Category: New

Before the Fall.

by Peter Lowry

Last Friday (September 22) there was a large picture above the fold of the front page of the Toronto Star. It was captioned: ‘It was a mistake’. It was a picture of a steely-eyed, stony-faced Ontario premier Doug Ford. This was not a picture of a contrite and apologetic premier. It was a picture of an old-fashioned salesman plotting to get even.

Ford is not finished. Not by a long-shot. All he feels is that he was off his game. He has to get back on that horse! Some voters still love him. And he knows that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Behind those slitted eyes, there was a mind churning out possible solutions to this problem.

Maybe Ford is confident that the ‘commie’ Toronto Star will soon collapse on its own. It is unlikely to continue to be a negative influence on his Greenbelt plans.

In the meantime, he has ministerial zoning orders (MZOs) to keep his developer friends happy and loyal to his cause. He has probably already told them not to unload their Greenbelt properties on the market too quickly. They might not have an $8.2 billion tax write-off but maybe there are other incentives that can be fed to them.

Ford’s major problem is that he could not afford the loss of any more of his cabinet members or back benchers. When it looks as though Caroline Mulroney in transport, Sylvia Jones in Health and Paul Calandra in municipal affairs and housing are the backbone of the cabinet, you know Ford is in trouble.

Caroline Mulroney has to get the Highway 413 moving or all might be lost for some of Ford’s favourite developers. Her problem is that the conservatives are also going to have to keep the money flowing on the Bradford By-Pass. Two ministers from Barrie will be in trouble if the work on all those bridges through Barrie slows down.

Ford seems to be unable to keep too many balls in the air. His office staff is supposed to be the traffic cops for his government and they are not doing a very good job of it.

They seem to have left Stepen Lecce to face the music with the Ontario teachers by himself. He is loosing the battle with them. And Sylvia Jones thinking she can handle healthcare is a sad joke.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Looney Tunes Is Alberta.

by Peter Lowry

Is it ever thus?  Premier Danielle Smith is off on her tangent to save Alberta from the rapacious government in Ottawa. It must be that they cannot teach Canadian history or mathematics in that province. It is also very important in mathematics that you count the oranges as oranges and the apples as apples.

Can you imagine an insurance program that allows you to take back everything you put in—without deducting what has been taken out? Maybe Smith has the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) confused with a tontine, that is paid out to the last person alive.

The beauty of the CPP is that the pay-out is guaranteed by the federal government. It might not please some actuaries or politicians (for different reasons). It does meet a need among the Canadian public. And it is easily taxed back if you do not need it.

But the simplest question is what the heck does Danielle Smith want with a pension plan? Is she going to decide where the money goes? Does she know anything about investing long-term? Would she put the money into funding the tar sands exploiters? And then what happens when the tar sands run out? The simple facts are that the tar sands become more and more expensive as the low-hung fruit of that resource become more and more expensive to access? And in a world converting to renewable sources of energy, what is Alberta doing, trying to stave off the inevitable? Is she some kind of King Canute, trying to hold back the tides?

And don’t give us that guff about carbon capture. Carbon capture is not 100 per cent. That is the first given. The second problem is that carbon capture relies on underground caverns as a place to capture the carbon. That means longer and longer pipelines from where the carbon is produced to where it will be tucked out of sight.

It would be mean of me to suggest that Danielle Smith must be the dumbest politician this country has ever seen. I just don’t like the impression it leaves with the rest of the country. Just how dumb are the people who elected her? I have worked with some of the people at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and I must admit they earned my respect. I could understand the Alberta voters’ dissatisfaction with Jason Kenney as premier, but Danielle Smith can only be described as Looney Tunes.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Criticizing Bonnie Crombie.

by Peter Lowry

Having missed the liberal leadership debate at the old Ryerson campus last week, it seemed, according to the news articles, I did not miss much. The mayor of Mississauga is handling her four opponents as an older woman would handle adolescent boys. They have foolishly declared her the one to beat and they are struggling with the desire to attack. They are learning though that an attack is not worth it.

Ms. Crombie reminds me of her old mentor, the late Hazel McCallion. Hazel could cut people down with the kindest of words. Bonnie just reminds her present critics that they are fellow liberals, of the task ahead, the need to work together and never really wastes time on their criticisms.

I started out this leadership contest thinking that Nate Erskine-Smith was my kind of liberal and that Bonnie Crombie would make a good back-up plan. I have changed my mind. Despite the charge of many close friends in liberal politics that my greatest weakness is my loyalty, I have to admit that Erskine-Smith is not as well organized as he thinks. He still owes me a call back after we both missed a call.

We should all be concerned about the length of this contest. The liberals needed their new leader this September, early October at the latest. If I were still on the Ontario executive, I would have fought hard for a real one member-one vote election. The approach of the liberal party executive is lazy, unimaginative and they should be ashamed to going along with the federal liberal’s no-fee membership and the conservative belief that all ridings are equal. And I am worried about how this vote could be manipulated.

I read at some point in this leadership campaign that the liberal’s interim leader in the legislature, John Fraser, had advised Bonnie Crombie that there was no rush to get the new leader into the legislature (if not already there). It was that kind of bad idea that cost the last leader, Steven Del Duca, and the liberals any progress in the last provincial election. To be credible to the voters, the leader needs to be doing the job in the legislature. It would serve the public well in Ontario to have all five of these contestants working together at Queen’s Park. Each can be an asset.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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To Live in Interesting Times.

by Peter Lowry

Returning home from a visit to Toronto this past week was like returning to a peaceful oasis. Not that Barrie does not have more than its share of construction going on with homes as well as the rebuilding of the Highway 400 bridges through the city. Yet Toronto felt like a battle ground. I spent most of a day driving around the city east to west and up to the northern suburbs. I never knew just where I would come to another traffic jam in a city of constant construction. And I see that the Don Valley Parkway is still jammed at any hour.

Toronto is no longer a city for a polite driver. It has the rude drivers of New York City at the speed of the crazy drivers of Rome, Italy. But I loved the experience, the learning, the old views, the new buildings, the staggering heights of new condominiums. I saw a lone transit vehicle test-driving the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Ask when it will open and Torontonians will laugh while people in Scarborough are bitter as delays and construction seem to forbid them access to downtown.

But the political anger was the most interesting. Oh sure, the younger generation seem to have bought into some of Poilievre’s bull, yet over all, the city is cold hunting grounds for conservatives today. The jokes about Doug Ford are among the most scatological I have ever heard. Any Torontonian who tells his neighbours that Trump Lite Poilievre is just what Canada needs might as well move.

They don’t have many positive comments on Justin Trudeau but then Poilievre came out with that common sense crap borrowed from the Mike Harris government, he cut his own throat. That conservative provincial government was the worst experience of the last quarter century in Ontario, I read a column in the Toronto Star last weekend where a sycophant of Poilievre had written that the conservative leader was taking a “back to basics approach.” Anyone who believes that Poilievre is going to improve life for Canadians, lower our taxes, as well as food prices, energy and trade must have just fell off the turnip wagon.

I was surprised when Trump won the presidency in the United States. It was a serious learning experience. The same type of bad news could happen here in Canada, and we sure as hell would regret it.   

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Reforming Voting.

by Peter Lowry

It seems that too often we are looking at voting methods instead of examining the entire electoral process. There is much more involved in Canadian politics that the voter should be concerned about. We could go a long way to improving our democracy. Start with our candidates for political office. Why should we have more than 100 candidates show up for a municipal by-election? What does this prove? Wouldn’t we do better to have some vetting of these people before we waste resources on the selection?

A simple approach is primaries. Primaries are used in the United States for nominating people to be president and can be different from one state to another. The basic concept can be for political parties to choose their candidate. People who register as supporters of specific parties are invited to vote in their electoral district for the individual they think should be the candidate for their party.

The impact in Canada for this process would be to take the selection of candidates away from the party leader. The power could be left for the political party to object to a candidate for reason. Registration of voters could be left to the political parties as they would benefit the most from this change. It could be a year-round opportunity for them to proselytize and gain new members.

The major reason people want to have a change in voting is because they consider it wrong to be elected without a majority of votes. With the advent of safe Internet voting, the cost of holding a vote will drop considerably. When that is assured, we can have a run-off vote a week later such as the French have for their presidential elections. If the leading candidate has 40 per cent of the vote and the second has 35 per cent, a run-off vote can be held with just the top two candidates.

In any reform in voting or the role of political parties, the objective is to improve our democracy. We should ask that question in any change. I would suggest to you that the power over candidates, presently held the party leader, works against democracy. We want our representative to represent us.

Democracy can only be measured by its effectiveness for the people. If the leader has to much of power, the people are losing. The more power held by party leaders, the less is held by the people.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Requiem for Truth.

by Peter Lowry

When politicians fail to tell the truth, when the Internet is littered with individual versions of truth, and print media is failing to survive, where do you look for truth?  And where do you turn when your daily routine for most of your life that has started with a cup of coffee in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other? Does broadcast media fill the void? Does news on an I-pad step up? Does the electronic news fill the need for trust? Are these not similar questions to what we asked when broadcast news first challenged print?

But when American news media came to Canada and loosed their political vitriol in the form of Canadian news, were we better off? AMI, the US-based company that owns Postmedia and Sun newspapers, are an embarrassment. These right-wing Americans, with their National Enquirer falsehoods, are now likely the largest newspaper chain in Canada. The only good thing you can say about them is that they sold off their fictional tabloids, led by the National Enquirer, a couple years ago. Their version of Canadian news is best explained by their mindless devotion to Donald Trump in the United States and Trump-light, Pierre Poilievre in Canada.

The reason Postmedia seems bigger and more dangerous for our country is the collapse the other day of Metroland Media, a subsidiary of the Toronto Star. It meant the loss of 65 jobs in Ontario, without severance or pensions. It also spelled the end of the weekly publications that were nothing more than wraps for grocery fliers. Before criticizing TorStar, the owner, for this treatment of their employees, you should also wonder if the proper treatment of those employees might not have collapsed the entire TorStar enterprise? Judging by what we see in the Toronto Star every day, its best revenue generator these days appears to be the obituaries.

Metroland is expected to try to continue its dailies in print form and provide the other papers in limited on-line versions. You might want to wait until the courts are through with the bankruptcy claims before betting further on TorStar. This last step it took with Metroland is obviously a sign of desperation.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Come Blow Your Horn.

by Peter Lowry

You have to admit, Little Boy Blue got a lot of attention from the media with his speech to the conservative convention recently. It was neither modesty nor myopia, nor missing his glasses that caused his eyes to appear to be squinting. It was the placement of the teleprompter screens. Pierre Poilievre was standing on a platform about 30 centimeters (12 inches) above the floor. The teleprompter screens were attached to the top edges of that riser and can be on two or all sides. It takes a lot of practice to make that arrangement work well.

But no matter how he blew his horn though, his message was mean, nasty and counterproductive to good government for Canada. I think I lost interest in the content of his speech and was more interested in his taking a misstep and falling off that riser. With the luck liberals have been having lately, there were likely people in the front row of that quadrangle prepared to catch him.

But why would the party be so busy with new types of teleprompters, redesigning the party logo and producing professional, image-softening commercials of Poilievre and his wife and kids. If they don’t like how he dresses or his haircut, you would think they would also want someone that people can like.

Poilievre built his reputation as an attack dog over the years in parliament. This guy has devoted his entire life to becoming prime minister of Canada. You would think that if getting to that position was his objective, that he would want people to think of him as competent. He might also talk about how he is going to help people. Who would believe a person who promotes Bitcoin just before the flaky promotion crashed and investors lost millions.

He spends many hours of his day complaining about Justin Trudeau but rarely tells anyone what he would do differently. He builds on animosity and hatred instead of trust and acceptance. And if everything in Canada is broken, as he claims, how does he think he can fix it? We have heard nothing but complaints and claims that it is all the present government’s fault. The few answers he approves of are from the extreme right wing of his party. I think Little Boy Blue should go blow his horn elsewhere.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Liberals Cannot Count.

by Peter Lowry

It looks as though the Ontario liberals have almost doubled their membership. And they are busy arguing about it. I would be more impressed and might even care if people had paid something for those memberships. The possibly 80,000 members in Ontario is a bit higher than the 74,000 members the party had in the 1960s, when the party had a membership fee. The recent boost in membership is credited to the Ontario liberal leadership contest with five contestants duking it out to be leader of the party.

The liberals have two federal MPs, two provincial MPPs and one big city mayor wrestling for the prize. And based on the problems the Ford conservatives have brought on themselves, the liberal leadership might be an ideal stepping stone to the job of premier of Ontario.

But that is not as simple as winning the majority of votes from liberals. The people running the liberal party have shown that they are just as bad at mathematics as the people running the conservative party. The conservatives give all of their electoral districts the same weight of 100 points. If the riding has less than 100 party members, it gets those votes as one person-one vote. In electoral districts with more than 100 members, the votes for the candidates are counted as a percentage of 100.   

If you think that is one member-one vote, you were not paying attention to your grade school arithmetic lessons.

After more than 60 years in politics, I can safely assure you that no two electoral districts are the same. And why in hell would you penalize the party members in electoral districts who take their responsibility seriously to increase their party memberships between elections?

It is very hard to justify the Northern Ontario electoral district deviations from the provincial average number of voters and then also have their vote count for five times the vote of liberals in a Toronto riding.

If people were worried about the ease of manipulating the vote previously, how can they believe this silly system is any better?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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No Ties That Bind.

by Peter Lowry

We note that the majority of Canadians have realized that there is no reason for Canada to continue to have a monarch. Charley definitely does not cut it. His wife is an embarrassment. His kids by Princess Diana have their own quarrels. Yet they have entitlements to which Canadians cannot aspire.

When polls show that four out of five Canadians feel no attachment to the monarchy, it is time we did something about it. I would suggest that no federal politician is rushing to open discussion on the constitution. That is a can of worms that only provides opportunity to the unwary.

It might fall on the provinces to make the course correction on the monarchy.  We could start by not feeding crap about the monarchy to our school children. There would be greater justification for them to learn some American history rather than believe the fancified records of the movies and television produced in the U.S.  British history might, in reality be less boring than what our textbooks tell them. Nor should we take them out of their classrooms to provide audiences for those boring visits by this or that overly entitled and titled person.  

But leave their statues standing. They provide a welcome perch and a place to poop for pigeons. And besides, only the foolish among us want to hide history. We are not all suddenly woken to the faults of our ancestors. Yes, when John A. Macdonald was prime minister, he was a drunk. It is likely that many who voted for him were also drunkards. But that drunk had a vision of Canada that benefits us today. Give credit when credit is due.

And I personally want to see John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau on our banknotes. We can also stop messing with the ten-dollar bill and restore John A. Macdonald to where he was immortalized.

It is appreciated that the Netflix series, The Crown, did much to inform and explain the monarchy’s role for us but it did not excuse the elitist attitude that allows the monarchy to continue to bore us.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Ford’s Smoke Screen.

by Peter Lowry

Somebody must have told premier Doug Ford that he could use MPP Paul Calandra as a smoke screen to cover up what he is letting happen in the Greenbelt. By making Calandra minister of municipal affairs and housing, he has the perfect cover for what is happening. He can thank former prime minister Stephen Harper for inventing the scheme. Along with many others, I have asked: What does Paul Calandra know about the Greenbelt?” The answer is ‘Not much.’

But that is the great part of the scheme. Do you remember when Calandra was a member of the federal parliament and parliamentary secretary to prime minister Harper?  He used to address the questions to the prime minister that the prime minister did not want to answer in the House of Commons. The point was that the prime minister did not give a damn what Calandra told the house, as long as he did not answer the question. The members in the house and the news media became used to Mr. Calandra talking about something else, that was irrelevant to the issue.

Doug Ford should be warned though that this scheme does not work as long as the premier might like it to last. The problem was that the news media took to ridiculing Paul Calandra and after about a year, he broke down. He had been asked to apologize to Thomas Mulcair, who at that time was leader of the opposition in the house. He started to weep as he tried to state his apology and over all, it was a sad scene.

This proclivity to cry seems to be a part of the story of Paul Calandra. There are some men who have trouble understanding a man becoming emotional but most are sympathetic. We only wonder if it can be brought to the fore when there is a need?

It seems Doug Ford is loading Mr. Calandra with lots of stressful work. Here he is minister of housing and has been challenged to get busy building the 1.5 million homes for Ontario residents that will be needed in this decade. He is also minister of municipal affairs and in that role, he is supposed to review the regional governments in Durham, Halton and York, as well as help sort out the problems in Peel County where Patrick Brown is demanding more from Mississauga in the breakup of Peel County. Doug Ford might want to ease up a bit before he pushes Paul over the edge.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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