Category: New

Quebec colonizing continues.

by Peter Lowry

Some of you might be wondering about that silly motion by the Quebec National Assembly last week. It was the one suggesting that Montreal merchants stop saying “Bonjour Hi” to customers coming into their places of business. The motion was proposed by those language snobs of the Parti Québécois and passed unanimously by all parties. The politicians are worried that merchants who are polite to their English-speaking customers might be easy for the English to colonize.

The conclusion we take to this foolishness is that Montreal merchants are a lot smarter than the politicians in Quebec.

You will please note that the motion of the Assembly is just a polite suggestion and has no form of enforcement included. They still cannot stop people from being polite. The politicians did not want to be given the finger by the Montreal merchants they were complaining about.

What the merchants know and the politicians fail to understand is that the merchants are there to do business. They are not allowed under the province’s somewhat oppressive language laws to say “welcome” on the outside of their place of business but inside is their territory. When someone comes into your store or restaurant, there is a strong possibility that they might want to buy something. The merchants are not all that interested in promoting one language over another. They will be happy to help you do business in either of Canada’s official languages.

I remember a time in Montreal when you got into some abusive situations if you could not speak French. Luckily, merchants realized that confrontations over language are bad for business. They certainly do not promote tourism. As one of those people who cannot carry a musical note in a bucket, I seem to have just as an inadequate an ear for languages. And growing up among the melange of languages of Toronto, there was the chance to study French but not to practice what had been learned.

Traveling around the world over the years, I have learned that you can never be proficient in enough languages but my rudimentary knowledge of French has sometimes been helpful. What really seems to matter in most countries is that it pays to be observant of customs. Politeness never gets you in trouble.

The Montreal business that wants to be polite to me by saying “Bonjour Hi” is going to be the one that gets my business 90 per cent of the time.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Chuckles needs to change gears.

by Peter Lowry

It is a rare time that we give serious advice to the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. It is that ‘Chuckles’ Scheer is going to have to learn the difference between legitimate political criticism and harassment. Watching Finance Minister Bill Morneau in the House of Commons it seemed to me that the poor man was distraught. This baiting has gone too far.

Chuckles and the rest of the Conservative caucus have to understand that if you are unwilling to ask your question outside the House of Commons—where you have no parliamentary immunity—then you are impugning the man’s honour. And if you have no basis for the truth of your claims, then you have no honour.

What all MPs need to understand is that Canadians are embarrassed and annoyed by the depth of the juvenile antics in the House. It is dishonourable. Do you go home and scream invective across the living room at the spouse? That is not a benefit of being elected either.

Why Bill Morneau should be hounded about selling his shares in the family company, when it was the only smart thing for him to do, makes no sense. He had been criticized for not putting the shares in a blind trust but he was doing the next best thing: divesting. Everyone knew that the earnings would be taxed at a higher rate in the next year, so why would he not tell his advisor to sell before the end of the year? And why would his father not do the same?

And all this being said, we should turn our attention to the prime minister who should have fired Bill Morneau at the beginning of this contretemps. As much as Morneau claims to have been assured by ethics commissioner Mary Dawson that he did not need to have a blind trust, she probably had no idea how much his holdings would be impacted by changing rules.

If Justin Trudeau had the discussions needed with the man chosen to be his finance minister, he should have advised him to use the same type of blind trust as the Trudeau family.

As I have already stated a couple times in these commentaries, the role of the finance minister is that of Caesar’s wife. He must be above suspicion. While Canada has lost a few good finance ministers over the years, the government of the day cannot invite suspicion of any sort. Morneau is no longer tenable.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Does Ontario come with an owner’s manual?

by Peter Lowry

Maybe Patrick Brown forgot to ask. It has been clear that Premier Kathleen Wynne has been playing the job by ear for the past four years. It is just that the former do-nothing back bencher from the Harper government wants Wynne’s job. The Globe and Mail tells us that Brown is a pragmatist on steroids and the Toronto Star’s Rick Salutin thinks he is merely returning to the zeitgeist of the Bill Davis era in Ontario.

As very few of us understand Rick Salutin, we have to go along with the Globe and Mail on this one. The only problem is that the Globe points out that some of the Conservative promises are more liberal than anything the Ontario Liberals are offering. Maybe Brown’s model is the Trudeau government in Ottawa.

All we know here in Patrick Brown’s electoral district is that the putz will say anything to get elected.

The only thing I regret is that the Conservatives must have read my criticisms of Kathleen Wynne’s Cap and Trade system. They are absolutely right to get behind the federal carbon tax. While it must be causing apoplexy in some Toronto board rooms, the carbon tax is the most open way to force people to help save this planet.

But nobody ever suggested that the carbon tax should fund personal income tax cuts. A proper carbon tax is designed to be revenue neutral and only a Libertarian would see it as a chance for tax cuts.

If any among us has had time to study all 147 promises in that Conservative work of fiction, they must be wondering where the cuts are hiding. You can hardly move that much revenue to popular promises without cutting the hell out of some critical programs. You have to figure that doctors’ incomes will be the only safe zone in the health care budget. (With the help of Brown’s campaign manager, Walied Soliman, greed won control of the Ontario Medical Association this past year.)

While the men in suits that seemed to dominate the Conservative gathering were applauding the new Patrick Brown, there was a feeling of déjà vu to the events. It felt like a piece meal plucking of a goody from here and a goody from there. Yes, Brown had a new haircut but it was the same schmuck we have known for years, reading the teleprompter.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Why Sarah is the perfect press patsy.

by Peter Lowry

Her name is Sarah Huckabee Sanders and she is President Trump’s White House press secretary. Watching her in action, you get the feeling that she is something of a female version of Forrest Gump. It is her gullible nature that makes her the ideal press secretary.

Having been in her position occasionally, during a career in politics, I have to be sympathetic to her plight. Laugh at her if you wish but she is the one earning the danger pay.

Back when I was looking after the media for prime ministerial events in Toronto, media briefings were often part of the job. Sometimes I would be asked to say something that was designed to mislead the media. My most frequent answer was to ask who would make that announcement. They would promise someone else to make the announcement but they would never show.

What they really wanted for those briefings was someone dumb enough to do what they were told. And that is why Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the perfect patsy as press secretary.

Anyone thinking they can defend Donald Trump’s nocturnal twitting on Twitter has got to be a few litres short of a fill.

The other day the media confronted Sarah Huckabee Sanders outside the White House in regards to the President retwitting some racist twits about Muslims. Her explanation of the retwits left the news media folks wide-eyed and amazed. She explained that even if the twits were wrong, they were right. She also claimed that the reporters were looking at these twits from the wrong direction.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that it did not matter if the twits were real or fake, the President and her thought the threat was real. The threat, according to the twits, were that if you were on crutches, you were liable to be kicked by a person made up as a supposed Muslim, someone else in costume smashed a statue supposedly of the Virgin Mary and some other mayhem. The videos were so bad, you would have to also believe in the tooth fairy to consider them credible.

The incident certainly annoyed Prime Minister Elizabeth May in the United Kingdom. The videos came from a far-right organization in England, known for their virulent and ignorant anti-Muslim sentiments. The fact that Donald Trump retwitted them to his 43 million Twitter followers just means that a large number of Twitter-users need to get a life.

But the sound of one hand clapping for Sarah Huckabee Sanders over here in Canada is in recognition of her unwavering loyalty, her creativity and her stupidity. Bless her.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

A Deal with the Devil for our heritage.

by Peter Lowry

The Toronto Star owners have made a deal with PostMedia to divide Ontario between them. Talk about a deal with the devil! Did they think that the Competition Bureau in Ottawa would fail to notice? Is this what heritage minister Mélanie Joly meant when she said the government was not interested in aiding newspapers because they were an industry model that is no longer viable?

PostMedia has not been viable since it was cobbled together by CEO Paul Godfrey. The newspaper company is a nightmare of fire sale accumulations of small community media. Godfrey has been well funded by American investors who wanted to gain a foothold in the Canadian media market. The last we heard, they were adding the American executive responsible for the electronic version of the National Enquirer to the PostMedia board.

You should try to imagine Paul Godfrey in a toga standing on a soap box on the spit by the east channel to the Toronto harbour holding up a flashlight. He could say: Give me your tired, unprofitable papers, your befuddled editors yearning to promote the Conservatives, the wretched refuse of unwanted reporters. Send all those rags to me. (With apologies to Emma Lazarus, author of The New Colossus.)

Of course, Paul Godfrey knew what he was doing as he assembled this list of losers. He made millions while his American investors paid the piper. As time went on, he just kept adding more losing papers.

TorStar, owners of the Toronto Star, paid heed to his wishes and assembled all their losers and cut them loose in a swap for some of the PostMedia stable. Of the local papers they got in return, TorStar will only keep three of them in business. I checked the lists and I find our town’s ancient Barrie Examiner is ‘Gone baby gone.’ TorStar has a competitive paper here that serves as the weekly grocery flyer wrap.

The two chains have effectively divided the province between them except for the largest markets. And what Minister Joly should worry about is the number of single newspaper markets in Ontario now served by the strongly Conservative leaning PostMedia newspapers.

What the heritage minister needs to realize is that those small dailies and weeklies serving us across the hinterland are the lasting record of the communities and their citizens. TorStar has just flushed down the drain a huge chunk of Ontario’s heritage. They are a critical part of what makes our communities, our towns and cities work. They cannot be replaced by electronic media. Those local papers were never just a business.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Promises and Political Promises.

by Peter Lowry

The magazine style “policy platform” handed out to the Ontario Conservative elite at their get-together last weekend is a style of political literature that was developed many years ago. The glossy magazine is a strong sales style that the voter might keep a bit longer. Adding a full-page guarantee was an idea that popped up occasionally when the writers ran out of policies. The only drawback is if you win the election, the people who keep the magazine the longest are your supporters and they will notice how few promises you keep.

The problem with promises are that governments are elected to govern and the minutia of day to day governance, their party ideology and reality get in the way of keeping promises such as a chicken in every pot.

But you are the sucker who believed them.

The other problem with all the promises made is that they are mainly half-baked, ill-considered ideas that are presented in very positive terms. These are not necessarily panaceas.

Some are very bad ideas. An example of a very bad idea is the one the Conservatives are making about taking over the planning and building of subways in Toronto. What they are suggesting is taking the process from one set of incompetent politicians and giving it to another group of incompetent politicians. The only difference is that the people affected will have less say.

Frankly, if a third of the election promises of any party are ever addressed, the voters should be surprised. One of Canada’s best loved Prime Ministers in the last quarter century was Jean Chrétien. His 1993 Red Book of promises was a work of fiction that was supposedly based on the Liberal Party’s Aylmer Policy Conference. Did he rid us of the hated Goods and Services Tax? Did he cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement? Of course not!

What is the most serious flaw in all these promises is that you need to understand the people making the promises. You need to decide whether these people really have your best interests at heart? If Patrick Brown has been a social conservative all his life, would you wonder at why he now says he is not? If he never had an idea in his life that helped people in Ontario, why does he now promote all these helpful ideas? Do you think we would elect him if he told the truth about himself?

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

A station ghosts have forgotten.

by Peter Lowry

As the winds of yet another winter blow through the beautifully restored but empty train station by Kempenfelt Bay, you wonder at the foolishness of Barrie’s city council. In the words of an old television series, they see nothing, they know nothing.

The story of the train station started about 700 years ago when nomadic aboriginals would sometimes camp at the shallows at the south-west corner of Kempenfelt Bay to fish and enjoy the cooling breezes from Lake Simcoe. There might have even been some disputes with other tribes about the right to camp there.

Europeans only started showing up 300 years ago when the area served as a portage point on the way to the head of the lakes. It was about 200 years ago that a village started at the portage on the north side of the bay and a village called Allandale started at the south-west. Trains have been coming to Allandale since 1853.

Today, Allandale is in the centre of the City of Barrie and the train station lands have become the de facto GO Train terminus and bus station. The only problem is that the preserved train station (built in 1905) remains unused. GO Train services are all automated, tickets are in a machine, buses pick up and discharge passengers. The only problem is that nobody knows anything and nobody sees anything. Only ghosts are in residence.

My barber, who has a small shop near the bus entrance, has noticed one problem. People who have to wait for a bus or train have no amenities. There are no snacks or coffee purveyed and there are no washrooms. When in need of a washroom, people sometimes ask her. She does not really have public facilities, but she is not cruel.

When the small business owner asked her local councillor about this problem, he assured her there were facilities. She checked the entire site again and realized that her local councillor did not know squat. So much for him.

When she told me about the problem, I checked with Barrie’s mayor. He acknowledged the problem. But it is Metrolinx’s problem, he told me. They are responsible for the GO Trains, buses and facilities but not the unused train station. It is an historic site, owned by the city. It might be a long time before it is open to the public for any purpose.

It seems nobody is in any rush. With the discovery of some possibly human bone fragments on the site that could be 200 or 700 years old, the Ontario Coalition of Indigenous Peoples (OCIP) has demanded that the land and the station be turned over to them as an aboriginal burial site. Since other local aboriginal tribes and groups seem skeptical of OCIP’s bonafides, there has been no rush for the city to give away a multi-million dollar restored train station and the site.

But nothing more is expected until the Wilfrid Laurier associate professor of Indigenous studies hired by the city gets around to a fourth level study of the site next summer, looking for historical artifacts.

It  seems like a long time to wait for a washroom.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Patrick’s pathetic policy pantomime.

by Peter Lowry

It was a come from behind event. Ontario Conservative Party Leader Brown hosted a party event over the weekend. Some of the media had noticed that he had no policies. He therefore had an event to announce some policies to start building the scenery for next June’s provincial election. He had already set the centerpiece by refusing to vote for an increased minimum wage and improvements in Ontario’s workplace standards. He was coming from behind until this weekend.

Since the event was in the British Christmas pantomime style, it was based on fairy tales, slapstick and rather broad humour. It was an event to please the children.

My favourite policy promise was that the Conservatives would take over subways from Toronto. Children love playing with trains. Instead of Toronto having an integrated transit system, the Tories would likely disintegrate it.

But, you will love these promises, the Tories say they are going to cut taxes, spend more, take another 12 per cent off Hydro prices, balance the books and pay down the provincial debt. And if you do not believe that he can do it, he is giving you a written guarantee. I bet that really convinces you of Patrick Brown’s sincerity!

Maybe that is why if you buy into Brown’s promises and elect him, he will spend $1.9 billion more on Ontario mental health needs.

It seems Brown has searched Ontario history so that he can find a Conservative that Ontario voters actually liked and he could try to copy. He had to go all the way back to the days of Bill Davis. While many liked Bill when he was Premier—because he has always been a stand-up guy—it would be taking Ontario back about a third of a century while we have to live with the realities of today.

But there were other new realities as well. On the weekend, the party was introduced to the new Patrick Brown. Yes, there has been another remake. He was sporting a new haircut. The first effort did not take and he had gone back to looking like a nerd.

Brown still does not seem to be a hot item with the ladies but he wants to prove he is warm hearted. To do this, he notes he has sleepovers for his sister’s three boys at his Toronto pad. He also tells us that he has been faithful to the promise he made his mother when he was nine-years old. He still does not drink alcohol. There was no mention of the change in marijuana rules coming in July next year.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

Black on black.

by Peter Lowry

It never pays to be pedantic but enough is enough. I try not to sound off on how others write, spell, punctuate or capitalize. I can make my own mistakes. And if I get on my high horse, the wife calls me ‘Anal Alan’ after the role of the brother in “Two and a Half Men.”

But I was reading an article by the Washington bureau chief of the Toronto Star the other day and I found he was capitalizing the colour black as though it was a proper name. He even wrote about Barack Obama as the first “Black president.” He capitalized the colour instead of ‘President.’ How far do we go?

The next thing we know, the Toronto Star will be referring to me as “that darn White man.” After all English is a living language. You have to keep up with the times!

I thought the Toronto Star only let writers of colour capitalize on being black.

Though the Star should be pleased with its writers who helped end the very successful program of having police officers in some Toronto’s public schools. Despite majority approval for the program, Star writers complained that some black students felt intimidated. Well, maybe they should be. You would think that we would be smart and find out what is intimidating about the program?

The cops are there to build better relationships with our young people and the empirical evidence is that this has been very successful. If we have the majority of the kids happy with the cops being there, we have a major win on our hands. And to kill the program is colossally stupid.

If we kept one kid from joining a gang today, what is that worth? If we discouraged one kid from thinking of stealing, what is that worth? If we got a few kids to think of becoming a police officer after they have finished school successfully, what is that worth?

And what our kids really need to see is that police can be of any colour, any ethnic background, any sex and lead surprisingly normal lives. That seems to be worth a lot.

And before we take the word of some group saying they represent the black community or this ethnic group or that group, you should check it out. It is amazing how many of these groups are self appointed.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

 

Rachel wants you on her side.

by Peter Lowry

Do you feel threatened by Alberta Premier Rachel Notley? It seems the lady can scare anyone who gets in her way. Right now, she is in a rage against people who think pipelines for bitumen are bad for the environment. You either ride the bitumen bus with Rachel or she might throw you under it.

You almost feel sorry for Conservative fixer and party leader Jason Kenney who thinks his new united conservatives are going to take over Dodge. Kenney and Notley remind us of that old Bob Hope/Dorothy Lamour movie Buttons and Bows. Remember that old song: “Don’t bury me in this Prairie. Take me where the cement grows.”

Notley is hardly insensitive to the environmental concerns but wants them put on the back burner until her province’s tar sands exploiters can get some money for their stuff that can be turned into ersatz oil.

But if those people trying to turn a buck out of the tar sands are expecting crude oil to go back to selling at $100 a barrel, they might have a long wait.

And even if the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline eventually gets finished down to the Texas Gulf ports, there will be no profit for Alberta in whatever bitumen that gets shipped to countries that do not care about the extreme pollution levels.

Notley has been selling anyone who will listen on the federally approved Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain twinned pipelines for bitumen. Her pitch is that partisan blinders are getting in the way. She believes that environmental protection cannot come before jobs for people.

And yet she tries to get Conservatives in Ottawa and back home in Alberta to understand that climate change is real. At the same time, she is encouraging Justin Trudeau to get his troops to stand up for Alberta. So far, the only people applauding that suggestion are the Conservatives.

Notley’s new federal leader is proving to be as big a problem as the British Columbia NDP. She tells federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh that his interference in the pipeline question is irrelevant and that he needs to stick to future concerns of the party.

One day, Notley is going to notice that she is the only one making all these foolish claims. It is about time for her to find better pursuits for Alberta capitalists than trying to cash in on coal and bitumen that are better off left in the ground.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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