final years.

I remember one time she was proudly telling me how she got her fellow seniors out to vote for our new provincial attorney general in the David Peterson government. While it was common knowledge that Ian Scott was gay, he considered it a personal matter and it was never mentioned publicly when he ran in politics. I will never know what perversely caused me to say to mother that the Toronto gay community would be appreciative of her seeing the light.

The trouble was, she was smart as ever and when she realized what I was telling her, she proved she was as feisty as ever, even in her nineties. And yet she had raised six children and I have never heard a discriminatory or intolerant word from any of my siblings. We lived in the heart of the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood as children and knew at a young age far more about human sexuality and tolerance than many people ever learn as adults.

But my point today is that I am deeply disappointed with the Toronto LGBT community. (And I do not add the ‘Q’ to that because I have never called anyone ‘queer’ in my life and I am not going to start now.)

What I am concerned about is Toronto’s Pride Parade. It is beyond understanding that there are people in the community who are set on destroying the best example of openness and tolerance that we have ever known. I understood it when it was just those ‘Black Lives Matter’ wannabes who were causing trouble just to get attention for themselves. Now you have people denying the inclusiveness of the parade to try to keep uniformed police out of the parade.

Whatever the hell is their complaint about Toronto police, they should take it to the Police Services Board. The Pride Parade is a place for all.

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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry

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

To Brampton Town with Brown.

by Peter Lowry

Barrie’s sorry excuse for a newspaper, the weekly Advance, has announced that Brampton mayor Patrick Brown is its newsmaker of the year. Coincidently the Barrie library had a copy of Brown’s tell-all book Take Down: The attempted political assassination of Patrick Brown—by none other than Patrick Brown himself. It was my intent to spend some time this week reading it.

It is with some regret that I report that Mr. Brown appears to have had no ghost writer, nor helpful editor beyond the spell check of his computer. You can only stomach so much of a politician’s self pity and whining. I gave up after about 150 pages and skimmed the rest.

The best part of the book is the cover—credited to a Mathew Flute. They should have ripped up the inside story. If Patrick Brown thinks this book is going to inform, convince, proselytize or draw any sympathy, he is deluding himself.

What is deeply concerning is that in 50 years of writing about politics, I would never refer to a politician as “bat-shit crazy.” If Mr. Brown holds anything back in the book, it is modesty and self-control.

One reason to read the book was to see if there were any clues as to the perpetrators of the CTV Television Network’s allegations. All it seems to indicate is how far that once esteemed network has gone down hill with Bell Canada in control. Patrick might have thought he had liberal enemies but he has far more vicious enemies in the conservative party. And a word of advice to him from a liberal is that there are much stronger connections between CTV News and certain well-known conservatives than any liberals.

The most serious errors in this entire fiasco were those by Brown himself. He is a politician who flies in the directions the wind takes him. He is considered a good retail politician because he knows and understand what needs to be done and has the determination to do it. God forbid he should ever have to work for a living.

But watching him at that news conference during the evening of January 25, 2018, I felt sorry for him. Sure, I disliked him as a person and as a politician, but he did not deserve this.

On bad advice, badly prepared, an emotional Patrick Brown read a bad speech and committed political suicide.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Persons who help themselves get most.

by Peter Lowry

The headline was supposed to be ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ It did not seem right though to invoke a Deity. Considering how many Deities are promoted around Toronto these days, it could have ended up a three-line headline.

This started out to be about Ontario premier Doug Ford. When the premier reduced the number of councillors in the city of Toronto earlier this year, he promised Torontonians millions in savings. He lied you know. It is becoming more apparent every day that the only people who will profit from having Doug Ford in the premier’s office are lawyers. And what you know for sure is that it will be the province that pays.

And the city has not yet felt the full force of its newly-elected 25 councillors. That gravy train is only now chugging into city hall. Within two days of being sworn into office, the councillors doubled their staffing money, increased their office budgets and told the clerk that they want a raise in pay. These people are not pikers.

But at the same time, it was strange to look down on the council in seating space that used to hold twice as many councillors. The Toronto council chamber needs some redesign. It was as though they wanted to emphasize the change wrought by the vindictive Doug Ford by clustering to one side.

It was obvious that they would claim the need for more staff. They are going to need the help to deal with the concerns of almost twice the constituents. The personal salary increase will be the icing on the cake.

Considering the average number of constituents, the staff to be managed and the hours of dedicated service required, the job is now worth more than $200,000 per year plus expenses. And as that is more than the dilettantes at Queen’s Park are getting, the Toronto politicians can expect a nasty draft from the direction of the Ontario legislature.

It might surprise you to know that in examining the workload of municipal, provincial and federal politicians over the years, the heaviest is municipal, the second heaviest is federal and our provincial guys and gals get the easy end of things. If the provincials are diligent, they are out promoting themselves.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

The Gods are busy; you fix it.

by Peter Lowry

No doubt you have been reading many of these opinion pieces on how to fix this or that at Toronto city hall. We already know that those nincompoops at Queen’s Park think cutting city council in half will solve the problems. Others are lending their low view of things by suggesting that Toronto mayor John Tory have more powers. We know that is a non-starter. Tory got a strong mandate but it was certainly not for his brilliance. He got to keep his job because he has proved he cares.

It used to be that the liberals and new democrats fought it out for downtown wards and conservatives and liberals fought over the suburban wards. Very occasionally Toronto would end up with a progressive mayor and enough progressive councillors that the city could get a few things done.

But all Doug Ford saw the one term he was there was a dysfunctional council that only agreed on getting rid of an alcohol and drug addicted mayor.

But in my various travels around the world I met with many local politicians. It is the same all over. When you have political parties headed by the mayoralty candidates who are committed to a specific platform, you can often get things done. If you have a bunch of individuals with no common agenda, you have chaos. It is that simple.

Look at Canada. In Montreal, we have parties headed by strong mayors. In Vancouver we have political parties and you never know what will happen. Toronto had an experiment with political parties 50 years ago. It is time to see if the city can ever get it right?

And there is no need for the parties to be the three behind most of the present councillors. Civic parties might do a better job if they are not tied to provincial parties. (This might seem odd to the people who remember I criticized David Crombie’s Civic Action Party. I really did not see it as being representative of the changing face of Toronto at that time. I lampooned it for being too much Lawrence Park and too little Parkdale.)

But you have to start now talking with current members of council. As they become more frustrated with the multiplicity of views and the inability of the council to come to a consensus, you will find they will become more amenable to a party solution. And if you get someone identified with a particular party first, get the next one from a different party. Your strength will be in your candidates’ ability to communicate with their voters.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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

Let’s have ‘Whack-a-Mole’ voting.

by Peter Lowry

Blame Chantal Hébert. The other day she described the voting reform question as a whack-a-mole game. It just keeps popping up and needs to get a whack. The only reason Chantal noted it was because neophyte premier François Legault of the CAQ in Quebec made the same rash promise to reform how Quebec votes before he knew he would win. Now he just needs a way to back out gracefully.

Most Canadians, who have any opinion on this subject, think prime minister Justin Trudeau let them down. He did (foolishly) promise the voters that 2015 would be the last time they would use first-past-the-post voting. While he took the blame, it was really the opposition parties on the special committee of the commons that dumped on Justin’s promise.

Now we learn that Prince Edward Island might ask Islanders what they want. If they are smart they will settle for a reeve and some councillors and give the provincial problems to New Brunswick.

And we hear from the Wet Coast that the question of how to vote is being asked again. Maybe it will be third time lucky! You would think that they would finally understand the problems when the Greens are running their NDP government. Or they might never learn

It seems every time I write about this subject I get inundated by readers across the country claiming I am a Philistine trying to protect first-past-the-post. I even conceded recently that I would be happy to help promote run-off elections so that we could have majority choice voting. That just got me more complaints.

The problem is that people, for some reason, buy into the fiction that if your vote is not for the winner in an election, it is a wasted vote. As silly as that sounds, that is their argument against first-past-the-post.

No vote is ever wasted in a democracy. We can all have our say. And yes, it is very rare that governments are elected by a majority under first-past-the-post. If you really want to have a majority vote, then you have run-off elections. That is carrying your democracy further.

But having local representation—is to me, the very essence of our democracy. You can send the smartest person in town to parliament or the stupidest. It is your choice. Denying you that choice is the road to anarchy.

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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry

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