Category: New

Ford is Cock of the Walk.

by Peter Lowry

He sure showed them all. He quit university to get out there and sell for his dad. He took the show on the road and tried to open the market for Deco Labels in Chicago. Salesman Doug Ford then followed younger brother Rob into Toronto city politics. It was four years of surprises and heartaches. Doug had not yet found his niche.

But he is convinced he has found it now. Doug Ford is in his second term as premier of Canada’s most powerful province. He is cock of the walk.

And the cock of the walk can get that bus with a bed, he so foolishly asked for four years ago. He now knows how. The cock of the walk has his way.

Ford has an agenda. He can finish the Bradford Bypass during this term. What else was it he ran on? “Conservatives get things done.” He can maybe get started on Highway 413. It runs from nowhere to nowhere but his developer friends are excited about it. They can pave over the wetlands.

But how do you pave over the ruin of Ontario’s healthcare system? Blame it on COVID. Blame it on Christine Elliott. Blame it on the federal government. You can always blame it on others when you are cock of the walk.

And what about Ontario’s vaunted education system? If the cock of the walk thinks that young guy with private school education is going to pull that system back together, he has a surprise coming.

There are many surprises in store for someone who thinks they are cock of the walk.

First, you have to realize how you got to be cock of the walk. You had no opposition. Neither the NDP nor the liberals had a leader more colorful or known than Mr. Ford. The conservatives ran the longest campaign before the election was called and the shortest after the election was called. The opposition never got off the ground. Ford ran circles around his opponents in a well-funded campaign. The election also showed the poorest turnout of voters in Ontario’s history.

And the cock of the walk needs to remember: you can fool some of the people, some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Where’s God in this?

by Peter Lowry

The Pope of Rome is in Canada this week. And if you are a devout Roman Catholic, you should be pleased. And if you are not a religious person, you are probably already bored with it. And if you have some aboriginal ancestry, I can imagine the mixed feelings that could be involved.

While residential schools for native Canadians might have offered a potential to proselytize for religious orders, it obviously opened the door to carnal desires. It led to mistreatment and abuse of children for whom the government had accepted responsibility. It led to deaths from diseases to which the children lacked inherited immunity. It was a wrong that we were talking about, to my knowledge, as far back as the 1950s. It took a long time for what was wrong to come into focus.

As someone who spent many years in the business of communications, it was clear to me that Canada’s aboriginal peoples had an oral culture. They passed down the stories of their people through generations. There was little pictorial language.

They went to war with other tribes, took slaves and wives. They were nomadic and followed the seasons. Survival over the winters was the biggest challenge. The best hunter was the natural leader and the woman best invested in midwifery was the natural leader among the women.

When the Europeans came with their blunderbusses and gunpowder, the aboriginal’s world changed, whether they liked it or not.

And, on the whole, the Europeans were poor colonists. They brought with them the bad habits and prejudices of their mother countries. Interaction with native North Americans created new prejudices. Offering to teach aboriginal children to think and act like Europeans was not a good idea. Taking the children was an even worse idea.

And then they let religious orders run the residential schools, which was another very bad idea. Errors compounded and voices of caution were muted.

Which brings us to today and the visit by the head of the Roman church. He says he is here to apologize on behalf of his church. I thought he had already done that. His church believes in absolution. I don’t.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Conservative Kangaroo Court.

by Peter Lowry

Wow, would it ever speed up the processes through our courts if the conservative party’s minions were running things. I will freely admit that I have absolutely no use for Patrick Brown, former MP, former Ontario PC leader, and former candidate for federal conservative leader. It is simply that I believe if you accuse someone of doing something wrong, you should prove it.

Mr. Brown has broken the rules in the past and I would suspect that he has done it again. As I understand the conservative party rules, a new membership in the party is required to have a personal cheque attached or valid credit card information that is issued in the applicant’s name. I would assume that rule would preclude money orders being used, as you can buy those for Santa Claus. And Patrick Brown should know better.

It seems to me though that the charge that Brown had contravened the election act is much more serious. It should be easy enough to track down that story and find out if it really took place.

What concerns me the most is that the citizens of Brampton might be stuck with Brown in the mayor’s chair for another four years. I am not sure that Brampton deserves that.

There have been repeated reports from Brampton of ruction at city hall. I have no idea what is going on there but it sounds to me that Brown does not know how to work with his council. It has been reported that when he was leader of the Ontario progressive conservative caucus, he had problems with an unruly group of conservatives. City councils are rarely all members of the same political party and you really do have to be a persuasive person to keep them all working in the best interests of their community.

While Patrick Brown has been active in politics since a very young age, he has not learned much about working with others. It seems to me that politicians who get the urge to get into politics later in life, after a successful business career, do a much better job for the local citizens. Brampton might be best to consider alternatives.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Poilievre Prefers.

by Peter Lowry

Why doesn’t Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre want a third debate among the remaining conservative leadership hopefuls? With two-thirds of party members preferring a third debate, you would think the obvious front runner might oblige.

But the answer is “No.” Poilievre gave the party leadership committee a scathing answer. He not only said no, he enlarged on his answer by calling the first debate an embarrassment for the party and saying both French and English events got in the way of selling temporary memberships in the party.

You would think that now the selling is done and with maybe 100,000 temporary memberships sold by Patrick Brown open for change, a third debate would not be such a bad idea. With a total of over 600,000 people available to vote, there would be no harm in enticing a few more into your camp.

But it sure is tough to try to shake the over-confidence of Mr. Poilievre.

This is a guy who wants his ‘convoy’ converts to conservatism to know how obnoxious he can be. He is promising them ‘free-dumb’ to block entry points to Canada and to party around the clock in the nation’s capital.

But the supporters that we really feel sorry for are the young people who like the idea of someone controversial in the conservative leadership.

But like the Republican Party in the United States will be a long time ridding that party of the image of Donald Trump, the Canadian conservatives will spend quite a while getting rid of the odour of Pierre Poilievre.

Poilievre has the problem that he shoots from the hip. The other day, for example, he said that he would have jet aircraft flying out of Billy Bishop Airport on the Toronto Islands. That will cost his conservative candidate a hell of a lot of votes from the masses of condos facing the islands in downtown Toronto. The noise level of turbo-prop aircraft landing and taking off from Billy Bishop can be handled. Jet aircraft, that close to downtown, would not produce happy voters. The promise is like his idiotic promise to support cryptocurrencies against the advice of the Bank of Canada. Poilievre is a high-risk possibility for Canadian conservatives.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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What’s Democratic About It?

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford’s proposals for ‘super mayors’ in Toronto and Ottawa have nothing to do with democracy. What he seems to be trying to do is make sure that the developers keep working with city hall. It is probably the only way that those cities will ever have close to enough affordable housing.

As I understand it so far, the idea is to give the super mayor a veto over any motion by council but council can overrule the mayor with a two-thirds vote. Giving the super mayor control over budgeting as well as department appointments could also be part of the package. Knowing how the progressives and right-wing members break down on council, such a formula in Toronto would give the mayor a virtual control of the current council. While there is not a clear-cut right-left breakdown of council, you do see more left-wing councillors downtown and more right-wing suburban council members.  

While there is general consensus that the more powerful mayor system would be more efficient, that does not mean that more meaningful work would be done. A powerful mayor might be able to negotiate more geared-to-income rental housing being built in the city but the mayor would also need to be motivated to use the power in that direction.

And there is still the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude to geared-to-income in individual wards. No councillor wants to be drawn into battle with his or her voters.

Ideally the super mayor would have the ability to negotiate with developers to include a ratio of geared-to-income in any major project.

It is amusing to realize that a similar super mayor concept was proposed by the McGinty liberal government back in 2008 and David Miller, mayor at that time, thought the system was unnecessary.

Obviously, the imagination of the municipal affairs experts at Queen’s Park have yet to be challenged by this proposition. We will await developments.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Ford’s Advice from Afar.

by Peter Lowry

Ontario premier Doug Ford needs to stop taking advice from his dead brother. We hear that he is thinking of giving the mayors of Ottawa and Toronto powers similar to those of the U.S. ‘strong mayors.’ Ford seems to get all of his ideas from séances.

The older brother, Doug Ford served as a city councillor in the four years that his younger brother Rob was mayor of Toronto. With the younger brother’s use of crack cocaine and then falling ill with the cancer, that ultimately killed him, it was a turbulent time in Toronto City Hall.

It was assumed to be ‘get even’ time when the elder Ford became premier and one of his first acts was to cut the number of Toronto councillors from 47 to 25. This was despite the fact that the election was already underway.

Doug Ford, coincidently, was based in Chicago for his father’s label printing company during part of the reign of Richard M. Daley as Chicago’s super mayor. Ford never got the label business off the ground in Chicago but he should have understood why the Ontario approach to mayoralty is more challenging than the American system.

I have never known a mayor in Ontario who did not complain at one time or other that they only have one vote on council. What you need as mayor is something most good mayors—such as Toronto’s John Tory has—panache.

As chief magistrate of their community, our mayors are well-paid greeters and honours dispensers. The smarter mayors use their appointment privileges to strengthen their clique and to get objectives through the council agenda. The lazy ones leave the heavy lifting to the city clerk and often have to settle for a single term.

The most annoying problem that our mayors face is that they have to go ‘hat in hand’ to the senior levels of government to get the money required for large expenses such as subways and other high debt load projects.

Toronto is one of the five major cities in Canada recognized as a Charter City. That means it gets additional funding sources in addition to property taxes. Yet, as is always the case: The more you give them, the more they want.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Brampton Brown Bifurcates.

by Peter Lowry

It is amazing how Patrick Brown always seems to find the fork in the road of least resistance. For someone who has never held a real job, it seems he can always weasel his way out of one mess and get into another. His only problem seems to be, whenever he gets where he is going, he does nothing.

It was seven years ago, that Brown went from being the apparent do-nothing member of parliament for Barrie to leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative party. There are various versions of what went wrong there. Needless to say, he was soon applying for the regional chair position in Peel Region. When Doug Ford arbitrarily cancelled that position, Patrick took the fork in the road to the mayor’s role in Brampton. It took some promises but with the aid of the South Asia diaspora in Brampton, the MP, come party leader, became mayor of Brampton.

I have been meaning to stop by some of Brampton’s parks to see how the big change is coming. Patrick promised members of the South Asia diaspora in Brampton that he would turn some of Brampton’s lovely parks into cricket pitches. South Asians dearly love their cricket games.

If there is one thing that Patrick knows, it is politics. He made quite a show of announcing that he was quitting the conservative leadership race (since he was already kicked out). That was a carefully chosen crowd that he had assembled—probably from lists of people who wanted something from the city. They all seemed pleased that he was running for mayor again.

And he even brought along his kids because they are at the cute stage. After all, who would want a picture of Patrick.

If there is any progressive running who thinks he or she can beat Brown, I would be pleased to come down to Brampton for a day and discuss how he can be beaten. Mind you, the gas is on you. Just once, I would like to see Patrick have to get a real job.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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Is it Good for You Too?

by Peter Lowry

It seems like a good time to review the request of Rogers Communications to be allowed to buy Shaw Communications. It is not as though we really get a vote on this. Our ‘betters’ in Ottawa are going to decide for us. Isn’t it always the way in Canada?

What the question of the day boils down to is whether you would prefer to be screwed by three companies or by four? For some time now we have had Shaw and Telus based in the west and Bell and Rogers based in the east. Along with Quebecor’s Videotron in Quebec, there are a bunch of what I think of as sucker fish. These are companies that buy the base service from one of the big three and resell it to consumers. In analysis, I seem to find that most of these sucker fish get your business by making an attractive offer but eventually get their rates about as high as their supplier.

The Grandpère of all these base operators is Bell Canada. The company that Canadians love to hate, Bell’s business is based on millions of kilometres of installed copper wire that is gradually being converted to fibre optic cable. Bell was the original contractor to build the Canadian Internet connections across Canada and to the world-wide web.

Rogers Communications was an early player in the game and became noticed in the 1960s. From roots in radio, Ted Rogers gradually moved his company through cable television to cell telephones to publishing and to television production, leaning heavily on sports and ownership of sports teams and facilities. When he died in 2008, Ted was the fourth richest man in Canada with a net worth of about $7 billion.

And his son took over the whole shebang.

Coincidently, a gentleman named James Robert Shaw built a somewhat similar cable, broadcasting and telecommunications empire, based in Calgary, Alberta. When JR died in 2020, the broadcasting part of that empire, was spun off as Corus Entertainment and the telecommunications end of things was put up for sale.

Enter the Rogers scion with an offer of $26 billion for the Shaw assets. That should create the largest telecommunications company in Canada.

Ottawa has yet to rule on this proposal. If the government approves of it, it will just prove that the Trudeau government is not on our side.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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The ‘Deplorables’ are in play.

by Peter Lowry

Nobody ever said that Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre was not a man on a mission. He will do anything to move himself along on the road to the prime minister’s office. Like Donald Trump in 2016, Poilievre is taking help anywhere he can get it. He is making headway with what Hillary Clinton referred to as ‘The Deplorables.’

In case you did not know who the deplorables were, you only need to check the photos of the event at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The deplorables were visiting. They had been invited by outgoing president Donald Trump to prevent his vice-president, Mike Pence, from certifying the election of democratic candidate Biden.

They were like the people who visited Ottawa this February with similar intentions to make their wishes superior to the will of the voters. These people make motor cycle gangs such as the Hells Angels look like choir boys.

The fact that this ‘convoy’ was warmly greeted and feted by MP Pierre Poilievre was like a stick in the eye to order and good government in Ottawa. The fact that so many of these yahoos who disrupted life in Ottawa back in February and their friends are now temporary members of the Conservative Party of Canada is a matter of some hilarity for those of us who know our Canadian political parties.

Mr. Poilievre claims he has found some 300,000 of this type of Canadians to support his candidacy. Since they have also paid $15 each for the right to vote in the leadership election, no doubt the conservatives appreciate the $4.5 million dollar donation to a party these yahoos neither understand nor would want to support.

And, frankly, they paid the money in response to false pretences. Poilievre promised them freedom. He promised them no more lockdowns. He promised them no more compulsory vaccinations. He promised them bitcoin instead of loonies. He promised them a freedom that does not exist in civilized societies.

The sad part of this are the young people who think it is fun way to give the middle finger salute to Canada’s politicians. We all know that we can do better. Supporting a sleazy demagogue such as Poilievre is not the way to do it.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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Alberta’s Angst.

by Peter Lowry

It was a long time ago, that as a teenage member of the Canadian Air Force, I drove from North Bay, Ontario to Cold Lake, Alberta. It was part of my right of passage to adulthood. While as an adult, I spent more time in Calgary and Edmonton, I have never forgotten those early days at the base at Cold Lake. That was when I met the native Canadian and the early settlers of that part of Canada. And it is balancing that knowledge with the acquaintances in the cities that helps you understand the cross talk of the politicians.

And you have to admit that Alberta has suffered some unusual politicians over the years. In the land of ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart, the demagogues come and go. The most unusual of these politicians is not the departing Jason Kenney but the distaff side in the person of Danielle Smith. When all the talking heads in Alberta politics, thought the woman had gone to watch the grass grow in Southern Alberta, they are starting to realize, she might just be the winning combination in the current race to replace Kenney.

For someone who might replace Kenney, Smith is likely to cause far more trouble than Kenney ever did. And for a party that calls itself the United Conservative Party you wonder why when it has all those libertarian members. Quite frankly both Smith and former Wildrose leader Brian Jean are better described as libertarians than conservatives.

And they really do call a spade, a spade in Alberta. An Edmonton writer the other day reported that Danielle Smith is running her campaign—not just as “anti-establishment but anti-science, anti-vax, anti-law and overall anti-reality.” Her promise to support the screwball “Alberta Sovereignty Act” to override federal law, should be enough to preclude her being assigned to run anything more complex than a lady’s washroom.

Just like the way Calgary-born Pierre Poilievre is dominating the current federal race for the conservative leadership by pitching to the angry, foolish and juvenile, we have a similar situation in Alberta. I thought two years of pandemic was nature’s way of remonstrating us for mistreating the environment.

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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry

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

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