Category: New

Poilievre’s Protagonist.

by Peter Lowry

There is only one target that interests conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. It is the prime minister’s job. It is the job the conservative wants and it is one he has worked towards all of his adult life. We can all wonder how he will react, if and when he discovers he will never reach his goal.

Poilievre’s problem is what the conservative communications people discovered too late, after he had been chosen leader. The conservative leader is not likeable. He is a mean and unfeeling little man and that is becoming better known all the time. Instead of hurting Trudeau with all his barbs against the liberal leader, Poilievre is pushing some of that audience to Trudeau’s side of the fence.

The most telling thing about Poilievre’s very expensive advertising campaign running over the past year is it is failing in its purpose. Take the ads with the children to start with; they clearly show that this man is uncomfortable with children. Look at the one with the little girl. That puzzle they are supposed to be working on together is way beyond her age group. She isn’t interested in it, other than maybe to see if any of the too small pieces taste good. Poilievre was not as interested in her as he is to look like he can put a couple pieces together.

What bothers me most in Poilievre’s attacks on Trudeau is that there is more than enough with which to criticize him, without sounding stupid. The only person, for example, I have seen criticize the Canadian prime minister for causing world-wide inflation is the conservative leader. He should let that complaint go.

He could weave a far more interesting story about Trudeau in regards to the strained relations with India rather than the silly remarks he has been making. And Poilievre should have been paying attention when the declared feminist, Trudeau, fired his justice minister. Poilievre is also not making friends with his complaints about the Trudeau government spending its way through most of the pandemic.

And one of the facts of governing of the Bank of Canada is that the prime minister does not tell the bank’s governors what to do. Nor does the leader of the opposition. Maybe Mr. Poilievre should do his present job in opposition a lot better, before aspiring to establish his extreme right-wing form of government in Ottawa.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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Conservative Comrades?

by Peter Lowry

They are certainly not comrades at arms. Recently Toronto Star writer Martin Reg Cohn wrote that the cancellation of the splitting up Peel region into the stand-alone municipalities of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon was cancelled at the behest of Brampton mayor Patrick Brown. That would be assuming that Ford and Brown, both conservatives, are bosom buddies. They are not.

If anything, the former Ontario conservative leader Patrick Brown hates premier Ford for denying him the opportunity to run for Peel County chair in 2018. He had to settle for the mayoralty in Brampton instead. The only thing the two conservatives might agree on is that they are both afraid of Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, who will soon be moving into her new role as leader of the Ontario liberals.

If anything, Brown deeply resents Ford’s easy trip into the premier’s office in Brown’s place. At least Crombie’s target is Ford’s job at Queen’s Park. She has other reasons to be appalled at Brown and his shenanigans.

It was the panel of conservative appointees who were supposed to help the three municipalities in Peel County to come to a new arrangement. Somebody must have told them of the complaints about Brown in Brampton. Instead of doing their job, the panel told the premier that the split would cause too many problems for the three municipalities, such as higher municipal taxes, and was not worth it. If they had been telling the truth, they might have also said they did not want to spend the next couple years fighting with Mr. Brown.

One of the complications in the separation of the three municipalities was the water supply for Brampton came from Mississauga. If Brampton paid for a stand-alone water system, it would take a major increase in municipal taxes. The separation of the two municipalities would lower Mississauga taxes and put the water costs where they belong. Paying higher municipal taxes in Brampton could be balanced in part if Mississauga could stop paying towards Brampton’s water supply.  

There are many other concerns but the panel of conservative appointees did not waste their time in dumping the job.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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The Trouble in Toronto.

by Peter Lowry

Have you heard what Toronto Council has done now? They have renamed Dundas Square at Yonge and Dundas Streets as Sankova Square and Centennial Stadium in the old Etobicoke Area for that fun-loving, crack-cocaine smoking late mayor Rob Ford. This is just one more reason that Torontonians are having trouble finding their way around their city.

I think it is very gracious to encourage our émigrés from Ghana who speak the Twi tribal language to participate more fully in the life of Toronto. It is unlikely that they constitute more than one-tenth of one percent of the population but we have to start somewhere to make people feel more welcome. I was amused to see that the word Sankova in Twi literally means “Go back and get it.” Twi is claimed to be one of eight major tribal languages in Ghana—which is likely the reason the West African country uses English as its official language.)

It must be a very smooth-running city council in Toronto that they have all this time and money to waste on tearing down statues and changing the names of many highlights of the city experience. To me, it will always be SkyDome where I used to go to see the Blue Jays play, and Maple Leaf Gardens, the temple of the Maple Leaf hockey team. No doubt the O’Keefe Centre has had a couple other names by now    Mind you, these changes are lost on this Toronto booster.

And don’t try to tell my wife that Ryerson University has some other stupid name. We both know why the name was changed and to us it is not only ridiculous but was an insult to anyone who spent time on that campus over the years. My wife was very proud of the time she was at Ryerson. Whomever participated in the name change had no understanding of what Egerton Ryerson contributed to the development of public education in Ontario. At the time of the creation of the residential schools, it was common thinking that this was something to help our aboriginal population.

I wonder if when we realize the harm separate schools in Ontario cause our children, will we vilify the people who thought they were doing something honourable?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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The Turn-Around Tories.

by Peter Lowry

The Ontario conservative government has broken another record. It has turned around and cancelled more schemes than thieves trying to figure out how to rob a police station. What Doug Ford and his cronies often announce with great flurries of publicity, they quietly and meekly admit they will not do.

The latest plan for the conservatives to cancel was the plan to separate the three component municipalities of Peel Region. This plan was introduced to so much cheering, we really thought they had a winner in which we could all cheer.

But no such luck. It was less contentious than Highway 413. It did not get the interest of the police like in the billion-dollar boondoggle in the Greenbelt. It was not as silly as the ‘Buck a Beer.” It was not as mean as passing laws saying nurses and teachers could not have the raises they needed. It got so bad with the Greenbelt fiasco, they had to promote Stephen Harper’s apologizer Paul Calandra to municipal affairs so that he could weep over the failure in making more Ontario developers billionaires.

One scheme that they are actually resuscitating is beer in the convenience stores and big box stores. We thought we would have to wait for many more years before any Queen’s Park government got sensible and gave the convenience stores something to keep them alive other than milk and lottery tickets. Mind you the blue stocking types have yet to have at our premier and they can sometimes be resourceful.

But if the Peel County dissolution was successful, the Tories were prepared to look at more regional municipal complexes in the province. The problem was that they rushed the Peel solution at the behest of the late Hazel McCallion and did not do the analysis that was needed. When the provincial panel that was supposed to assist the three new municipalities in the transition realized some of the complications involved, they panicked and advised the province to cancel the plan.

What they should have done was to help by examining ways to solve the problems. One of the alternatives was to recognize the connections between Mississauga and Brampton and if put those two municipalities together as one city. That would have provided far more cost savings in the long run.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Poilievre’s Hell.

by Peter Lowry

There should be a special place reserved in Hell for a political poseur such as Pierre Poilievre. I was reading a column by Jaime Watt of Navigator in the Toronto Star recently and he was bragging of the skill of the conservative leader in the House of Commons in using social media on the Internet.  Watt seemed particularly impressed with a recent release from Poilievre that he referred to as “Housing Hell.” I took a look at that effort the other day and found it amateurish, misleading, full of factual errors and a series of repeated slurs on the prime minister.

I do hope Mr. Watt’s public relations company had nothing to do with such a scurrilous piece of garbage. This is not fair political comment. It is malicious and mean and deliberately inaccurate. We all know that the conservative leader wants Mr. Trudeau’s job and spends far more time maligning him than proposing solutions to Canada’s problems.

Despite Mr. Poilievre’s opinion, Mr. Trudeau is not responsible for world-wide inflation. He was hardly the cause of the escalating costs of homes across Canada. You sometimes wonder if Mr. Poilievre has any knowledge of what is going on in the real world. Canada is still trying to shake off the vestiges of the pandemic. World routes for trade are still stabilizing.

And does Mr. Poilievre have a clue about the impact of the war in Ukraine and the concerns of the sizeable Ukrainian diaspora in Canada? And is he aware that Canadians have concerns for both sides of the conflict in Gaza? Canada took in twice the numbers of immigrants last year because of the pressures in many parts of the world and Mr. Poilievre blames it on Mr. Trudeau.

Poilievre is a mean and selfish little man who takes his lead from Donald Trump in the United States. I am surprised that he has not made his slogan “Make Canada Great Again.” Instead, he uses a vague slogan that says “Bring it home.” It implies a selfishness that most Canadians reject. In it, he seems to reject our responsibilities to help the people of Ukraine or the concern we all feel for the unfortunate non-combatants in Gaza and Israel.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Concerning Calandra.

by Peter Lowry

Paul Calandra is now the go-to guy at in the Ontario government for apologies. It is his ability to feel the pain. He is the guy who cried for the House of Commons in Ottawa when the MP was the appointed apologist for prime minister Stephen Harper. He is now basking in the accolades from the building industry as an MPP in Ontario.

Just last week, as the new minister of housing for the Ford government, Calandra apologised to the Building Industry and Land Development (BILD) association, at their annual general meeting in Woodbridge. They treated him kindly. They even offered him a free lunch.

With the Royal Canadian Mounted Police possibly checking his script, an unabashed Calandra told his audience that he regretted that the government could not bring people with them in their 7,400 acre give-away in the Greenbelt. It came across as though he and the Ford government were deeply disappointed that they did not do it right the first time.  It is not known just how strongly the audience felt about losing the potential billions in profit.

The particularly poignant part of the speech was the heartfelt shout-out to Silvio De Gasperis president and CEO of TAAC Developments. Calandra could not seem to say enough to this gentleman of their mutual Italian heritage. He made it sound as though he and the conservatives in government were deeply disappointed that they could not deliver to Mr. De Gasperis and friends the billions in profit that the conservatives thought they had earned.

But it sounded like Mr. Calandra was telling the builders that next time, the government will get its ducks in order before playing Grand Theft Greenbelt.

Some of the comments from the attendees made it sound as though they were puzzled by minister of housing. They complained that Calandra made it sound as though the Ontario government and the building industry in Ontario were joined at the hip.

But, all in all, it was a good time for all when Paul Calandra came to Woodbridge.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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The Web We Weave.

by Peter Lowry

The wife’s health has not been the best lately and she spends much of her time in her electrified Lazy-Boy chair. It is where she keeps two Apple I-Pads in use. She alternates the I-Pads for charging. She will frequently want to show me something that she thinks will be of interest to me.

This morning, there was something political that she thought would be of interest. She knows how I despise conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and this was a picture of Poilievre in parliament and the headline said that he had been indicted for something.

I quickly identified it as fake news but I must admit it was well done. The person who created this amusing piece of garbage might have known some things about Mr. Poilievre but was woefully ignorant of some of the differences between how American and Canadian laws operate.

It was something of a coincidence that I had just read an opinion piece in the Toronto Star by a senior apologist for the conservative party, Jaime Watt. Watt heads up a public relations firm and seemed to be chortling over the purported successes of Mr. Poilievre as a guru of social media advertising.

He also seemed to be chortling over the potential demise of the CBC and Radio Canada if Mr. Poilievre ever gets to be prime minister of Canada. That annoys me.

I was born the year parliament created the CBC and as a youngster I delivered Globe and Mail newspapers to homes and apartments in the area of the Jarvis Street headquarters of the English language CBC in Toronto. I also spent many learning hours there thanks to an older brother who became a CBC producer in the early years of Canadian television.

Maybe Mr. Watt missed the revelation from the late Marshall McLuhan that the medium is the message. And what is your potential if you are the kingpin in a garbage dump? Of what value is your audience if you only reach the semi-literate?

Mr. Watt compares Poilievre to conservative Michael Harris of Ontario’s Common Sense Revolution of 1995. Michael Harris was a disaster as premier of Ontario as Pierre Poilievre would be a disaster as prime minister of Canada. He is an egocentric personality in the robes of Cassius.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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The Social Media Weapon.

by Peter Lowry

After 12 years of writing Babel-on-the-Bay, I find it energizes me and gives purpose to my days. I enjoy the approbation of some readers and the criticisms of others. My only connection with Facebook is when the wife points out some interesting pictures of our far-flung family. I tested Twitter years ago and found it wanting. Other than that, I fear for the Internet as it is absorbed into the ever-deeper troubles of a dystopian world.

What brings this spurt of insight into the Internet world is an admired writer from Ottawa telling us about the weaponizing of social media by our parliamentarians. She sees it as a war zone. My problem is not knowing how she finds time for sorting that trash.

She reminds me of Canada’s famed Pierre Berton. Berton was best known for his many, many books about Canadian history. He was accused of trying to make Canadian history a popular subject. We also used to kid that he was not a writer but a factory. He would joke in his Toronto Star articles, once in a while, about the team that assisted him in doing his research. And as a writer myself, I knew that there was always good research backing up what he wrote.

I always wanted to meet Pierre Berton and I think it was our mutual friend Charles Templeton who once kept us apart. That was a time when Chuck and Pierre were doing their popular CFRB radio program from Maple Leaf Gardens while I was working for a different radio station reporting on the same conservative leadership convention. A friend was listening to them on air and told me that Pierre mentioned that I was across the arena from them and would make an interesting guest for their show. I was told that Chuck ignored the suggestion and changed the subject.

I guess I forgot about it next time I saw Chuck. He was standing in front of the orchestra section at the O’Keefe Centre hugging my wife. It’s funny that I remember that scene and I cannot remember what it was we were at the O’Keefe Centre to see.

I often wonder if that old saying about living in interesting times is really a curse or a blessing. I cannot answer that. All I know is it sure keeps me interested.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Hold High in Honour.

by Peter Lowry

Honouring people for their contributions to our society is a timeless human tradition. There have also been those times when we have taken down the statues or have erased the names of those we determine to have erred in their responsibilities. I mention this at a time when people are talking about honouring former Toronto mayor Rob Ford who loved football and also loved smoking crack cocaine. They want his name attached to the current Centennial Park Stadium in the formerly Etobicoke area of Toronto.  Let’s just hope, that in years to come, we do not realize that the two loves are not equal. Does one excuse the other?

Would we, for example, seek to obliterate the memories of John A. Macdonald because of his fondness for whisky? Did he not still accomplish the task of creating this Canada? And did he not succeed in his duties to accomplish this new country’s rails of steel from coast to coast? Sir John has been dead these many years lying in a long- neglected family plot. The debates on his accomplishments run on. He can have the credit for bringing this country together but he was also here for the attempts to take the native out of our aboriginal peoples. It was a common direction in his time.

And who would want to honour the former Toronto mayor’s older brother whom the younger tutored in politics. Doug Ford got into politics as a replacement city councillor when his younger brother ran for mayor. The older brother lost his subsequent bid for the mayoralty after Rob Ford’s death.

And yet, when he lucked into the leadership of the provincial conservatives and ended up as premier of Ontario, his first act in office was to vent his anger at his former enemies at Toronto city hall. His administration restricted the salaries of those in medicine and education. He was caught up in the pandemic and struggled through his first term. His second term saw him caught up in inflationary pressures, unexpected and concerning. And yet he has still cut the spending by the Ontario government at a time when government has to make sure that it is looking after its responsibilities. While Ford has been very generous in his help for his developer friends, we have seen our universities starved for the funds they need to do their critical job for the province. Doug Ford is always a salesman, never an academic.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

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Liar, Liar.

by Peter Lowry

One hates to see the scion of the Weston family lying to our parliamentarians.  He blames his international suppliers now for his stores’ unconscionable profits. He says that his giant company is performing the way it should, with record profits every year. I do not know how he became so facile with the workings of a grocery empire such as Loblaws.

I also was taught about the grocery business as a young man. I had come home from the Canadian air force, trained in the use and care of weapons and munitions. I was looking for something more peaceful as a career. It happened to be a time of rapid expansion of grocery chains in Canada and there was a need for store managers and area supervisors. All I had to survive was some rigorous training while earning my salary by working in every department of some very large supermarkets.

I think I was shocked at the time with the waste in produce that demanded a 40 per cent mark-up across the board in that department. I learned more about meat than I really wanted to know when learning the basics in that department. Unloading trucks of canned goods was a very basic muscle-building job. Frozen food was only starting to come into the stores at the time and other departments had to pay for the new freezers. I think my favourite learning time was as a cashier and I learned a lot there.

And to this day, I enjoy taking the wife to the grocery store and checking out the prices and doing the math for her on which deal is the better. Two of my favourite stores here in Barrie are Metro and Zehrs. They are the best run and probably most profitable stores in the city. For value for your dollar, you cannot beat No Frills, which is part of the Loblaw empire.

And that is why I know that the Weston heir was lying to our MPs the other day. I have mentioned before that I have a favourite orange juice that we buy every week. It is the 2.5 litre jug of pure orange juice packaged in Quebec for Del Monte Canada. I get it on sale at No frills for $4.49 and regularly at up to $5.29. I was in Zehrs just last week and the price of exactly the same product and packaging was priced at $9.99. There is absolutely no rational way that the Del Monte company would have any part in the setting of those stores’ prices. Personally, I think there should be jail terms reserved for those who lie to parliament. And I am even more convinced that there should be heavy fines for companies that exploit Canadians at a time of extreme inflationary pressures.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry            

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

[email protected]