Category: Provincial Politics

What we have in Ontario today are three political parties that have moved to the right of the political spectrum. They will all tell you that there is no meaning to left or right wing politics anymore. They might be correct. And if they are correct, we can assume that their various political labels have also become meaningless.

This could be why so many of the labour unions in Ontario have moved their allegiance to the Ontario Liberal Party over the past decade. After the experience of Rae Days back in the 90s, they looked for new opportunities. They reasoned that there is more in it for them—and maybe their members—if they make a deal with the Liberals the same way as big business does. They have an advantage over business. The difference is that unions can offer the party a better deal. They bring workers who can help in elections. They can also bring third party advertising campaigns to help vilify Liberal Party opponents.

What it is really is corruption of the political process on a province-wide scale. There are no barriers to this corruption. All parties participate and all are discredited.

The Ontario Conservatives have lost all faith in the former Progressive Conservatives who were drawn from the elite and saw paternalistic governance as a responsibility and a duty. It took former Premier Michael Harris to show them the dog-eat-dog world of harsh ideological right-wing politics and nobody is bringing back the good old days of Bill Davis and Leslie Frost.

The Ontario New Democrats have become less of a conscience of the legislature and more of a centrist party looking for a reason for being.

At the same time, the Liberals see themselves in the role of the kindly gentry bringing governance to the masses. Their only problem is they have no understanding of those masses, their needs and wants. They try to create leadership with surveys and elitist committees and thinly disguised bribes for voters.

It used to be that you could more openly buy the votes with the voters’ money. You could pander to NIMBY’s who do not want a natural gas generating plant in their back yard, wind generators on the next farm or a Walmart down the street. The only problem is that nobody stays bought for long. It is alright if you no longer trust your politicians. It is obvious, they no longer trust you.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It would be great to have a real left-wing political party in Ontario. This is not a promise to support the party but it would be great for voters to just have the option. And if you think Andrea Horwath and her Ontario New Democrats are going to answer the call, you might as well forget it.

After North Toronto’s Premier Kathleen Wynne bravely promised to raise the minimum wage to $11 an hour several weeks ago, we assumed that Horwath and her team were gathering their skirts to wage war. They finally offered the New Democrat alternative and it is not what you might expect. While the Liberal plan was to adjust the rate based on the consumer price index—to make sure the poor stay poor—the New Democrats had to be different. Horwath announced that the $11 an hour would be great but needs to be raised 50 cents per year for the next two years—with or without the agreement of the consumer price index.

And you would be wise not to ask what Conservative Leader Tim Hudak thinks—nobody is sure he can.

What the Liberals and New Democrats are doing is a disgrace. They are thumbing their noses at the experts who suggest that the minimum wage in Ontario should be at least $14 per hour to keep workers above the poverty line. And even then, the experts tell you that the person needs to work full-time. Too many of the minimum wage jobs in Ontario offer just part-time hours.

Politicians will tell you that they are being lobbied by supposed “small business” interests that cannot sustain themselves at a fair wage rate. The politicians are afraid of losing those jobs. They should not be. Any business running that close to the line has a bad business plan, should not be in business and we will be better off without them.

The greatest insult in all of this is that the New Democrats think they will help matters by lowering the small business tax rate further. When the supposed left-wing politicians are more worried about the earnings of small business investors than the wages of the impoverished, we have something topsy-turvy in this province.

Andrea Horwath would have won more plaudits and maybe the premier’s job if she had the guts to demand an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Now that would make for an interesting election campaign!

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Maybe some of us are a bit slow on the up tick. An e-mail arrived the other day saying that Premier Wynne now had a way forward. It came from a policy input program on the provincial Liberal web site called Common Ground. If this is the best that the Liberal Party in Ontario can produce, the situation in Ontario is far worse that we thought.

In the past four months provincial party supporters made 1700 policy suggestions. These ideas generated about 10,000 comments and then the top(?) 20 ideas were ranked from 1 to 20. The weighting system was not explained but the top three policy proposals were not likely to be very helpful to Premier Wynne.

The number one policy from this process is Properly Funded Transit. The suggestion is to restore government funding to the pre-Harris levels and fund 50 per cent of the operation of public transit in Ontario. Obviously some researcher in the party office needs to do some research to tell Premier Wynne what this would cost and maybe suggest where the money for the proposal could be found. Frankly, this proposal might not register very high on the public applause metre.

The number two proposal is to Keep Our Hospitals Public. You would expect that if someone in the private sector could figure out a way to make a hospital profitable, they would be most welcome in the Minister of Health’s office. They might not be allowed to buy a hospital but they might find a ready market for some of their ideas. The public is very sceptical of private for-profit hospitals and we can count on them to support all efforts to keep Medicare operating for the public. As yet, it does not seem to be a concern on the voters’ horizon.

The third proposal is in regards to Great Lakes Protection/Clean-Up. Since Ontario is part of the International Joint Commission with the federal government, the U.S. federal government and the U.S. States involved, the Great Lakes are already of major concern. If the Commission is not doing its job, we should know about it. Until then, we should encourage the Commission to do its job. We have some concerns about the Harper government carrying its weight here but Ontario should let us know if the job is not being done. Again, there is no need to raise alarms with voters if the processes are working.

Now would someone please show us where one of these proposals is going to create jobs for Ontario workers? We need jobs that pay well. We need jobs that will help build our economy into the future. In this case, Premier Wynne asked her party for some help. They appear to have let her down.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

The Conservative caucus at Queen’s Park must have got to their Leader Tim Hudak. They made him promise to cool his jets on right-to-work laws. With a broad wink, he is promising not to mention the idea again until after Ontario’s expected spring election. After all there is more than one way to drive down the expectations of the middle class.

And it is the middle class that Tiny Tim seems to despise. The last of the middle class in Ontario are the union classes. They include the teachers, the nurses, the university professors, the plumbers, the firemen and the police. They are Timmy’s target.

Timmy trained as an economist. He knows there is more than one way to lower the expectations of the middle class. His new approach is all bundled up for him in the term “contracting out.” This is just another way to race for the bottom. It is the way that we can all be poor except for Timmy’s elite one per cent.

Contracting out was one of the methods that fellow economist Don Drummond recommended that Ontario use to save money. He actually suggested it just for information technology needs but to Timmy, there is no end of scope for the method of forcing people to work for less.

What neither Drummond nor Timmy would understand about information technology is that the last three per cent of the tasks never get done. The first 97 per cent is easy but the rule is that the job is never complete. Microsoft recognized this reality of information technology many years ago and solved it by letting unsuspecting customers solve the last three per cent of the problems.

But Timmy sees contracting out as the final solution. He thinks Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is a fool to stop at just contracting out some of the city’s garbage collection. There is a long list of work that can be contracted out. In the private sector, people have been known to build a virtual company that had every job contracted out. (It makes it easier to leave town when appropriate.)

But Timmy wants to be in for the long haul. He wants to show his mentor former Premier Michael Harris that he too can drive Ontario into the ground by doing his bidding. Just wait until those members of his caucus who argued against right-to-work want to be in his cabinet. They are in for a surprise.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Yesterday, we discussed the branding problems of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. In the discussion, the fourth option for her was deliberately left off the table. The fourth option, under current political conditions in Ontario, requires its own discussion.

The premier is fully capable of ignoring those who are telling her what to do. As desperate as she is for a political solution she seems to have few trusted politically-savvy people to whom she will listen. The problem then starts with the first option.

Frankly, it is the best option. It involves Kathleen Wynne’s resignation. The non-political person has a hard time getting their mind around this. They see the danger for the Liberal Party as being forced into an election campaign while without a leader. Think about it for a while though and think also of an open and honest leadership race. It certainly could not be like that phony and corrupted event at the old Maple Leaf Gardens a year ago.

An open race during a general election means that you have over 100 potential leaders running as Liberals across Ontario. All candidates will have to be chosen by their local riding associations. They will be free to espouse liberal principles as they see them. All politics in that campaign will definitely be local. The party hierarchy will be able to pull the campaign components together but they will not have much discipline. It would be that time when all good people will come to the aid of their party. It will drive the news media to the wall.

The advantage would go to the potential candidates for leader as they waged their own campaigns and launched themselves into the provincial scene. Their success in even getting province-wide attention will tell us much about them. In the cauldron of an election campaign, true leadership can shine.

But that is the first option, not the fourth. The fourth option is for Kathleen Wynne to go through the machinations of supposedly governing. She would allow Charles Sousa to prepare another callow, uninspired, do-nothing budget. The New Democrats can then self-righteously vote against the budget and the Lieutenant Governor would call an election. And we can easily guess the outcome of that scenario.

Ontario would have that nice chubby Andrea Horwath as Premier of a minority government, shorn up by a rump of Liberal Party MPPs. It would be a do-nothing government. It would continue to fight against modern distribution of alcoholic beverages. It would wonder what to do about the Ring of Fire. It might raise the minimum wage a bit. It might lower auto insurance premiums. Other than that it would dither until the few Liberal MPPs can no longer support it. And then you get Timmy Hudak. Which is why the fourth option is frightening.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has a problem with Ontario voters. They have taken her measure. She has been found wanting. It is not her politics. It is not her demeanour. It is not her sexual orientation. She simply fails to lead.

And she has put the voters in a hell of a mess. They have no reason to vote for her. And they have no strong wish to vote for either of the other party leaders. When you add all the pluses and minuses facing voters, an election could leave Ontario with Premier Andrea Horwath and a minority New Democrat government. Just think of that problem!

A year ago, Kathleen Wynne could have called an election and won. At that time, she could have offered hope and renewal. She could have looked like a leader. A year later, all she can say is that she stayed in office because of New Democrat support.

And you would think that a budget approved by New Democrats would have more goodies in it than what Finance Minister Charles Sousa produced. Charles does not seem to listen either. And he thought he had the stuff for leadership! If you do not know what leadership is buster, you do not get to play with the big kids!

So, here are the choices folks: First choice is that Kathleen Wynne resign; Second is that Kathleen Wynne discovers leadership, rebrands herself and does something; And third that Kathleen Wynne call a provincial election instead of waiting for Andrea Horwath to pull the plug. When you are on life-support is no time to be dithering.

Sure the first choice means that the opposition at Queen’s Park could pull the plug on the Liberals while they are leaderless but if they were in the middle of an open and honest leadership race, the possibilities could engage the voters. And we have to face the facts: none of the three present leaders is a much better choice than any of the present leaders.

Of course, the second choice is the most expensive. Rebranding any product is expensive. Any experienced marketing person can tell you that. It is a possibility but it would take some very hard-nosed political thinking to come up with the new branding. Bear in mind, the job is done with a rifle, not a shotgun. And there are no mulligans (do-overs) in this political game.

The third choice is the highest risk. To call an immediate election would take guts. And it would take an all-out attack on both Hudak and Horwath. There can be no quarter given. And Wynne could not expect any quarter either.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Quebec Premier Pauline Marois appears to want to have a provincial election based on the bigotry of her charter of values. She sees it as creating conditions for separatism from the rest of Canada. That is an illusion. There might be as many as three or four strategies that could give her a stronger mandate to govern—but emphasizing bigotry does not appear to be one of them. It is not a path down which Quebec voters want to go.

What Marois is trying to build on is tribalism. She sees Quebec tribalism as rooted in the high degree of language and cultural control that the Quebec government has gained. What she wants to add is mind control and that is beyond her capabilities. There are no bindings strong enough, moats wide enough, walls high enough to maintain the degree of language and cultural purity that her pur laine péquistes seem to seek. There will always be outside influences.

And it is the influences from outside Quebec that make Marois grind her teeth. Her problem is that there is a wonderful world to explore beyond Quebec. Quebec cannot keep its people on an isolated island in an English-speaking North America.

Marois and her separatists have never been honest with Quebecers about the real costs of separatism and the dangers of trying to divide our country. Being Canadian is a benefit beyond value.

And supporting tribalism with racial tensions is not only disreputable but something borrowed from a painful past. History shows us that bigotry often destroys the perpetrators of hatred along with their targets. The tête carrée (square head) slur never worried too many of Quebec’s English speakers. It took the demands of the language police to drive out many of the English-speaking small business people and rigid rules in education to discourage those who wanted to keep their English-speaking roots.

But Marois’ separatists now want to use racial hatreds to further their political goals. For a government to claim they are furthering secular objectives by heightening racial tensions is not only shameful but reminds some people of Germany in the 1930s. While the courts are unlikely to ever allow Quebec to mistreat minorities with the ill-named Charter of Values, Marois wants to add that threat to her arguments for sovereignty.

“We must be separate,” she seems to claim, “So we can discriminate.” What logic is that?

It shows the desperation that we face from those still trying divide instead of build. When Pierre Trudeau said “Canada must be a just society,” he was speaking of a Canada without barriers to race, religion, language, opportunity and freedom. It is the small-minded and self-important who do not understand the importance of that to all Canadians.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Today, February 13 is hard lesson day for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. Despite the reasonably good turnout at advance polls, there is no rationale for neophyte Premier Wynne to anticipate anything good from her ill-timed, ill-considered by-elections.

She can probably write off the previously Liberal electoral district of Niagara Falls. Former MPP Kim Craitor is too much of a Liberal and a gentleman to comment on his decision to retire. Yet his timing speaks volumes. There are only two votes the new Liberal candidate can count on in Niagara Falls. They are hers and the last Liberal act from Craitor. What the Liberal candidate might have going for her is that Ontario Conservative Leader Tim Hudak lives in the riding and to know him is not exactly a reason to vote for him or his candidate. We would not be surprised to see a very strong showing from the New Democrat in this riding.

But we are hardly going to sit here in Babel and pretend to know the mood of the voters down on the Niagara Peninsula. It is much easier to read the voter mood in a general election. In a by-election too many local issues come into play and that can override good political instincts. That means we place no bets on the outcome in Niagara Falls.

But Thornhill is a different matter. Before moving to Babel almost ten years ago, we lived in Thornhill. It is a very attractive part of the Greater Toronto Area and a fine place to live. The area is a long way from a childhood in downtown Toronto. It has a mix of relatively well off and industrious people from many backgrounds.

The higher than average Jewish vote in Thornhill (largest in Canada) has been pandered to by both Conservatives and Liberals. It will be very interesting to see how the Prime Minister’s recent trip to Israel plays in a provincial by-election. There is no question that Mr. Harper’s trip had absolutely no diplomatic context and he took a full Airbus of MPs, rabbis and others to impress Jewish voters. And why Thornhill Provincial Conservative candidate Gila Martow would have that nice big picture of herself, Prime Minister Harper and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on her web site, we have no idea.

The New Democrats are not a factor in Thornhill. The contest is between Tim Hudak’s Conservative candidate and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal candidate. And that is why we wrote originally that calling this by-election instead of a general election was one of the dumbest ideas that we have seen yet from Premier (briefly) Wynne.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

There was a robocall from The Beer Store the other day. The cheap bastards would not spend a nickel to call in person. They sent a recording to do a man’s job. (That is not sexist, it was a man’s voice.) They want to talk with Ontario beer drinkers and gin bottle returners about the ruction concerning their beer distribution and retailing monopoly. They are going to hold one of those telephonic “virtual town halls.” That is a town hall where they pick the comments they want heard and you are expected to listen to propaganda.

Thanks but no thanks. It is bad enough when you have to hold your nose to dump your recycle and buy a two-four. You should hardly have to listen to the bad smell as well.

It is getting so bad at “The Worst Beer Store in Ontario” that we really must relay a recent event: It happened when waiting patiently in line with a week’s meagre collection of wine and beer bottles. The delay was caused by two scruffy gentlemen who had obviously spent the morning beating the garbage trucks to the recycling boxes. Their bonanza of bottles and crushed cans in three shopping buggies took time to sort. People coming in behind us were nonplused by the delay and became impatient. In their rush to get about their business, they offered their empties to this writer. That extra $13.65 was enough for us to get a premium beer instead of the usual economy brand that day.

But we hardly expect that to become a regular supplement to our pension.

It is obvious from that robocall that The Beer Store is concerned. Maybe we are finally getting through to those do-nothing nobodies at Queen’s Park. And if the foreign owners of the Beer Store are worried, that might be half the battle.

It appears they are going to build a campaign based on slandering convenience stores because they might sell beer and wine to minors. Knowing how successful Ontario has been at keeping those stores from selling cigarettes to minors, that is a scurrilous approach.

It is our politicians who have to grow up and smell the roses. It would be a bloody shame to let Timmy Hudak and his Conservative Neanderthals win an election by offering to modernize beer and liquor sales in this province.

Kathleen Wynne is quickly reaching the point of no return and unless she gets her act together and pays some attention, she is going to be toast. She has to face the fact that the votes in Ontario come from ordinary people across the province and not just from large law firms in downtown Toronto.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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