Category: New

There has been a reluctance here to comment on the current leadership race for the Alberta Conservatives. It is not as though the outcome does not seem obvious but our best insight into Alberta Conservatism died last year and she is irreplaceable. It has left a serious sinkhole in our understanding of the Alberta political landscape.

But we still dislike, distrust and detest all that front-runner leadership candidate Jason Kenney stands for. We actually have more respect for Brian Jean and his Wildrose Party. It is just hard to believe there are people further to the right than Kenney. How a fat and fortyish bachelor can sell his questionable sexuality to religious extremists is the wonder of it all?

Kenney survived in Ottawa over the years under the umbrella of Stephen Harper. He was hardly the more flamboyant of the Bobbsey Twins but he must have chosen Alberta for his political future for a reason. Anyone who believes that pumping bitumen out of the Alberta tar sands is good for the environment has got to be gullible as hell. Or is that just simple greed?

That is what Kenney really understands: human weaknesses. He must have exhausted every argument with Stephen Harper to get him to see the value to kissing up to newcomers to our country. This had too long been a strength of the Liberal Party. Liberals were welcoming; Conservatives were less so.

His best student during those Conservative years in Ottawa was the new leader of the Ontario Conservatives Patrick Brown. That putz had less of a challenge to win the Ontario leadership than Kenney is facing in Alberta.

But the sleazy tactics and sneaky tricks of the Kenney campaign are decimating the field of candidates. Here we are six weeks from the leadership decision and he is still forcing out challengers. His tactics are not only driving Conservatives out of the race but even to other parties.

Someone asked how to stop him? What they need to remember is that sincerity can counter sleaze. Truth can overcome fiction. Decency is more acceptable than deceit.

And what people need to better understand is that God or nature gave Alberta lots of oil, gas, coal and tar sands. Those highly polluting natural elements are there as a challenge. If you build your economy on them, you will eventually come to the curb on empty. If you build your economy on renewable resources, you will build a future.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

There are few things funnier than a Toronto Star editorial that lambastes the Ontario government for all the wrong reasons. And nothing deflates the pomposity better than getting their facts wrong. We are looking at the Star editorial demanding an end to the proposed increases in community college presidents’ salaries. What would really help here would be if the Star could just contain its mock outrage.

First of all, the Star should check and it is quite possible that our community college presidents have had their salaries frozen since 2010. That would be seven years, not five. And what is pertinent is how their jobs have been changing throughout that period.

What also strikes us as we look at this situation is that not all community colleges are equal. The Toronto-centred interests of the Toronto Star are well understood but the Toronto-centred focus of the Ontario government is an absolute disgrace.

The critical lack of a university base in central Ontario, for example, has put a serious onus on Georgian College to work with multiple universities to bring degree courses to its wide-flung geography. Nobody would have believed you if you had said that was part of the job 20-years ago.

What we know today—and what Minister Deb Matthews knows—is that Ontario’s community colleges are terribly underfunded and not all can count on international students to fill the gap. Major adjustments have to be made in funding based on the need to look after our Ontario students. If the disparities continue, the province will have to pay some of the presidents three times the salary just to take the job.

In recruiting these people, they need to understand that a big part of the job today is revenue generation. You cannot do what needs to be done if you are not out beating the bushes for money. You have to negotiate every day with your communities, universities, industries and expanded international opportunities. And then you have to get back to the office to keep the home fires burning. People who can do that do not come cheap.

This is not a nine-to-five job and any college president who does not agree should be immediately fired. Nobody should be getting a free ride here—especially Minister Deb Matthews.

But all this being said, our college presidents are generally doing a great job. They deserve an increase of some sort after so many years of penny-pinching governments. Maybe they will get decent raises over the next few years but nobody is so dumb as to expect the figures the Toronto Star is talking about. We should wait until the boards act. We should leave our muskets over the mantel until we have something real to shoot at.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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

An associate professor at McGill wrote an interesting op-ed last week in the Toronto Star seeking to answer the four major myths about the Ontario-Quebec cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gasses. The only problem with Christopher Ragan’s column is that most of the myths he attempts to debunk are answered with arguments for a straight carbon tax.

The first myth and the easiest to debunk is that it will raise hydro rates. That is wrong because Ontario has phased out its coal-fired generation plants and has only a small percentage of gas-fired plants for back-up. Professor Ragan’s bias is showing though when he refers to the Ontario subsidies for its small percentage of renewable energy sources as “massive.”

The second myth and the most crucial is that business will want to move to jurisdictions without taxes on greenhouse gas emissions. Yet he tells us that his Ecofiscal Commission has studied this question and he finds that less than two per cent of the Ontario’s gross domestic product is at risk of this.

The third myth he mentions is that the provincial government can undermine its cap-and-trade system by the distribution of free passes for some of their carbon emissions. While this is not the case in a straight carbon tax, it illustrates the major weakness of cap-and-trade in that these “get-out-of-jail-free” passes can be handed out behind the scenes without public knowledge.

The fourth myth applies to both cap-and-trade and a carbon tax—that carbon pricing might not work. Ragan uses the old argument from Wealth of Nations guru Adam Smith that “a large collection of small responses to price movements is what makes our market economy work.”

Ragan insists that there is ample evidence from around the world that carbon pricing works. He says though that we should not expect results right away and it will likely only happen as carbon costs rise.

But Ragan leaves us with no clear understanding of where he stands on the differences between cap-and-trade and carbon taxes. We have a right to expect more from academics.

The Ontario-Quebec cap-and-trade system that they have linked with California is the least understood system. It is carried on between industry and politicians and the public is largely left out. Some vague taxes showing up at our gas station on January 1 was a bad idea and the governments involved have done little to clarify the situation.

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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry

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