Category: New

In Ayn Rand’s Tutelage.

by Peter Lowry

A recent opinion piece in my daily paper invoked the image of “Ayn Rand’s Apostles.” It is hard to believe that forty years after her death, a Russian-born script writer from Hollywood is still influencing the right wing of America. And, even worse, influencing the hard-right libertarians in our country to challenge the legitimacy of Canada’s federal government.

It is important to remember the Ayn Rand philosophy of Objectivism was built on extremist levels of libertarian self-interest and self-gratification. It also should be noted that she felt she needed to emphasize her anti-communist leanings in an America after the Second World War.

When foolish Ford in Ontario announced his strong-mayor idea, I must admit I saw little wrong with giving the mayor something to do rather then follow the firetrucks and cut ribbons to get his picture in the paper. It makes little sense when the mayor has no more voting strength than his ward councillors despite sometimes having more citizen votes than all the city councillors combined. I was also under the impression that a strong mayor would be given powers of appointment. I never considered a situation where the mayor could pass legislation with less than 50 per cent support.

Mayor John Tory disappointed me when he made an appointment without council support before the bill had even been passed by the legislature. As much as he might smile at the prospect of an easy third term in office, passing motions with just minority voting is hardly democratic.

But one only has to look at Alberta to see just how bad the situation might be. Danielle Smith has backtracked from some of the extremes of her Sovereignty Act. What she does not seem to understand is how this country is put together. I think I took that level of civics in public school.

Somehow, I doubt that Scott Moe, premier of Saskatchewan, will follow with his province’s sovereignty act. He does like to follow Alberta’s lead.

But the guy who marches to the Ayn Rand tunes in Quebec is the bigot and tribalist, François Legault. He is giving Canada a reputation for bigotry and racism from his forbidding religious symbols, demands in immigration and preventing people from using any language other than French. Ayn Rand would have been proud of him.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Serfs Up!

by Peter Lowry

We are not talking about the ocean surf here. We are talking about the people Ontario premier Doug Ford seems to consider as his serfs. He doesn’t seem to understand that slavery has been illegal in Ontario for going on 200 years. He thinks he can threaten people with ridiculous fines for withdrawing their labour.

This might be the beginning of the second Upper Canada Rebellion. Bring your muskets and we will meet at Montgomery’s tavern. We can march down Yonge Street. We can start by offering solidarity with CUPE’s education workers. They were brave to tell the Ford government: “Hell, no.”

Mr. Ford needs to be advised that all education workers have rights. These are not just the right to strike for a fair wage. Like our Ontario nurses, they have the right to move to where they can be paid fairly.

While we certainly agree with the CUPE education workers that they are being undervalued and that Mr. Ford is nothing but a braggart and a bully, the real blame has to be laid on Ontario voters. Mr. Ford’s conservatives were re-elected by about 20 per cent of the eligible voters in the election. That was one voter in five who chose Mr. Ford. Mind you, what did you expect to happen when more than half of Ontario voters did not bother to vote?

I expect that more than half of the Ontario population are also deeply concerned about the children whose education has been cut short again. Children are resilient but remote learning is still not the solution for many. They need the expert guidance offered by trained teachers. They need to learn in an environment that is designed for that purpose. They need the encouragement of a professional to learn. The group interaction provides incentive. The interaction is also important to their socialization.

And there is one thing for sure, a college drop-out such as Doug Ford is not the person I would want directing my children’s education. Nor would I consider it a good idea to having a private-schooled minister of education such as Stephen Lecce.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Food Fight.

by Peter Lowry

Going into a grocery store today is not the pleasure I used to feel when going into a well-run store. Each visit becomes a brutal series of price shocks. It is the few cents on a smaller can of peas. It is the three dollars more for a pound of butter. And nothing infuriates a senior more than the multiple deals where you get a few cents off if you buy two or three of something or the value-pack in the meat department that can fill your freezer for months. You are not saving it for your old age. How much more old age do you think we still have to endure?

What really annoys me though is the thoughtless promotion of Loblaws over their ‘No Name’ products that they have finally stopped raising the prices on products that they contracted for two years ago. All I know is that Loblaws’ various branded stores are making unconscionable profits to the reported tune of a million dollars a day. This is the conglomerate that was hauled into court in 2018 as part of the infamous bread price-fixing scandal. Remember the $25 gift card that all Canadian homes were supposed to get from the Weston empire. They owed Canadians a hell of a lot more.

If the triumvirate of grocery giants in Canada—Loblaws, Empire and Metro—is anything like the triumvirate of—Bell, Rogers and Telus—good luck to us. We already pay 20 per cent more for cell phone service in most of Canada. Are we about half-way there in heading for a 20 per cent rise in food costs?

I listened to finance minister Cynthia Freeland the other day. She stood there in the House of Commons and told us that we were getting a boost in the GST refund rate for the next five months.

At least she did not spout that garbage from Pee-Pee Poilievre that some other social benefit would have to be cancelled to pay for this federal largess. I am assuming that some of her cabinet colleagues had given her a heads up on spouting conservative dogma.

But I remain adamant that the communications companies, the gas companies and the bastards in the food chain who are making unconscionable profits off Canadians be taxed out of their profits on our suffering.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Letting Lecce Learn?

by Peter Lowry

I heard over the grapevine the other day that the word on Ontario education minister Stephen Lecce is that he is too old to be handsome and too young to have learned much. And all along, I thought he was just deaf. Why people waste time talking to the man is the wonder. Yet we let him pretend to run a $30 billion operation called the Ontario Ministry of Education.

That seems to indicate that the man who gave Lecce the job of minister was stupider than we thought. And what either Lecce or his boss know about bargaining with unions, is obviously not very much. The conservative government’s attitude towards unions is what created unions in the first place. The support workers who help keep teachers in their classrooms don’t deserve the treatment they have been getting.

In bargaining with a union, you don’t keep offering the same insulting amount and then lie to the legislature about what they asked for. In face of galloping inflation, it is unrealistic to stand firm on poverty wages. Decent offers often get a decent response. Standing firm on poverty level wages gets the response it deserves.

But what else would you expect from a premier and a minister who have absolutely no experience that might help them do their jobs? Lecce can hardly rely on his private school experience to help him understand public education. What he has ever done or learned to help him do the ministry job seems to be a secret.

He actually said this week that if the union would take strike action off the table, he would have another offer. And if the union took the strike off the table, they would be at the mercy of people who do not care. Strike is their only option.

Lecce’s boss, premier Doug Ford is more of an open book. Doug Ford failed municipal politics 101 under the tutelage of his late brother Rob Ford. And after failing to win the mayoralty, he moved up to provincial politics. Maybe his father was a one-time member of the legislature but the younger Ford learned nothing from him. When he entered the legislature to sit as premier of Ontario, his first six months was a series of gaffs and mistakes. He interfered in a municipal election in process in Toronto. Cronyism filled his appointments schedule. Pay-offs for developers and other donors was his game plan, He knows nothing of good government. The other day he had the sergeant at arms escorting the NDP members from the legislature. It seems you are not supposed to call a lie a lie in Mr. Ford’s Ontario. I am pleased that there are some people there who know a lie when they hear one.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Pee-Pee, Where Are You?

by Peter Lowry

Our Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre (Pee-Pee) has vanished. Our new leader of Canada’s conservatives is among the missing. After all the hoopla around his winning the leadership, you would think Pee-Pee was in for the duration in opposition. Or is he just sitting at home, enthralled by watching the Rouleau Inquiry on CPAC?

You remember those halcyon days last winter in Ottawa don’t you Pee-Pee? You could go to your home, west on Hwy 417, away from that noisy downtown. Do you remember welcoming your trucker friends to Ottawa. You waved to them from the bridges, you brought them coffee from the parliament buildings. You introduced them to some of your conservative friends. You encouraged them to make downtown Ottawa a living hell for those who lived there. You encouraged them to break reasonable laws for peace and order.

But why aren’t you at the Rouleau Inquiry? Your friend Justin Trudeau is coming. We are not so sure if your buddy Doug Ford from Ontario is coming, maybe. After all, those fuckers, the truckers, are your kind of guys. They don’t like masks. They don’t like mandates for healthcare. They are somewhat ignorant as to how Canada is run but they want to fix it anyway. Just like you.

Pee-Pee, you are such a sleaze! You and your Bitcoin world need a dose of reality. You don’t even understand the role of the Bank of Canada but you think you can lay all the blame for world-wide inflation on Justin Trudeau. If you ever have to get a real job, you should definitely stay away from the world of finance.

And don’t you love the way the lawyers at the Rouleau Inquiry are trying to dump all the blame for use of the emergencies act on former Ottawa chief Peter Sloly. I wonder if former Toronto police chief Bill Blair (now an MP) has noticed that Pete Sloly doesn’t work for him anymore.

You have to admire how Sloly has handled himself during these hearings. He has been giving back as good as good as he has got. Maybe he should have been more attentive to what the Ontario provincial police and RCMP were really doing but considering what he was facing on the streets of Ottawa, I think he deserves a medal.

Unlike Bill Blair, Peter Sloly knew when he had been had and to resign.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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A Peoples’ Parliament.

by Peter Lowry

A peoples’ parliament is an ideal for Canada but reality is that we have an elitist prime minister, a manipulative leader of the opposition and a few other struggling parties. At one time we had more of a peoples’ parliament. This current one is more of a peoples’ parties’ parliament. If we would stop voting for useless party drones instead of the best candidate for MP, we might once again have a peoples’ parliament.

It really was more of a peoples’ parliament back in the days of Justin Trudeau’s father. You could argue that it was not truly democratic but I felt that the openness of the government to input was a great start. One aspect in which I was directly involved was the creation of the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). I started with the group who fought at a liberal party session in Ottawa to let the Board of Broadcast Governors run the CBC but not make the rules for the private television stations and networks that were developing.

The CRTC was created by Pierre Trudeau’s government in 1968 and my MP, Bob Stanbury, was the communications minister at one time. The first time I appeared before the commission was on an application by a cable television company to cherry pick the apartment buildings across Toronto and let the other cable companies have the rest. I had fun with that one and the commission ruling was taken directly from my comments. It also led to a call asking me to produce shows for a young cable upstart called Ted Rogers.

I appeared many times on behalf of consumers before the CRTC and I never had as much fun as in those early days. I think the most successful appearance I made before our parliament was one before the parliamentary committee on finance. I was president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada at the time but appeared on behalf of Canadians for Health Research. It was in the Railway Committee Room in the parliament buildings. The Montreal based Health Research group were very concerned about some $60 million that had been cut in primary research funding across Canada. The gal running the health research group needed someone who wasn’t going to be too impressed to be speaking to members of parliament. My address was ‘read into’ Hansard that day and I got a call from the prime minister’s office that the finance minister had ‘found’ $60 million and there would be no cuts to health research that year.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

These Twits Twitter.

by Peter Lowry

I have never been able to make the connection between the more popular personal Internet exchanges and the world of blogs. About 10 years ago, one of my grandsons told me that I needed to use Twitter to attract readers to my blog. He set me up with a Twitter account and I had fun writing short pieces of doggerel about my blog entries.

After a while, doing twits just bored me and I could see no difference in the readership of my blog. Google Analytics tells me that my readership goes up and down like a side view of the Rocky Mountains. I find I get more readers when there is an election to write about and less when I am only writing on the politicians’ progress. I am not even sure if politics interests many Internet viewers these days. I sometimes feel like I am exchanging my political secrets with four or five hundred readers—some as far away as Beijing. If I did not get the occasional angry e-mail from a reader about my spelling, I would say my readership was all in my imagination.

The biggest surprise is the audience you can pick up through aggregators such as Canada’s Progressive Bloggers. While a few of the writers are really doing twits there are some of them who provide excellent commentaries. There are others who cannot spell. And I noticed the other day there is one who thinks Rob Ford is the premier of Ontario. Rob Ford was the late brother who was mayor of Toronto. The premier of Ontario is Doug Ford.

And I have solved my problem with the Twitterverse. I ignore it.

But I do make the occasional comment on distant relatives’ Facebook pages. The wife will show me the pictures of new great nieces and nephews from around North America. I now know what those guys were doing during those pandemic lockdowns!

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

A Frugal Ford?

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford has an unusual problem for a conservative. The provincial government’s Financial Accountability Office says that the government has a $2.1 billion budget surplus instead of a $13.5 billion deficit. This is an amazing turnaround of $15.6 billion. It raises all kinds of questions for me.

Many years ago, before the major use of credit or debit cards, I took a hands-on course in super-market management. The training was in one of the largest chain stores in the Toronto area. One of the things I found in cash management was that you needed to worry more about the cashier who frequently finished the day with more money in the till than the one who was a bit short.

One of the traits of the Harper federal government was this tendency to have more money left over each year than expected. What the Harper conservatives had learned was that money, promised to be spent, but not spent, was money in the bank.

There are cabinet retreads in the Ontario government who served in that last Harper government. They obviously brought some of those ideas with them.

And, you have to admit, $15 billion would have gone a long way in retaining nurses in Ontario’s health system. Part of it could have helped settle teachers into teaching instead of worrying about the cost of food at the grocery stores.

But the cheapskates in the Ford government would rather have ignorant voters think the Ford crowd knows how to manage their money. As it is, retaining our capabilities in healthcare, providing adequate teaching staff and in all aspects of managing government services in Ontario are in question. The Ford government cannot be trusted to spend the money it promises to spend.

The worst part of it is the failure to stay alert to cost of living concerns of those least able to handle them. The money for the Ontario Works program and The Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) has been jerked away from these people and then only replaced when inflation is running rampant. Doug Ford makes Scrooge look like a saint

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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A Shotgun Marriage?

by Peter Lowry

Do we realize that it is the Canadian consumer who is getting screwed in this Rogers takeover of Shaw Communications? It would leave Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus free to rape and pillage in the Canadian 5G world. You can feel the change in attitude already. It is a new arrogance.

I got my first dose of this new arrogance earlier this month. I tend to be a frequent flier on the Bell Canada help line. This month’s bill included notice of a coming rate hike but I was on a four-month quest to get an item taken off my bill. It was a $20 per month charge for a 4K PVR. Bell wants to charge me this $20 over 60 months This is the device that records television programs for you. Whether it is worth $1200, with or without interest, is not the argument. The problem is that I do not have one. I have a working 3K PVR that does the job just as well as the 4K model. I like it because I know it is paid for.

Why Bell sent me the 4K model has been a bit confusing. Plugging it into the maze of wires for remote television and Internet service was the challenge. I failed at plug-in 101. A service representative had to come and rescue my installation.

He was a very knowledgeable person and he quickly noted that the television signal was not plugged into the system hub. How it got unplugged I have absolutely no idea.

His second question was why, for two pre-historic television sets, I had a 4K PVR. He plugged in the old 3K that I was sending back to Bell (despite that I owned it after 60 months of payments). Since I now had a fully functional system, I accepted his suggestion that he take the 4K model back to Bell for me. This is why I have been trying to get it taken off my bill for the last four months.

And that is when I met the new model Ma Bell. She reminded me of my grade three school teacher who terrified us kids. If the principal had not come in and took me up to grade four, that teacher and I where in a fight to the finish.

This was not your usual mealy-mouthed, ‘we are here to help’ type of Bell employee. This was a new tough-minded, ‘Let’s duke it out,’ person. She said I got my 20 bucks back in the Internet credit of $25 per month. She acted as though I was cheating the widows and orphans who have Bell stock in their portfolio. And they were not about to move the credit to the television bill as opposed to the Internet bill.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]

The Charlottetown Calamity.

by Peter Lowry

The Charlottetown Accord was rejected by Canadians 30 years ago. It was not one of our country’s finer moments. Historians might puzzle over its failure in years to come but to those of us who fought it, we knew we were fighting for our country. The accord was a top-down, inelegant document having its origin in the former Meech Lake Accord. Crafted by federal and provincial politicians, it was considered just an appeasement to Quebec—whose voters turned it down anyway.

The Charlottetown Accord passed by 50.1 per cent in favour in Ontario. It was the newer Canadian’s votes in Toronto that passed the accord. They were impressed that all three parties were supporting it.

That agreement between the parties caused me political problems. I could tell my local MP (a conservative) to get lost but liberal senators and MPs who contacted me were more of a problem. I particularly remember the lengthy conversation with Senator Richard Stanbury, a good friend for the past 30 years. It was especially hard for me to say ‘no’ to Dick when he asked me to support the accord. His concern was with Quebec voting for separation from Canada if we did not pass the accord.

I had a great sense of relief when former prime minister Pierre Trudeau came out of his retirement. His speech at La Maison Egg Roll in Verdun, Quebec was classic. He was still in great form. He held the accord up to ridicule. He saw it as a document that would further divide Canadians rather than bring them together. He was concerned by the attempts in the accord to make changes that would be irreversible without unanimous consent. He was particularly scathing in denouncing the transfer of many federal government responsibilities to the provinces.

Pierre Trudeau might have thought of himself as the little Dutch boy sticking his fingers into the dike. Yet, he turned the tide. And yes, the péquiste leaders in Quebec hated the accord because it was a few steps short of giving them the separation they wanted.

What we can all agree on is that never again will Canadians allow their politicians to control changes to their constitution. It must be done democratically. It involves all of us. We are already warming to the idea of telling Charles III to take a hike as Canada’s sovereign.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]