Category: New

My Country is Burning.

by Peter Lowry

Many Canadians seem to have little understanding of wildfires that are happening thousands of kilometres away. Millions of city dwellers in Ontario and Quebec probably have little comprehension of the danger and demolition that accompanies these often thoughtlessly lit fires caused by foolish smokers and careless campers.

Having an early introduction to the danger, I have a deep appreciation for the men and women who are fighting those fires today. I was 17 and a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) when I found I had been volunteered to help fight forest fires in the Temagami Region of Ontario. It was an introduction to the hardest physical work of my lifetime.

I spent over a month in that beautiful, rugged forest. We were roasting in the day and shivering under thin blankets at night. We learned to pay attention to the winds and when the fire tried to crown over us, we ran like hell. I always kept in sight of one of our Ojibwe firefighters, these guys seemed to know the paths of the forest. And the Temagami is a very serious place to get lost

One of our fellow firefighters was a métis and nobody wanted to help carry his pack. He was our dynamite expert. Too often, our only source of water was shallow creeks and we had to blast deep enough basins for our pumps. When he found out I had just come off a six-month course in munitions, he figured I had learned when to duck.

It can take many, many years for the scars of fire to be overpowered by new growth in our forests. We cannot do much about the fires caused by lightning but get the firefighters to them as fast as possible. It makes rain both an ally and an enemy.

I was one of the last of the RCAF ‘volunteers’ to be flown out and sent back to North Bay that summer. I arrived at the air base only to be met at the gate by a Group Captain who looked at me with his mouth wide in surprise. Considering I had lost my cap somewhere near Temagami Lake, my jacket was torn, dirty and covered with black soot, my pants, mainly rags, strung for modesty and my boots held on one foot by a dirty rag. All he said was, “Son I can guess where you are coming from, so you deserve better, but get the hell out of sight.” I said nothing but snapped him a pretty good salute.

Luckily a Security Police Sergeant told me to get in his van and he drove me to my quarters. He was laughing most of the way. He told me I came back on the day the base was undergoing an inspection.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Moon, June and By-elections.

by Peter Lowry

It might not rhyme but there is nothing more exciting than a bunch of by-elections. And June is my favourite month for them. Warm, sunny weather gets the political canvassers moving. It’s a super month for getting out the vote. And we’ve got a great mix: four federal by-elections and a big city mayoralty.

And nobody is sneering at the Toronto mayoralty. Where else would you get over 100 candidates. (I think it is just a rumour that one of the candidates is a dog.) When you figure that the Toronto mayor gets paid close to $200,000 per year, you would think there would be more citizens who would want the job.

But we have four federal by-elections a week before the Toronto event. And you don’t often have a pissed-off conservative retiree out stumping for a liberal successor. That is in Oxford riding in Ontario. It is just another misstep by leader Poilievre putting his candidate into the once considered safe conservative seat.

That would be the same as the liberals feeling insecure in the absolutely safe liberal NDG-Westmount riding in Montreal that has been occupied by MP Marc Garneau for the past 15 years. It is an honourable retirement for Marc. Another liberal is expected to replace him.

And that little worm Poilievre has more to worry about than just Oxford in Ontario. The late Jim Carr’s riding of Winnipeg-South-Centre, despite some high jinks to do with an enlarged number of names on the ballot, is expected to stay liberal.

It is former conservative MP Candice Bergen’s Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar that might bite Pierre on the bum. Peoples’ Party leader Maxime Bernier is working his little heart out to win that riding. A really down and dirty fight between Bernier’s extreme right-wing peoples’ party and the conservatives could split the right and elect a NDP or even a liberal.

The only race where the NDP are even at play is in the Toronto mayoralty. And it has little to do with party politics. There is this six or seven-person clump of candidates that has only one NDP facing off with a bunch of conservatives and a liberal. The problem is that more prospective voters know the NDP candidate’s name. It is this name recognition that is confusing the pollsters. They think that if they report that a has-been like Chow is in the lead frequently enough, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Personally, I always like to surprise the pollsters.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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The Pique of Pierre Poilievre.

by Peter Lowry

The leader of the conservatives in parliament comes with both good news and bad news. You will never guess which is which. The first piece of news has to do with the libertarian elected premier in Alberta. The second piece of news is that the former governor general has told the conservative party leader to ‘get stuffed’ or words to that effect.  

The fact that the former governor general is very much a gentleman tells us that he is probably a bit embarrassed by the disrespect of the vindictive little man. There is no suitable venue for Mr. Johnston to respond to insults to his honourable intentions and he knows it is best to continue to carry on in the direction he had determined in the first place and ignore Mr. Poilievre.

And if there is anything that really annoys Mr. Poilievre, it is being ignored. Mr. Poilievre is on a mission of destruction and he can hardly accomplish it in a vacuum. A good lie about someone needs a denial. That is what enables you to segue to the next and more serious lie.

Obviously, Canadians were not overly shocked to hear that the former governor general had friendly relations with prime minister Trudeau when he moved his family into Rideau Cottage in Rideau Park. Since the prime minister’s official residence, across the street at 24 Sussex Drive, was under repair, it was a friendly arrangement.

But poor, pissed-off, Pierre Poilievre had more news than his pique with the former governor general, who was appointed governor general by Poilievre’s leader, former prime minister Stephen Harper. Mr. Poilievre’s home province of Alberta is now under firm control by the leader of what is called the united conservative party, known in Alberta as the UCP. What could be considered the bad news is that the leader of the provincial government is a Looney-Tunes libertarian retread from the Wildrose Party by the name of Danielle Smith.

And if you think Danielle Smith is good news for Pierre Poilievre, I would respectfully suggest that you rethink that foolish notion. Danielle Smith is bad news for everyone.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Dumbing Down with Ranked Ballots.

by Peter Lowry

It is hard to believe people who fail to understand the mathematics of voting with ranked ballots. No matter how many times we see the proof of the problem, some numbskull is going to pick up the cudgel to hit themselves over the head with that ill-considered way of voting.

It was probably more by accident than design that the conservative party in Canada solved the problem in the last leadership by ejecting one of the candidates before the vote. By throwing Brampton mayor Patrick Brown out of the race, they guaranteed that the winner would be Pierre Poilievre. The problem in that race never was the liberal leanings of John Charest. If Poilievre had less than 45 per cent of the votes on the first count, Patrick Brown might have won on the second or third count of the ballots. I really think it was because of that concern that Brown was convicted of unspecified charges and his votes were discarded.

And with Brown out of the race, Poilievre went on to an easy first ballot win. His win was the same as though it was a first-past-the-post win because of the missing votes for Patrick Brown. The missing Brown votes obviously put Poilievre over 50 per cent.

You wonder why so many people think that ranked ballots are democratic when with each count, you are throwing out votes from the initial count. Many people do not bother to rank their choices. You can hardly force them to. Their ballot does not count if their original vote is dropped out. And how much thought would voters put into their third or fourth choice?

There were 14 candidates in the 2017 conservative leadership. That was the one that proved conclusively that the system the conservatives used was guaranteed to provide an unsatisfactory conclusion. When it came down to Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, it was obvious that there would be a lot of unhappy conservatives. And don’t forget, there was the further obstacle in the count of applying the votes to ridings as though they are equal—which anyone with political experience knows is not true.

In the next leadership in 2020 there were only four candidates in the race, it took three ballot counts to declare Erin O’Toole the winner. It should be noted that he only had 31 per cent of the vote on the first ballot. He was second choice to Peter MacKay and needed the votes from both losers on the second and third ballots.  

And that is why I always say that in ranked balloting, the losers are the choosers.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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A Future for Ford’s Fiefdom.

by Peter Lowry

We should all be sick and tired of the so-called liberals who claim they are financially conservative.  That is not liberal. With liberals like that, conservative leader Pierre Poilievre might as well say he is liberal.

The conservative ideology is built on a “screw the lower classes” framework. It came from the aristocracies of Europe. We heard how “Unionism must be stamped on!” Or, we need the poor for the lower class, ill-paid work. They belong ‘below the stairs.’ If we cannot have slavery, we can make the underclass beholden to us for our benevolence and charity. We can never pay them much but a mean existence is better than wandering the streets of our towns and cities stealing or begging for the occasional gratuitous coin.

It was the skilled workman who created the middle class. It was the added cachet of sending their progeny to university that extended the process. How many times have we heard the proud statement in middle class homes about my son the lawyer, my daughter the doctor.

Our society extends itself in greed. Yet it puts no markers on the lower or upper limits of this middle class. We make little accommodation for the homeless. We waste little thought or concern for them. In a country of raw winters, we leave them to sleep on grates with escaping steam that heat the offices of the rich. We leave the mentally challenged to wander hopelessly and alone. Our hospitals treat the obvious and dismiss. Our food banks close for the holidays. Our hypocrisy knows few bounds.

Sometimes you wonder if liberals are just dishonest conservatives.

But there are also the new democrats in this political mix. It is amusing to note that the died-in-the-wool conservative will go to the NDP before voting liberal. And it is the vice-versa for the NDPer. These are people who see the liberal as the enemy. And besides, unions can often be described as greedy. The needy need not apply.

When one of my brothers made his first couple million dollars, he confessed to me that he was embarrassed by how little the government required from him by way of taxes. He might have been embarrassed but he still voted conservative.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Crazies in Control.

by Peter Lowry

With the vote, such as it was, on Monday, the Loony Tunes have polarized Alberta. Their next target is Canada. We are headed down the rabbit hole with the Americans. In the land of the free, nobody stands on guard for thee.

More and more, talking to American relatives and friends, there is an attitude of surrender. They know not what to do. They feel hopeless in the failing grip of a grandfatherly Joe Biden. They have no trust in the checks and balances of a political system that is broken, traumatized and has let them down before. The cold granite faces of long dead heroes of past battles for the republic are staring into the past.

In Canada, our control is in the hands of an actor. He is not his father. He is the sum of the challenges of his mother. Justin Trudeau’s stretch in power is tenuous. His government supported by an ersatz warrior of the Tenth Guru.

The emboldened regime in Alberta will become the spear with which Pierre Poilievre can wound and defeat the unity of our nation. He will use the conservatives in power in the provinces to undermine the confidence in a liberal federal government.

And all hail Trump. The Trumpian legacy in the United States stands over the definition of truth, the definition of justice and the way forward for America. It little matters if Donald Trump wins or loses the Republican nomination. He has set the standard and his followers are but acolytes to the Way of Trump.

Ron DiSantis is not as charismatic as Trump but as long as he sticks to the playbook, he has clear sailing to the White house.

Pierre Poilievre will have a tougher challenge to unseat Justin Trudeau. He is disliked in Quebec, despite his French name. He is weak in the Atlantic provinces. He divides the country at the Ontario-Manitoba border. He has to win Ontario.

He has to have the support of Ontario’s premier Doug Ford. Poilievre, the rapacious libertarian, is not in the same game as Ford, the populist conservative. They could never be friends, nor partners in power.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Follow Polls at Your Peril.

by Peter Lowry

Reading political polls is a trap but we all do it. Polls are never that accurate. Polls can mislead us. Polls are always old news. At their best, they report history. Not only do some people consider pollsters intrusive, but people often lie to them.

The worst type of polls are the robotic ones—they are the type where a recorded voice asks you to press one for candidate “X” and two for candidate “Y” etc. You can never prove to me that the kids in that household don’t answer the home telephone. They hardly want to tie up that phone by giving it to a parent, so they obligingly press a few guesses for the pollster.

But how ever the dirty was done, pollsters wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time on tweaking polls for the news media. I never shared my polls for my candidates with the news media and I really don’t know what the current arrangements are with the pollsters for the free advertising.

I am expecting, with some trepidation, the first scam artist who sets up a phony political poll that enables the scammer to get you to press more than a few numbers and you find that you have bought a few acres of a swamp. I hope at that point our lackadaisical telecom regulators will put an end to robotic telephone calls.

The real purpose of this opinion piece was to comment on the polls in Toronto in regards to the upcoming mayoralty race. I think if we are going to have over 100 candidates in an election or by-election, there should be some sort of preliminary process that allows the voters to choose the debaters instead of letting the pollsters make the decision.

So far, the polls have conclusively convinced us that the NDP candidate has the best name recognition among the 102 candidates for mayor. Olivia Chow is very lucky to have no serious NDP competition but there are certainly candidates with better credentials than Chow. And there is lots of time for a loser such as Chow to drop to third again as she did last time that she ran, nine years ago. She came third behind two conservative candidates. John Tory and Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Bonnie Blunders.

by Peter Lowry

You hate to see a promising politician do a pratfall on the way out of the starting gate. Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie broke all the rules she could have learned from Hazel McCallion. Hazel was a strong liberal and I am sure she wished all the best to Bonnie in her political career. No doubt she could have given some good advice to her successor about welcoming all who want to support you.

But Bonnie puts the caveat on her candidacy for the leadership of the Ontario liberals that she is a middle of the road liberal. Where I come from in the liberal party, people who go down the middle of the road are called ‘Road Kill.’

And if Bonnie thought that the provincial reigns of liberals such as Dalton McGinty and Kathleen Wynne were too left-wing, she wasn’t paying attention. In moving to the left, Dalton was just slow. Wynne was glacial.

Dalton McGinty had a lot to fix after the disastrous years of conservative Mike Harris in the premier’s office. He only addressed the more public of the problems. And Kathleen Wynne followed his example.

It was when she started to loosen up the liquor regulations that her instincts as a prissy school-teacher took over. Being openly lesbian in no way guarantees that you are progressive in anything else. I got the impression that maybe she had made a deal with the Weston clan that she would introduce beer in grocery stores one Loblaws store at a time.

And when she conceded the 2018 election before the polls had even closed, she did serious harm to the liberal party.

Right-wing liberals are the source of problems over the years for the party. A leader such as federal liberal Paul Martin was so far to the right that the voters figured they might as well vote for the conservatives and get the real thing. Liberal premier David Peterson in Ontario proved to be so right-wing that voters opted for the new democratic party in hopes of improving things. It didn’t.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Attacking the Wrong One.

by Peter Lowry

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has tackled the wrong opponent. He is trying to besmirch the bona fides of David Johnston. He has picked the wrong target. He is attacking the epitome of Canadian conservatism. How does he explain that to his older conservative base?

David Johnson was born in Copper Cliff, Ontario before the INCO superstack was built. His family later moved to Sault Ste Marie, where he played high school hockey with the Esposito brothers. He went on to Harvard University in the United States to play hockey and earn a BA. He has law degrees from Cambridge and Ontario’s Queens University. He has taught law at Queens and the University of Toronto. He was dean of law at Ontario’s Western University. He also taught at Montreal’s McGill University after serving as principal and vice-chancellor. And along life’s road he fathered five daughters and wrote or co-wrote 25 books. He was appointed Governor General of Canada in 2010 on the recommendation of conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. He was asked to stay in office an additional two years by liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau.

And, to be honest, I don’t give a hoot for his being made a Commander of the Order of Canada. David Johnston would be recognized as a great Canadian anywhere other than in Pierre Poilievre’s mirror.

Mr. Poilievre demeans himself in trying to defame Mr. Johnston. He can hardly sneer at Mr. Johnston’s academic career. I have never heard of the conservative leader playing hockey. I have never heard of him doing anything worthwhile. He has never held a job that was not political.

It is hard to believe that Poilievre would be so foolish as to sneer at a man such as David Johnston for being friendly with Justin Trudeau. It strikes me that Mr. Poilievre is a man who desperately needs friends.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Toronto: Neither Broke, Nor Broken.

by Peter Lowry

I find this campaign for the mayoralty in Toronto on June 26 to be quite boring. It reminds me of the old song: “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before.” It is an old Helen Forrest number she did with Harry James in the heyday of Swing. It is part of the wife’s repertoire of Swing era songs and I have heard her sing it many times.

First of all, Toronto is not broken, neither financially nor in the operational sense. To say that is to give up. This city has opportunities yet unknown. It needs rental housing, transit, ever-growing and necessary networks of storm and sanitary sewers. It needs firm and judicious hands on its policing. It needs compassionate understanding of the homeless. Sure, the city needs constant repairs to infrastructure and new infrastructure for tomorrow. It desperately needs geared-to-income housing. And all of this seems to be needed at the same time.

Confusion and chaos are hardly unique to Toronto. I have driven in just about every major city in Canada as well as in the United States from Boston to Los Angeles and from Miami to Seattle. I was in Boston a couple times during what they called ‘The Big Dig” and I later tried the solution it offered. The difference was amazing. Toronto’s closing down Queen Street from York to Victoria for two years is a serious inconvenience but the outcome should be worth it.

One thing I always admired about John Tory as mayor is that he can keep a lot of balls in the air. I keep watching for that ability among those with a potential to replace Tory. The former police chief is a non-starter. Olivia Chow is too old, too out of the running and of no consequence. Josh Matlow is too shrill. Ana Bailão seems to lack the understanding of the suburbs. Brad Bradford is too close to the premier. I must admit that the mixed background of Mitzie Hunter looks better every day.

Nobody is going to fix all of Toronto’s problems overnight. Even the very controlled administrations in Chicago and New York go from one panic to another. Los Angeles really is one great big freeway. And nobody wants the problems of Miami.

Voters in this Toronto by-election have to care about their city. It will be the most important decision they will make before the provincial election in June of 2026.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]