Category: New

Liberal leadership for losers.

by Peter Lowry

On Tom Clark’s West Block show for Global Television on Sunday, Senator George Baker suggested that former Quebec Premier Jean Charest should run for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. George was talking with Tom and Assistant Professor Ian Lee of Carleton University at the time and you could see where both were temporarily stunned by the idea. And neither is the type to ever be at a loss for words. In a remarkable and lengthy career in politics, it had to be the worst idea George had ever articulated.

For a parliamentarian who has represented Newfoundland and Labrador in Ottawa for more than 35 years, this was almost as silly as his suggestion a few years ago that Newfoundland and Labrador needed its own version of the Bloc Québécoise. To his credit though, George preceded his suggestion of Jean Charest with stating his desire to see Members of Parliament Justin Trudeau from Quebec and Dominic LeBlanc from New Brunswick in the leadership race.

But every race needs losers and George just might have something here. There could be a special reduced rate category for losers in the federal leadership. After his dismal showing in the recent Quebec election, Jean Charest’s first problem would be to establish some credentials as a federal Liberal. A former Conservative cabinet minister under Brian Mulroney, Charest came second to Kim Campbell in the Conservative leadership race to replace Mulroney. Why he wanted the job at the time was never clear as everyone knew that the Conservatives would be soundly defeated in the upcoming election.

Another potential loser candidate is Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.  After losing his majority government in last year’s provincial election, Dalton is guaranteed his loser status after his despicable treatment of the teacher groups who previously supported him. He lost a lot of friends with that.

We could also have Liberal Christy Clark from British Columbia, if she just moves up the B.C. provincial election a bit. Everyone expects her to lose in B.C. She could move up to federal politics and also be a loser there. Just think of the cumulative knowledge of losing between these provincial politicians. They could provide an excellent crash course in the pitfalls of Canadian politics for the eventual winner and fellow losers.

But there is one fiendish thought that comes to mind. What would happen to the Liberal Party of Canada if one of these provincial losers accidently won?

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

In defence of civility.

by Peter Lowry

Sitting beside someone the other evening who admired Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was a bit of a trial. When he went on to laud Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s award of Statesman of the Year, there was an urge to use brute force to silence him.

But he had a right to his opinion. While he appeared (to us) to be ignorant and misled, you try desperately to understand where this person is coming from. What will it take to educate him? You try to analyze the situation. Can he convince others to think as he does? If the answer is ‘no,’ maybe you can dismiss him from your mind and go on to weightier matters. And, even if the answer is ‘yes,’ the physical  act of hitting him will feel good but will solve nothing.

A reader wrote the other day that I fear for civility and our ability to get along with one another in very basic and practical ways. He was writing about Mayor Ford’s seeming propensity for breaking laws that were inconvenient for him. The reader could not understand a man, who wants to be a leader, not realizing the impact of leading by example.

The reader goes on to say: I believe I have been witnessing a decline in civility in recent years. Our social fibre is less rigorous, certainly less responsibly social. Unthinking and selfish individualism has been on the rise. It’s part of the “Government back off, this land is my land” ignorance and selfishness. He concludes with the comment: They just haven’t been civilized. They think such behaviour is for wimps.

This thinking was in mind when trying to understand Romney and Ryan’s reaction to the death of American diplomats in Libya. These shallow, crass people used this ugly, tragic event to further their own ambitions, to attack the president of the United States of America. The president is required to speak on behalf of the nation in reaction to incidents such as this and all they are proving is that they are inadequate to the task.

Looking at the incident, the quickly assembled riots throughout the Muslim world seem to be gross over-reaction to a piece of garbage video that had no purpose other than to insult. It seems promoting racial hatred is not illegal in America when it hides behind freedom of speech. The problem is that there are elements within the Muslim communities around the world who constantly seek out supposed slights to continue their war of hatred against America.

The world is going through bad times. Civility needs to start at the top. We need leaders who can set an example.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

A pocket full o’ posies and some royals.

by Peter Lowry

‘And we all fall down’ is a nursery rhyme believed to date from the time of the Black Death in England in the mid 1600s. It comes to mind as the Brits continue to send their less luminous royals to grace us benighted Canadians with their presence. It is part of the Queen’s jubilee events being promoted by order of Prime Minister Harper.

Our current visitors are His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, Earl of Sussex and his public relations wife Her Royal Highness, the Countess of Sussex. Why they are visiting Canada is not quite clear. Why Canadians should care is also not quite clear.

But, for some reason, Stephen Harper is giving the British monarch’s diamond jubilee year a leg up. Mind you, we have nothing as exciting as Prince Harry’s recent visit to Las Vegas—which certainly overshadowed his father and stepmother’s visit to Canada earlier this year. You get the feeling that Her Majesty had a quiet word with her fun-loving grandson when he returned to England—something along the lines of a ‘jolly well-done!’

We will not be seeing as much of the Duchess of Cambridge for a while. According to the British tabloid media—who know everything—Billy has done his royal duty and she is pregnant.

Maybe Stephen Harper’s strategy is misunderstood. There is a form of aversion treatment that gives you too much of a good thing to break you of the habit. It is like the Senate. Stephen has decided to keep loading the Senate with mindless Conservatives to teach us that the Senate is useless. If he keeps displaying the useless progeny of the House of Windsor to Canadians, more of us will be hollering ‘uncle.’

It is also a sharp stick in the eye to Quebec. There seems to be an even stronger attitude there that the royals are a load of do-do. One can hardly blame Quebecers. Who wants constant reminders of a bunch of British red coats climbing the cliffs at Quebec City some 150 years ago? Canada has become a very independent country made up of many cultures since then and while we will always have strong connections to our country’s European origins, the English monarchy should be the least of them.

There is no excuse for politicians to continue to hold Canada back from the advances it needs to make in the 21st Century. We need a Constitutional Conference of citizens and a referendum to set Canada on a new path. We need it sooner than later.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Welcome to Mr. Harper’s Canada.

by Peter Lowry

Did Prime Minister Stephen Harper fly to Vladivostock without his hairdresser? Is she sick? Has she left him? That woman has become more important to Harper than wife Laureen. A wife is just to show the voters he is not gay. His hairdresser keeps him young.

Did you see in the news clips from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit? Poor Stephen was having a bad hair day. His toupee was out of kilter. It looked like it was glued in place about 2.5 centimetres to the left of its normal position. It was not the effect Stephen likes. He could never accept his recent award as statesman of the year with hair like that.

Did you hear about Stephen Harper being named Statesman of the Year? The award is from a Jewish organization in New York City. They want to remind President Obama that he will not even get their votes unless he gets in line with Mr. Harper’s denunciation of the regime in Iran. It does seem a bit perverse though to be named Statesman of the Year for cutting off relations with a country on the other side of the world.

Closer to home, there is a meeting in Montreal this week where people can vent about the growing control of television programming by the largest telecommunications company in Canada. Stephen’s friends at Bell Canada already own CTV, its sports channels and radio stations and are currently in the process of taking over Astral Media for a bit more than $3 billion. This is all in aid of Bell being able to screw a much broader range of consumers. Did we mention that Bell Canada is a major contributor to anything Stephen wants? Did we also mention that complaining to Stephen’s appointees at the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is a terrible waste of effort?

It is a good thing that Stephen got back in time to help destroy the lists of people in Canada who have registered their long guns. The Quebec Supreme Court has decided that the federal government had gone beyond its mandate to destroy the records in Quebec. That decision will now be fought out at the Supreme Court of Canada. Stephen needs to realize that there is something profoundly pathetic about watching someone like Public Safety (sic) Minister Vic Toews railing against what he calls the wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry. His problem is that by far the majority of police chiefs in Canada disagree with that view.

Oh, and did we mention that Stephen has appointed more Conservatives to the Senate that is already dominated by Conservatives. Stephen sure knows how to convince us that the Senate is useless.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Hudak, McGuinty, what a team!

by Peter Lowry

Tiny Tim Hudak, leader of the Ontario Conservatives and his new best friend Premier Dalton McGuinty passed their Putting Students First Act today in the Ontario Legislature. This legislation denies teachers their rights to collective bargaining and arbitrarily changes their terms of employment. Whether the legislation is even legal under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms will have to be determined by the courts.

But no matter what the courts decide, the act might be the final hurrah for both leaders. Timmy Hudak is the most vulnerable. His party is already fed up with him. He took a strong lead in the polls going into the 2011 election and turned the lead into a miserable loss. The loss of Kitchener-Waterloo (a formerly Conservative seat) the other day was his death knell. He has failed as party leader. He has upset both the rabid right wing and the softer old style Ontario Tories.

The rabid right of Ontario’s Conservatives is dominated by a mix of the religious right and the Ontario Landowners Association. The Landowner members are actually Libertarians and are kissing kin to the American Tea Party fringe of the Republicans and Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance.

Tiny Tim should have realized that when he and his wife set out to make him leader of this pack, the dangers he was facing. Like a scavenging wolf pack, the leader leads only until he falters. Then a new leader emerges, kills and eats the old leader and the pack carries on.

McGuinty, on the other hand, runs with a completely different pack. Liberals tend to be more like lemmings. He was originally chosen as a compromise candidate for party leader in 1996. He is the only person to ever win the party’s leadership after coming fourth on the first convention ballot. He was the choice of the party’s right wing.

Dalton McGuinty answers to his party on the weekend of September 29. So far the Liberal Party web site has made no mention of the mandatory leadership review required by the party’s constitution. There are certainly enough Liberal Party members in Ontario who are aghast at how McGuinty has treated Liberal friends such as the teachers. Let us hope those Liberals do not show their displeasure by boycotting the convention.

The only problem that we see in voting out McGuinty as leader is the need to find an alpha member of the pack to challenge him. Where can you find an alpha lemming except at the bottom of a cliff?

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Harper failing at foreign affairs.

by Peter Lowry

What can you say about Canada’s relations with the rest of the world? Will we ever be able to dig our reputation out of the dumper where Prime Minister Harper and the Bobbsey twins have taken us?

It was bad enough when Stephen Harper let Flossie Bobbsey (a.k.a. Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird) lose us a seat on the Security Council. It was bad enough when Stephen Harper allowed Freddie Bobbsey (a.k.a. Jason Kenny, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) to put the screws to refugee claimants. The one-two punch of  Harper’s Bobbsey twins is enough to destroy any country’s reputation.

And the Iran affair is beyond belief. Can you imagine a foreign affairs minister of any country to be so rude as to announce the breaking of relations with an unrelated country at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit? Why on earth would Canada’s foreign affairs guy do the deed when in Vladivostock, Russia? This is a gathering of some of the most powerful leaders in the world and if he had just farted, it would be glossed over.

But you cannot gloss over an announcement that had obviously been in the works for a while. This had been decided while Prime Minister Harper and Baird were in Ottawa. It had its roots in the recent visit to Ottawa of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was the favour Netanyahu had come to Ottawa to ask.

It is hardly a gesture that does any good for Canada. It harms our reputation as peacekeeper. It smears our reputation for fairness. If  it were necessary, it would only follow a long series of speeches and negotiations at the United Nations. For this act to be carried out, there had to be far more grievous concerns than are already evidenced. Is Harper copying George W. Bush with his fictitious ‘weapons of mass destruction’?

If Canada had the money and organization and the smarts to field its own Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it still would not have enough eyes and ears in Iran to replace our diplomats. Our embassy in Tehran might have seemed useless but it was a gesture that we were willing to listen. Only idiots stop listening.

Prime Minister Harper is micro-managing the Canadian government into foreign affairs positions where we should not go. Is he so keen to destroy the reputation we once had?

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Is equal representation a lost cause?

by Peter Lowry

Heard from someone the other day with who we shared e-mails strategizing on ways to block the foolishness of the proportional voting proposal in the Ontario referendum held during the 2007 provincial election. That must have been the first time we really wondered what planet Premier Dalton McGuinty was from. Our correspondent was curious as to what we thought should be done about federal electoral district redistribution in Ontario.

The honest answer was that we had put redistribution on the back burner to think about in October, before the hearings come to Babel. The problem you always face with redistribution is that the outcome is will always be unfair until there is an opportunity to change the Canadian constitution. And this is not the issue that will justify that event.

Canada has had many changes in its representation over the years that try to hone to the concept of representation by population. We fail every time because of the minimum seats required by Prince Edward Island, the sensitivities of Quebec, the continued growth of Ontario and the increasing weight of population in the west. As each commission realigns seats, we challenge the elasticity of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. That old building cannot have its walls pushed out further.

And what is the purpose of adding more members to the House of Commons when so many are there doing next to nothing now. As long as Canadians are willing to send people to Ottawa for no other reason than to support this or that political demagoguery, why bother? Why are we spending money on nebbishes?

Face it. It costs a lot of money to send someone to Ottawa. And it is far more than just the salary. It would be a delight to have someone from your district you can respect.

Here in Babel, the redistribution commissioners want to split the electoral district in two. What it would mean, in effect, is that old city would be linked to some of the townships to the north to create a district with a population of 102,361. The west and south parts of the city would then be combined with some of the rural area to the south and that would create a new district with a population of 104,730.

And anyone who lives in Babel will immediately understand the problem we always have with these commissions. They do not know Babel. The smaller northern electoral district will grow some over the next ten years but the bulk of the growth in Babel will be to the south. In the next ten years the district to the south could have a population more than 25,000 larger than the north district.

Yes, we do need to talk to the commissioners.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

There is meaning in the Ontario by-elections

by Peter Lowry

Nobody is crowing about the results in the Ontario by-elections in Vaughan and Kitchener-Waterloo. This is not even a ‘told you so!’ It is just a simple conclusion for Premier Dalton McGuinty and Tory leader Timmy Hudak. The conclusion of this sample vote is that they both have to go.

Ontario no longer needs or wants a liberal premier who blames doctors and teachers for the province’s deficit. Calling an act to deny teachers their civil rights the Putting Students First Act is an insult to the intelligence of the voters. And expecting Kitchener-Waterloo voters to vote Liberal after buying off their sitting Conservative MPP is something only a political neophyte would seriously consider. Conservative voters in Kitchener-Waterloo did what Conservative voters always do when confronted with a silly Conservative leader and an unknown local Conservative candidate, they voted NDP.

It is hard to say how many times this has happened. And, contrary to some of the pundits, Andrea Horwath had nothing to do with it. It was not her victory. If anything, her low profile in the by-election helped the NDP candidate in Kitchener-Waterloo.

The by-election in Vaughan was also very interesting but in a different way. Running Greg Sorbara’s executive assistant and former labour leader in Vaughan for the Liberals was an easy transition. It must have been the best way for Greg Sorbara to apologize for getting out of the fiasco at Queen’s Park.

But how long Steven De Luca will want to sit quietly in caucus at Queen’s Park and listen to McGuinty’s out-of-touch Whig philosophy is a good question. At least, with his background, he knows what he is getting into.

Both McGuinty and Hudak are a drag on their parties. Tiny Tim Hudak is a sad joke carried over from the moribund Michael Harris Conservatives. Dalton McGuinty is just as sadly out of touch with the real world. There is still some hope for Horwath. The lady needs to lose about 15 kilos and some of her union backers along with gaining a better insight into the needs of Ontario voters. The good news is the Liberal and NDP caucuses are going to have a higher average intelligence quotient after these by-elections.

But the sooner the Liberals get a new leader who understands the needs of 21st Century Ontario the better. The Conservatives are in need an entirely new brain trust. Just because many of your followers are out of touch with reality is no excuse for the leader to be like them.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

Liberalism in a land of opportunity.

by Peter Lowry

It is a sad comment on the current state of the Liberal Party of Canada that a caucus of members of parliament and senators would involve more senators than elected members. Call it a low ebb for the party, if you wish, but the tide is about to change. The party is heading into a leadership contest that can set Canada and the party in new directions. And it is an ideal time and opportunity to redefine liberalism for the 21st Century.

The success of liberalism in the 20th Century was largely due to the success of a growing middle class in North America. Liberalism became increasingly popular because of its belief in the rights of the individual. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy in the United States and Pearson and Trudeau in Canada offered the individual new freedoms and new entitlements. Liberalism made its greatest advances when dealing with the social standards and equality of opportunity.

But what surprised many of us middle class liberals was the vehemence of the opposition. We were told that liberals were too soft on the poor, the disenfranchised, the workers, the unionists and those who served the public. Our list of entitlements for the individual was considered unrealistic. Keynesian economics was vilified.  The word liberal became a curse word in the mouths of the hard right and their ignorant followers.

In our trials, we let the nascent right wing of the Liberal Party become more powerful. We let this sneering right agree to campaign on the left so that they could rule on the right. They broke faith with the party. They broke faith with the voters. Nowhere was this more evident than in the party’s provincial rumps. They tried to save themselves by being more right of centre than their opponents.

For liberalism to meet the needs of Canadians in this century, we have to stay to the left. We have to welcome the true social democrats from the New Democratic Party. We have to talk entitlements. We have to offer the dental and national drug plans that people need. We have to ensure that education is free to everyone. We have to make it clear that we are the party that cares about the individual in our society. We have to make it clear that it is not an argument between big government and little government. It can only be based on good government.

The right wing sycophants of Stephen Harper are hurting Canadians in the name of political dogma. This is hardly good government. The NDP is a party dominated by the big unions. Big unions are not always progressive. Only the Liberal Party can properly represent the individual Canadian. We need good leadership to do that.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me

 

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

by Peter Lowry

We know that Thomas Mulcair, Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition was at his party’s caucus meeting in St. John’s, Newfoundland. We assume he voted in the advance poll in Quebec but it is an interesting question as to which party he voted. Bob Rae and the Liberal Caucus were in Quebec and had ready comment on the Quebec election for the news media. It was a surprisingly shy Prime Minister Harper who was missing on the 10 pm news in Eastern Canada.

But then, Stephen Harper has been playing hide-and-seek with Canadians for most of the summer. In many ways, it added to the enjoyment of the pleasant summer weather.

But other than a comment earlier in the summer that he might launch a provincial NDP wing in Quebec sometime, Mulcair was also among the missing.

What does it say that the Federal Liberal MPs and senators were coincidently gathering at Montebello in Quebec? Timing is everything. Bob Rae, the news grabber that he is, knew to make the federal Liberals the saviours of the nation. The scene just needed appropriate music to give his statement the right drama.

There is no question that the federal Liberal MPs from Quebec are, collectively, far more experienced than the federal NDP members from that province. They continue to run rings around Mulcair’s people and have good access to the news media.

In contrast, Thomas Mulcair has to toe a very fine line in Quebec. His basic problem is that his NDP actually share the core vote in Quebec with the Parti Québécois. The PQ is the left of centre party in that province. There is no comfortable home in Quebec for a left-of-centre federalist. When you add the right-wing Liberal Party’s vote and the CAQ vote on Tuesday, you find that about 57 per cent of the voters opted for a federalist option (even if François Legault’s federalism seems temporary).

Keen observers of the Quebec scene are eagerly waiting for the re-opening of the inquiry into corruption in the construction industry. We expect that we might find that certain trades unions, some contractors and possibly some politicians have been chasing their tails for payoffs. We can all agree that cleaning up the construction industry in Quebec is long overdue.

While it will be very much a step backward, Mulcair will probably find that a cleaned up construction industry can give him a base of union support for a provincial New Democratic Party. It could ultimately relegate the Parti Québécois to the fringe party status that it deserves.

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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  peter@lowry.me