Category: New

On a Bicycle Built for Two.

by Peter Lowry

Okay Toronto, how are you and your new mayor doing? Is she getting all those Torontonians out of their cars and onto bicycles? Has she had Dundas Street renamed? Is she keeping us seniors out of High Park on the weekends?

High Park is a remarkable asset to Toronto. It is like Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London or the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. It is a place of pride in the city. The cherry blossoms are a time of beauty. Enjoying the wisdom of Shakespeare on a summer night is an inspiration. It is a place for the peaceful animals in the zoo and a quiet place for a family picnic on the grass. What it is not is a place for incompetents to be making foolish rules.

Do bicycles rule because of a mayor without a driver’s licence? Does the ‘woke’ council waste time and money on changing the names of streets?

The selection of this replacement mayor was based more on name recognition than any known competence in leadership. She has lived off the voters’ largesse for many years. She was never a knowledgeable councillor, nor an effective member of parliament. Does she just live off the all to brief popularity of her husband?

What has she accomplished too date on the budget problems of a great city? Has she brought Queen’s Park to heel? Has she brought home gifts from the feds in Ottawa? Has she solved any of the critical needs of the city? Is Scarbough always to be left to mouldering in the east? Must Scarborough suffer without proper transportation to fit its needs? Is the Eglinton Crosstown LRT to be just a playground for the province? And what the hell is the Ontario Line hoping to accomplish?

The critical need today in Toronto is homes. These are homes for newcomers and homes for the poor, fighting so hard to keep up with inflation? People cannot sleep on the streets in a winter city.

Toronto needs to tell the province to take its spa away from Ontario Place and return the land to Toronto citizens for the playground that was always planned. And a Science Centre needs to be central to the needs of the city’s schools.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Say ‘No’ to Singh.

by Peter Lowry

Federal new democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh wants the liberal government to come up with another one-time benefit payment of $500 for low-income families. This is the same as the payment in 2022, that the liberals had issued to Canadians to ease the impact of inflation. It did not do all that much last year and is unlikely to do more this year. Nor was the payment appreciated all that much last year.

Singh’s approach is similar to the rhetoric of a union leader snarling at corporate management for the sake of some publicity. He hopes the liberals will refuse and give him an excuse to be more critical of their lack of action on behalf of Canadians.

What would make more sense is for the liberals to lower the tax rate on low-income Canadians and to increase the Old Age Security payments to seniors. That would put more money every month into the pockets of those who need it, instead of a one-time payment that soon disappears.

Canadians should realize that inflation is also benefitting government revenues. A reasonable decrease in the low-end of the income tax rate is justified and would be easily covered by the higher tax levels.

Of course, the conservatives under leader Pierre Poilievre will be outraged at anything that smacks of an increase in taxes for the well-off. Typically, conservatives are not impressed with anything that even maintains the balance in our country’s graduated tax system.

As for the new democrats, they do not want to be forgotten and the strategy is to be critical of the liberal regime without upsetting the accord they have with them that is keeping that party in power until 2025.

For the liberals, the key is to get the home building across Canada moving. It is going to take a complex program of incentives. This could include tax refunds on certain basic building materials and tax benefits on completed geared-to-income housing.

The current government needs to look at the home building programs that got millions of homes built in the years just after the Second World War. Those incentives were put together by a liberal government that understood the needs.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Integrity be Damned.

by Peter Lowry

Integrity is a catch word for accountability. The report of Ontario’s integrity commissioner does much more than impeach the honesty of the minister of municipal affairs and housing. It brings into question the decency and honesty of every single conservative party member in the Ontario legislature. These are the people responsible for allowing Doug Ford to continue to occupy the premier’s office at Queen’s Park. A simple vote of confidence by the legislature can determine if Mr. Ford has the continued support of the majority of that body to stay in office.

And, we suspect, he does not have that confidence. It must be clear to all members of the legislature that it was Mr. Ford who selected those of his developer friends who would be rewarded with parcels of land out of the Greenbelt. It is Mr. Ford who keeps the inept minister Steve Clark in office as his shield against direct attack on him.

The premier keeps referencing the 1.5 million homes needed to be built in Ontario, but we have seen little progress. It is hardly just land that is needed to have homes for people. That land needs services, such as sewers and electricity and transit. It needs convenient schools and stores and recreational facilities. It needs the conveniences of modern living in a progressive country such as Canada.

There is no way that Mr. Ford can bluff his way out of this mess. It is his mess. And the conservative members of the legislature can hardly ignore their responsibility.

If they are they really “honourable” members, they will hold Mr. Ford to account. They pay themselves about $150,000 per year plus various stipends and fulsome expenses. We put our trust in all the members of the legislature to help us be protected from those who would abuse our trust. They have never had a better opportunity to show us that they can earn our trust.

The person who has got off the easiest in this mess is the former chief of staff for the minister of municipal affairs and housing, Ryan Amato. His resignation earned him a severance package which has not been disclosed. His boss, Steve Clark, the minister, has expressed his regret for not supervising the situation. The only problem is that we all know the developers benefiting from this farce are Mr. Ford’s friends.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Guilbeault’s Guilt.

by Peter Lowry

If, by some miracle, the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline is completed this year, where will the tar sands bitumen come from to fill that greedy sucker? On one hand, federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault ignores the need to recover at least a portion of the $30 billion cost of the twinned, high-pressure line and on the other hand, he is threatening tar sands companies, such as Suncor, with a cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector.

Mr. Guilbeault wants it both ways! Not, that we really expect the twinned Trans Mountain pipeline to be ready to boogie that early. One would be hopeful that there is a lot of testing to be done before anyone would want to try to force three times the bitumen through the new and high-pressure version of the 70-year-old pipeline.

And besides, the pipeline people have already worn a path to the Canada Energy Regulator’s office complaining about the non-co-operative British Columbian tribes resisting change in their agreements. It is something like the housewife who has been promised a new sky-blue kitchen and the contractor trying to get her to accept a shocking pink kitchen instead.

Guilbeault threatened the tar sands industry with a cap on emissions after the Suncor chief executive officer, Rich Kruger, said the company was disengaging from non renewable resources in favour of short-term tar sands profit. That was akin to sticking the minister in the eye with a sharp stick.

Suncor’s most current figures show the company emitting 17.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2021. The entire tar sands production of bitumen contributes 13 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions but that does not count the emissions after the bitumen is refined into crude oil products and used in heating oil and gasoline, diesel fuel and other products.

The tar sands companies, led by Suncor, are going to make carbon capture their thing and they promise that they will be “net” zero in carbon emissions by 2050. While I, for one, might not be here to witness that miracle, I side with the more technical experts who think that promise is ridiculous. It would cost too much in the long term.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Confusing Conservatives.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to compare the conservatives in opposition in Ottawa and the conservatives in power at Queen’s Park for Ontario. The main difference must be the anger in opposition and the arrogance in power. In neither case does it speak well for the conservative party of Canada or its provincial fledglings.

Take the Ontario situation. Please. Talking to an Ontario liberal the other day, I asked him who he liked in the current leadership race for that party. He gave the following answer: “I’ll go with whomever sends a shiver down the fat boy’s spine.”

This liberal should not worry Doug Ford as much as active Ontario conservatives who are deeply embarrassed by the chicanery and dishonesty of the Ford administration. They will turn their backs on Medicare and let him make profits for specialized clinics but they are not pleased with his catering to dishonest developers. Conservatives understand the purpose of the Greenbelt and are hardly pleased with Ford’s self-serving mishandling of that portfolio.

Mind you, if you listen long to federal conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, you would swear that conservatism is headed for Hell in a handbasket. Mr. Poilievre is not only a mean and vicious little man, but he knows of no difference between a truth or a lie.

Poilievre is a classic failure of a politician. He has one only person he wants to please: himself. He has no empathy or caring for people. He wants to inflict a dystopian form of conservatism on our country. He wants a country that does not care about its people. He wants a dog-eat-dog capitalism.

This Ottawa cowboy only seems to understand libertarianism. He does not want a future for our country. He seems to see only the pleasures of the day. He cares nothing for the problems with the environment. He might think of himself as a conservative but he has no understanding of what is worth conserving. He hardly wants a better country for all, he wants a better country for him and those who choose to follow him.

It might be hard to choose between Justin Trudeau and his elitism over the sad plan-less Pierre Poilievre. You will get to decide soon. We can put up with Justin Trudeau. You would hate the alternative with Pierre Poilievre.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Singh’s Song.

by Peter Lowry

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh’s turbans might be bright and colorful but his beard is graying. It is also showing a little more trimming, in contravention of the dictates of the tenth Sikh Guru. Canadians might never choose the NDP for governance under an observant Sikh but they are more than willing to see him as the balance point between the harshness of the conservatives and their tiring with the acting of liberal leader Justin Trudeau.

Even without his glasses, Pierre Poilievre can see the tenuous nature of the liberal- NDP agreement that is supporting the current government. He enjoys sniping at their arrangement. He is in a constant state of readiness for the slug-fest to come.

But like Canada’s aboriginal peoples, the NDP also have their stories to be told. The NDP support works, they can say. “We are holding the liberal feet to the fire.” They will tell you: “We are getting things done.” And that is the song they will sing to their voters.

Poilievre, of course is there to try to convince voters that the NDP are just liberals with different hats. He is trying to redirect some of the rage, that he has been laying so heavily on the liberal doorstep, on the NDP. Whether this is going to work or not is open to question.

Thinking back over the years, we saw an NDP support agreement with the Pierre Trudeau liberals in the 1970s. The federal NDP leader, at the time was David Lewis and his party never won any dividends on that investment. In the same era, Ontario provincial NDP leader, Bob Rae, did benefit from his party’s support agreement with the Peterson liberals in the last half of the 1980s. That was in the 1990 provincial election when Peterson slipped and slid into oblivion leaving a surprised NDP in power in Ontario.

Yet, the question is, will the NDP story be heard, in the ongoing bombast of a federal election fought between a weasel like Poilievre and an elitist like our current prime minister? It could be that the new democrats will, once more, be the detritus left on the battlefield between the two larger political parties.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Time To Go Justin Trudeau.

by Peter Lowry

Your sunny days are done, Justin. And few voters want to watch you being defeated by the Ottawa cowboy, Pierre Poilievre. We hear that your effort to provide Alberta with a pipeline for its tar sands product over the Rockies has now become a $30 billion plus disaster for our country.

You have spilled those billions down the Rockies to Burrard Inlet. Even the BC tribes who bought into the pipeline promises to cross their tribal lands, are now questioning their support. And even in a country as rich as Canada, we cannot accept these losses.

And why is your chief critic, conservative leader Poilievre, saying nothing about the failed expansion of the pipeline? Did you build it for the Ottawa cowboy? Will he be there when the first ceremonial barrels of tar sand’s gunk flow through the expanded high-pressure pipeline? Will Poilievre take the bows for you when the first ocean going tanker is loaded with bitumen in Burrard Inlet? Will he take any of the blame when the first ocean tanker spills bitumen into the summer playground of the Orcas in the Strait of Georgia?

The Ottawa cowboy was not as prominent when you bought Trans Mountain five years ago. It only cost taxpayers $4.5 billion at that time. We should not forget that the original pipeline has been in service now for 71 years. And you are going to triple the pressure in those rusty old pipes. And the taxpayer’s final bill for the expanded pipeline is going to be north of $30 billion.

I certainly admire your trust, Justin. I do hope the engineers who planned the increase in pressure through the pipeline for you are still around. You might find you want to get our money back from them that you paid for their opinions. And please do not suggest that the aboriginals buy the whole mess. We would certainly like to see more of the tribes be entrepreneurial but we can ill afford to see the ones who buy into Trans Mountain pipeline, be bankrupted.

We have heard from the Ottawa cowboy about your supposed generosity during the pandemic. We have heard from him about your supposedly taking of Canadian news from the Meta people. Why is he so silent about more than $30 billion?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Let Me Entertain You.

by Peter Lowry

Listening to Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie the other day was a surprise political event. It was the first time I had seen her give a speech to an audience. She was working without notes and she had that audience of liberals in the palm of her hand. This lady is an entertainer.

And her audience of Barrie, Ontario liberals loved her. It was the largest gathering of liberals I had seen in one place in Barrie in the last eight years. Ms. Crombie reminded me of the Cinderella character who greets visitors at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. That was probably because she worked in communications with the Disney Company at one time while she was married. That Disney experience is golden.

But she also reminded me of the late Bill Davis. The former conservative premier was a politician who could hold an audience with charm and humour. Since the time of J.J.  (Joe) Greene, who was prime minister Lester Pearson’s Minister of Agriculture, from Renfrew, Ontario, we have seen few liberal politicians who can enthrall an audience. Bonnie Crombie might just be one of those elite.

Bonnie had a simple message: The Ontario liberals are back. People are proud to be liberal again. She is particularly reaching out to all the small towns in Ontario, telling them that they no longer need to feel isolated and neglected by liberals. It was a very smart pitch as the liberal backroom boys and girls on the executive of the party had decided that all electoral districts are created equal and each would only have 100 votes no matter what their real membership might be. That means that a rural riding with a few liberal diehards could have 10 to 20 times the voting strength of a liberal in a riding with a thousand or more members.

It was also impressive that Ms. Crombie wasted little of her time on the incumbent conservative government. Her comments on the way the conservative government is trying to fix our healthcare were amusing and very much to the point. She has no good words for their opening up clinics that are hoping to make money with their additions to Medicare costs.

I can see now why my old friend Hazel McCallion endorsed Bonnie Crombie to replace her in the mayor’s chair in Mississauga. This lady has the skills.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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No Rest for the Wicked.

by Peter Lowry

No, premier Ford, the Greenbelt fiasco is not going away. Firing Ryan Amato was just the first of many steps back you need to take. Not that you hurt his feelings by saying he was fired. He was probably the recipient of some unexplained miscellaneous funds from the premier’s office, in addition to the legal severance pay. You also opened broad avenues of lucrative employment for Amato in the housing industry in Ontario.

It was premier Ford himself who blew it. He blotted his copybook the first time we heard through the news media that he was having meetings with developers about Greenbelt lands. He was like the deer in the headlights.

“Oh no,” Ford said. “I love the Greenbelt. I will protect the Greenbelt.”

Premier Doug Ford lied.

And the Ontario provincial police have kicked the can on this case down the road to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Did you think for a minute that our politicized OPP would want to take on that can of worms? Anybody who had seriously watched commissioner Thomas Carrique at the inquiry into the Ottawa convoy could guess the servile position he held for the Ford government.

The news media in Ontario are holding on to their demands for the resignation of Ford’s housing minister, Steve Clark. He is hardly the first cabinet minister in Ontario history that claimed to be unaware of what his chief of staff was doing. Proving Steve Clark’s hypocrisy is low hanging fruit when the real target should be Doug Ford.

There are 79 other conservatives in the Ontario legislature and they all appreciate their well-paying jobs. Many of them will freely admit that it was Doug Ford who won those jobs for them. And they will continue to support Doug Ford until there has to be an election. The likelihood at that election is that there will be a surprising number of early retirements.

Even conservatives can have a conscience. And voters can have long memories.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Ford Fails Fallacious.

by Peter Lowry

He cannot win his Greenbelt argument and he doesn’t know when to shut up. Every time the Ontario premier opens his mouth in public, he sticks a foot in his mouth. Mind you, what we are hearing from him is grade school sophistry. He can hardly tell us that the only available land for building on in southern Ontario is in the Greenbelt. And he is embarrassing himself when he sticks to his lie.

The basic problem is that Doug Ford has never had any mentoring in politics. His late brother Rob tried to instil some political savvy in Doug when they were both in city hall in Toronto. The problem was that Rob was self medicating on crack cocaine at the time, and leaving his brother to the sycophants among the lawyers and other builders’ representatives.

Ontario is not going to have a housing problem because we don’t want to build in the Greenbelt. We have a housing problem now. Toronto has been trying to build more infill for the past 40 years and has been battled to a stand-still by the NIMBY’s and their over-paid councillors.

What people don’t seem to understand in Toronto is that if you want a world-class city, you damn well have to pay for it. And they had John Tory holding the line for them for the past nine years. John Tory was a pretty damn good mayor, for a conservative. He was living in the past. He did not build any future. Ask me of his legacy and I will try not to laugh too much.

And let me remind you: A world-class city does not have people living in their parks and on their streets. And remember that a panhandler is just a lost boy who is looking for his Peter Pan and Wendy.

I will try to remember that Toronto’s major problem these days is that asshole at Queen’s Park. Doug Ford should have grown up in my part of York Township instead of down in Etobicoke—both integral parts of the Toronto of today. I thought my family was coming up in the world when we moved in 1946 from Sherbourne and Wellesley to north of the stockyards. It was a world that Doug Ford never knew existed. All the homes on streets around ours had their basements finished first so that people could have a place to live while the rest of the house was finished.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]