Category: New

The strength of Joe Biden.

by Peter Lowry

Listening to American President Joe Biden address his nation the other night was a rare delight. Here was a politician at the apex of his career. He was entitled to those words of self-congratulation. His first 100 days in office did set new records. He not only knew how to do the job but he got a lot done.

And he did it with confidence. In a time of the worst plague of our world history, Joe Biden brought order to the chaos in America. He did it with the soft gravelly voice of an elderly man. He did it with respect for the women behind him and at his side. He introduced a child-care plan for his country that could work. He wants the minimum wage to be a living wage. He is promoting caring over confrontation.

How different it was, after the past four years, to see a leader holding out the olive branch to the opposition. He is willing to compromise in detail but was plain in his intent to change how America treats its citizens. His strategy was clearly jingoist, “Buy America” and such—simple words for all to rally to but strategic in intent. America’s allies will not be mistreated as they were by the previous administration. This is a president that rushed to vaccinate his country but still took time to think of and send vaccines to its neighbours.

It was critically important in the speech that the president said, “We have to prove that democracy works.” Democracy is under attack around the world. And nowhere is the attack more serious than in the USA. In the bitterly polarized political climate of America, it is critically important that all realize the damage that continued polarization can cause.

The lessons of the last four years in the United States showed Americans and people around the world the potential weakness of the once most powerful country in the world. Internal division is the secret weapon of enemies. Joe Biden’s call is for unity.

On Wednesday, April 28, 2021 the president was talking to the congress, the American people and to the rest of the world. It was an important message.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

 

Doug Ford: Ideologue.

by Peter Lowry

This is an open and shut case. Ontario premier Doug Ford is obviously an ideologue. His beliefs and actions in government prove that he is committed to extreme right-wing political ideals. His actions from day one of his winning the premier’s job where to change the Ontario government from a caring and responsible administration to a cheap and small-minded government that panders to the rich. He can shed all the crocodile tears for the poor and downtrodden he wishes but he is still an uncaring phony.

Among his first actions when he took office in 2018 was to cancel the liberal start at mandating paid sick days by Ontario-registered companies. He also canceled the plans to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. He told us that these programs were “job killers.” He never told us what jobs he helped create by that foolishness.

And in a pandemic, the lack of sick days can kill people. Without paid sick days, desperate people, living on inadequate wages, are going to work sick. At work they become the super spreader of whatever it is making them sick. If it is covid-19 and its variants, it can kill fellow workers. The pandemic is filling our hospitals, usurping our hospitals’ intensive care units. It is costing our taxpayers millions of dollars every day and that ignorant man thinks he is saving money?

The federal government had recently mandated a $15 per hour minimum wage for federally incorporated companies and established a temporary federally-funded pay system for time off because of illness. It is a hastily created program and is awkward in its implementation and slow in payments. It will not last for long. And yet Doug Ford tied his totally inadequate plan for Ontario to the federal plan that few are using.

Do you remember when Ford was standing there in his late mother’s backyard? There he was, all teary-eyed about how great the Ontario plan was going to be. It became obvious over the following week that he had no plan at all. All he wanted to do was send the news media away with something positive to chew on. All we got was Doug Ford—friend of developers and millionaires—spouting his usual bullshit.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Determining Democracy.

by Peter Lowry

Measuring democracy in any country is like measuring the depth of a fast-moving stream with a wood ruler. In a country where few know democracy, is there a measure? In Canada, we think we know democracy and we seldom measure it. It is time we started questioning our democracy.

Ask yourself, why in a democracy should federal power be so concentrated in the office of the prime minister? Why is the upper house of parliament, the Senate of Canada, such a sad joke? Ask why powers, given to the provinces in confederation, are the appropriate powers for today?

And measured against the exigencies of the covid-19 pandemic, would a better structured system of government have benefitted Canadians?

Since the time of the present prime minister’s father, Canadians have been increasingly concerned about the power with which we anoint the prime minister of the time. Even in the Roman Republic, they always elected two consuls to rule and they answered to each other and the patrician senate. No consul could say to the news media of the day: “Just watch me.”

Why did the politician writers of the Canadian Constitution ensure that only land-owners could serve in the senate? We have now made sure that senate and other appointments are elitist selections—selected by elitist committees—and appointed by an elitist prime minister. No riffraff allowed.

Why is it that political party leaders are given the power to determine who may or may not run as a candidate for the leader’s party? If a political party cannot practice democratic principles, how can it be entrusted to run a democratic country?

Democracy is rule by the people and for the people. And Canada is supposed to be a constitutional monarchy with a faux monarch in the form of a governor general. It has a constitution controlled by its parts, being provinces, that are all different sizes and populations.

This is supposed to be a democracy. Canadians should question that.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Doing the cha-cha with Mike Harris.

by Peter Lowry

Get into the rhythm folks. It is one-two, one-two-three when you do the Chartwell Chair cha-cha with former Ontario premier Mike Harris. If you have a mother-in-law you hate, convince your wife that dear-mom should be stowed away at a Chartwell long-term care residence. With Mike Harris in the chair of Chartwell, it is unlikely to be the loving care a dear mom might deserve.

But, to be fair, you had to live through Mike Harris’ common sense revolution in Ontario from 1995 to 2002 to really appreciate his right-wing theories. It is Canada’s Shareholder Association for Research and Education that is calling for Harris’ head over concerns for the safety of Chartwell inmates and the company’s employees. The shareholder protection association is asking Chartwell for a “human capital disclosure” on how it protected its customers and employees through the worst of the pandemic.

The concern is that even as premier of the province, Mike Harris earned a reputation for not being concerned enough about human life. He was famously criticized by the superior court investigation into the killing at Ipperwash Provincial Park of an aboriginal named Dudley George. Harris was reported to have said, “I want the fucking Indians out of the park.”

That matches Harris’ disregard for safety in Walkerton, Ontario where seven died and many more made seriously ill from an e-coli contamination in the water supply. It was just an example of his dismissal of safety measures. He thought safety cost too much.

His record as premier is probably missing the deaths of those welfare recipients who ended up on the streets because of his slashing and then downloading welfare costs on Ontario municipalities.

It is particularly interesting that, as premier, Michael Harris oversaw the deregulation of long-term care facilities in Ontario. After Harris’ conservatives were defeated in 2002, he became Chartwell chair in 2003. He has held the position of chair ever since. As chair of Chartwell, he is reported to have earned $223,000 in director fees in 2020.

Chartwell told the Globe and Mail that 44 per cent of its residence employees responded in a survey last year that they strongly agreed with the statement “I am satisfied with Chartwell as a place to work.” It makes you wonder what the other 56 per cent of employees said.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Ridiculing Freeland’s Luxury Tax.

by Peter Lowry

My old Lamborghini is just fine, thank you. It was amusing to read a conservative’s apology the other day for people who buy luxury cars. After duly noting the foolishness of finance minister Chrystia Freeland’s luxury tax on the toys of the very rich, I had gone on to more important issues.

But now I am mad. Freeland failed us. Her budget is a farce. She is toying with us. We need a legitimate wealth tax in Canada. And to do that you have to start closing tax loopholes. Not all of us can afford the best accountants to wheel and deal and advise. We want everyone to pay their share.

And oddly enough, I know a guy with a couple luxury yachts. He loves sailing. One is parked on Lake Ontario and the other is down in the Caribbean. He might be well off but he is hardly filthy rich. He rents out one yacht while sailing the other. He started with a skiff years ago and kept trading up.

This must be the first time I have agreed with that conservative writer. He thinks the Trudeau luxury tax is just show biz. And he concedes if we are ever going to pay the cost of the pandemic in Canada, it is going to take a lot more than a tax on luxury goods.

What really annoys me about the budget though is that the mainstay of Ms. Freeland’s effort is child care across Canada. She is probably going to be old and grey long before all the provinces agree to the federal government taking over that territory. There are lots of easier ways for the federal government to subsidize child care for working parents.

If we really want to start negotiations with the provinces, Pharmacare is by far the better fight. Logic is on the side of the feds. We can all understand that a single buyer for the entire country can do better than individual provinces and territories, each negotiating for various quantities of product.

And we all have had enough of the environmental bullshit from Justin Trudeau until he puts an end to the twinning of the TransMountain pipeline.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

The Vulnerable Sex Workers.

by Peter Lowry

If we are going to consider the most vulnerable in our society for vaccination, we should start with the sex worker. They are doing something most people enjoy. It is even worse when people do not talk openly about the good, the bad and the art of it. And it is an art. It encourages mutual enjoyment. It is a dance that we humans do—combining touching, feeling, smiles, and pleasure lubricated by bodily fluids and we need to bring it out of the dark.

For people to put a price on the enjoyment of their bodies is a practice that goes back to antiquity. The ancient Greeks worshipped at the naked statue of Aphrodite. And the Romans taxed the sex worker. The sex worker should be honoured, not reviled. The dancer is applauded, the model drawn, the acrobat cheered, their bodies entertaining and gracing us.

But why draw the curtains on the sex worker. Why is he or she a harlot? Did we not understand the needless anger of the sad, sick individual who rampaged with a truck on Toronto’s Yonge Street? Do we not recognize the need for outlets to that frustration? Do we expect celibacy of our military personnel when the ratio of the sexes in the forces is so unbalanced?

Why? Oh why, do we even listen to the sanctimonious hypocrites of the clergy? Our parliamentarians need to face reality. The courts need to protect our rights as humans. And sex is not just for the purpose of procreation. Even procreation needs practice. Sex is a pleasure of living that people should enjoy as they wish. And, thankfully, most do.

But do not make prostitution legal and the client the criminal. That does not protect the weaker member of the pact. The act of prostitution should be by persons of free will. Pimping is wrong if it is the exploitation of a person or persons by another. If a sex worker or a group of them wish to hire a person as door keeper, that is just part of the sex worker’s business.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

B.S. for the Beer Store.

by Peter Lowry

You wonder sometimes if anyone is ever going to tell the truth about Ontario’s Beer Store. For more than 90 years, this restrictive system of selling beer has been foisted on the province’s beer buyers. It has provided profits for brewers and sinecure for our politicians and nobody has ever shed much light on the profits and the cashflows.

It must have been someone’s idea of an April Fool’s joke a few weeks ago when it was reported by the Beer Store headquarters that the beer retail operations had lost $50 million last year. I must admit that as a public relations professional in my business life, I never lied. You hardly need to—as there are so many ways of telling the truth. I expect the Beer Store operation did sell less beer last year. It would hardly impact the Beer Store masters—the brewers—who would have more than filled the gap with increased prices and sales through the liquor control board outlets and large grocery stores.

And no doubt the members at Queen’s Park got their political donations. It is only politicians on the outside, looking in, who promise voters that they will be able to buy beer at convenience stores. Your corner store is in the business of convenience, elected politicians are not.

But it seems the Beer Store benefits can also mean largess for others. In an op-ed in the business section of the Toronto Star the other day, we found out that the Beer Store has four independent directors—people not on a brewer’s payroll. This opinion piece was signed by the chief operating officer of the Ontario municipal employees’ retirement system (OMERS).

It read to me as though some public relations person had written it for him and all he did was take the credit. The op-ed discussed the accounting losses and how the Beer Store revenues were really fees charged to the brewers. It also lauded the Beer Store’s environmental stewardship for collecting some two billion used beverage alcohol containers from customers. It claimed that the stores took back 95 per cent of the refillable beer bottles and about 70 per cent of the 602 million wine and spirits containers sold by the LCBO and grocers.

Maybe the Beer Store should change its name to the Used Beer Bottle Place. They obviously do a much better job on recycling than selling beer.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Ghosts of Pandemics.

by Peter Lowry

It had been another hard day for Ontario premier Doug Ford and he drove his truck to his late mother’s house. The doctor had told him to self-isolate because one of his worker bees had come down with covid. Feeling sorry for himself, he got into an old pair of jammies and burrowed down in his mother’s old bed.

But he was awakened at the first dong of midnight from the grandfather clock. Was that chains he heard rattling outside the door? And, to his amazement, his late brother Rob walked through the door. Good ole Rob did not even have to open the door. He just rattled his chains, floated to the foot of the bed and stared down on his older brother.

“Listen up jerk,” he said fondly. “I’m here to tell you that you are going to be visited by a trio of spirits tonight. The first will be the ghost of the Spanish Flu that wiped out a lot of Ontario taxpayers a hundred years ago. Obviously, nobody ever learned anything from that.”

“Hey, we got vaccines now,” Dougie responded.

“Yah, but they’re too late, dummkopf,” replied the ghost. “Your vaccines are too late to help you.

“The next ghost will be of pandemics present,” brother Rob went on.

“That ghost is going to show you just how bad this pandemic is for the unemployed, the poor, and the people who have to work to survive.”

“But its their own fault,” Dougie responded, “We conservatives only help the guy who is helping himself to the profits to be made. Look at all the money we are making for millionaires today.”

Ghost Rob just glared at his brother. “Look stupid, you kept saying you were there for the people. The only thing you have convinced them of is that you don’t give a damn for them.

“Anyway, it hardly matters. The third ghost is the removals guy who will take your body to a freezer where you will wait for a lonely burial, when there is time,” he told him.

“But I’m alive,” shouted Dougie. And woke himself up.

That was when he called his office and arranged for the news conference to apologize and shed a tear for the people his clumsy orders were hurting.

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With apologies to Charles Dickens.

Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Leadership Lacking.

by Peter Lowry

We are not getting much provincial leadership in Canada these days. Despite liking both Andrew Furey in Newfoundland and Labrador and John Horgan of B.C., I cannot say much for the premiers in the mushy middle. I must admit that I really dislike Doug Ford of Ontario and Jason Kenney of Alberta. They are interesting from a leadership training point of view. Doug Ford has absolutely no training for a job that has overwhelmed him and Jason Kenney’s training must have been too much.

Jason Kenney’s training began when he was elected from Calgary as a Reform candidate to Ottawa in 1997, re-elected as an Alliance MP in 2000 and then as conservative MP in the next four elections. He spent 19 years in total in Ottawa, mostly under the tutelage of prime minister Stephen Harper. It is a period that we still think of as Steve’s reign of terror.

But it was what Kenney spent the most time doing for Harper that intrigued me. As a political communicator in Toronto, I spent a sizeable portion of time learning about and working with the ethnic news media. It taught me a lot about our broad mix of cultures. I found Kenney doing the same research for the conservatives that I had done 30 years earlier.

What bothered me with Kenney, he was using the information gained to further the careers of some conservatives that were not worth it. He showed Harper how to speak in front of a wall of people in an ethnic mix instead of white men in suits. He sent people such as Patrick Brown, my MP from Barrie, to learn about the Indian Sub-Continent. Kenney made inroads for the conservatives with ethnic groups.

Interestingly, it is the pandemic that has shown how bad both Ford in Ontario and Kenney in Alberta are at leadership. Neither man has the life experience to lead people. Jason Kenney is a social conservative. He is a lackey of the oil industry. He is a schemer, a user and a misogynist. He is no leader. And his knowledge of ethnic Canadians is not as helpful in Alberta.

Doug Ford was always more interested in his father’s label printing business than his dad’s stint as an Ontario MPP. His younger brother Rob taught him some moves in the municipal arena of politics but he came into the premier’s job with little or no idea what it was all about.

Both Ford and Kenney could be history after the next provincial elections in their provinces.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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

Religion, Politics and Leadership.

by Peter Lowry

The admonition to never bring religion and politics into a conversation is a lot of B.S. They are two very interesting subjects and they are ever present in our daily lives—not only in Canada but around the world. In some countries, the subjects of religion and politics are the same subject. In China and Russia, for example, politics has replaced most religious practice. In countries such as Israel and Iran, religion appears to control the politics.

One of the benefits Canada offers is the clear trend to separate politics from religion. We are certainly not free of all biases about religion but I feel our growing tolerance is a work in progress. While fewer of us are taking part in organized religion today, there is no question but the many religions observed in Canada bring values to us.

And now we can get to our subject for the day: leadership.

We have already discussed the federal liberal and conservative leaders in previous commentaries and it is time to bring up Jagmeet Singh of the new democratic party.

Jagmeet is an observant Sikh. That means he follows the teachings of the Tenth Guru of Sikhism. This includes the uncut hair, the wooden comb, the iron bracelet, the undershorts and the symbolic knives. There are many fine qualities to the Sikh religion. While based on a warrior ethic, it teaches tolerance and protecting the poor and downtrodden, no matter the religion or caste. It is a religion where every woman is a princess and every man a lion.

And as an educated Canadian, Jagmeet Singh, can count. He looked at the less than 100,000 members of the new democratic party during the last leadership contest and realized that his supporters, with ties to the Indian Sub-Continent in British Columbia and Ontario alone, numbered more than 200,000. He simply had to swamp the membership of his party with new sign-ups from this cohesive group to win the leadership of the NDP. And he did.

In Toronto, we considered it the ethnic edge. It is why someone with an Italian name ran in certain ridings and Anglo names in others. I never approved of that way of choosing candidates. I still don’t. I want my MPs and MLAs to represent everyone in their electoral district.

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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry

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