Category: Provincial Politics

Premier Kathleen Wynne and her government have a unique approach to solving Ontario problems. If and when enough of the right people have told them that something needs to be fixed, they form a committee of the right sort of people to study the situation and await the committee’s recommendations.

This method of running Ontario was developed by Premier Dalton McGuinty. He had come into power when Ontario voters could no longer stomach the Mike Harris Conservative government. Dull Dalton reasoned that Ontario had not been satisfied with Liberal David Peterson as he did not really know what he was doing. They were equally dissatisfied with the Bob Rae New Democrats who did not know what they were doing, Then Ontario suffered Mike Harris and his Conservative ideologues who did know what they were doing and the voters came to dislike that intensely.

That left Dull Dalton a fairly free hand to do nothing as long as he looked like he knew what he was doing. It worked. During the Dalton years in Ontario, we saw renewable energy in Ontario turned into what can only be described as a Ponzi scheme. His one big accomplishment was full day kindergarten. The only problem was that as the memories of those bad years with Bob Rae and Mike Harris started to fade, voters became restive and started paying attention to the opposition parties. Mind you when you do pay attention to people such as Tim Hudak, you wonder if this kid flunked nap time when he was in kindergarten.

But the voters were restless. Ontario has been losing manufacturing and processing jobs on a serious scale since the 2008 economic crunch. Dalton seemed to be getting on the wrong page with the voters. The voters did not quite dump him in 2011 but they did not give him a majority. Seeing his opportunity, he bailed.

Enter Kathleen Wynne. Here was a person who had no experience running anything. She tried to surround herself with her competitors for the job of premier. They were no help at all. She therefore followed poor departed Dalton’s lead of doing nothing until you had to. It took her a full year to create more commissions and committees than Ontario had ever seen before. And that nice lady who tries to run the Ontario New Democrats kept her in power because they have a mutual distrust of elections.

But the problem with her committees is that when they report their findings, she is still at a loss. What to do? Her solution to date is to listen to the report and then find a half-way response to it.

Take the minimum wage situation: Wynne’s solution appears to be to move Ontario’s minimum wage to $11.00 per hour. It is a compromise that pleases nobody. It does nobody any good. Even if you tie it to inflation, you leave people teetering on the edge of poverty. What she does not understand is that no matter what she raises it to, she will piss off the business exploiters. Why not make some people who need the money happy?

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It is all part of the game with the news media. It is their opportunity to interfere in events. When it comes to reporting on politics, the news media and their pals, the pollsters, are combatants, not spectators. And they relish the role. Consider their positions in the current provincial by-elections.

There is much pontificating to be done and polls to be run between now and by-election day, February 13. The media might even get around to doing shallow profiles on the various parties’ candidates but it is the photo opportunities with the leaders, they will report more thoroughly. And Premier Kathleen Wynne will definitely be there if the younger, more attractive federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will be there for the shot.

The problem for the news media is that they know, as well as anyone else politically knowledgeable, that these by-elections are a waste of time and money. They are nothing more than a stalling tactic. Without a provincial election, Premier Kathleen Wynne has no credibility. There will be nothing she can do in the few months until the opposition combines to defeat her government.

Oh sure, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa can get smart and bring in a budget that makes sense. It could even be a budget that appeals to Ontario voters. There could also be three moons in the sky to accompany that unusual event. The Toronto Star will sagely give approval to his budget while Sun Media and Post Media will damn it and the broadcast media will announce unrelated snippets. And not enough people will read the Globe and Mail to find out what the budget really means.

But it hardly matters. No Liberal budget is likely to receive any approval from Ontario’s opposition parties. They smell blood and they want an election. It is do or die time for both the Conservative and New Democrat leaders. To make matters worse, they will believe the pollsters. Andrea Horwath will be the most convoluted in her decision. She does not seem to enjoy the election trail and she knows that without a major breakthrough this time, her days are numbered as leader. It will be the news media calling for her scalp.

But Conservative Tim Hudak and Liberal Kathleen Wynne are in even worse positions. Tim would have to come in with a majority to save his scalp. And where can Wynne grow under present circumstance? She will have no choice but to resign.

And what are the penalties for the news media and their pollsters? They will just say, “We told you so!”

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

The Québéc government’s Charter of Values proposal is earning the province ridicule. Premier Pauline Marois and her Parti Québécois government think it will make francophones in the province hunker down and blame everything on the rest of Canada.

But it is their own supporters who are making out the péquistes to be fools. In inviting people who are ignorant and bigoted to give testimony in support of the charter, they are building the case against themselves. In a testimony by a man and his wife the other day, the couple brought into sharp focus the need for Quebecers to learn more about other religions and customs.

The woman argued against having to take off her shoes before entering a mosque in Morocco. When she finally agreed and was allowed to enter, she was aghast to find people praying on their hands and knees on carpets. She was appalled at this way of praying and used it as an example to explain her desire to deny others their rights to religious freedom.

The woman did not indicate, while speaking in French, whether or not she had grown up Catholic in the predominantly Catholic province. If she had seen a Rite of Ordination in a Catholic Diocese, would she have been equally appalled at the sight of candidates for the priesthood lying prostrate on the floor before the alter during the chanting of the Litany?

Maybe our federal government should subject people intending to travel abroad to a written test before issuing a passport. This would help to ensure that they do not embarrass Canadians with their ignorance. At a minimum, fools should be forbade to visit places of worship that they do not wish to try to understand.

The funniest part of this testimony was the husband who testified that he had his pockets picked while visiting a Morrocan souk. While he claimed that it was two people with their faces and bodies covered, it is more likely these people had a different objective in mind for him. No self-respecting Moroccan pickpocket would ever be noticed relieving you of your wallet. Here again, the gentleman would have benefitted from some advice before visiting a market in that country.

It is nice to see that Quebecers can also hit it big on UTube. The clip of the couple’s appearance before the Commission studying the Charter of Values has already been seen by many thousands. It is not really how our friends in Québéc want to be known.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has committed. She has called for pointless by-elections in the electoral districts of Thornhill and Niagara Falls in February. It is a waste of time, money and political capital. She could have done the right thing as a politician by calling a provincial election.

But, frankly, we are never sure if the name of Ontario premier and the word politician can be used in the same sentence.

While we tend to want to stay away from winter elections, it adds a dynamic to the campaign that needs to be added at this point of time. Ontario needs a hearty dose of reality to add to the decision making.

We have to face the fact that none of the parties or their leaders is particularly appealing. It is a situation that forces us to deal with candidates on a riding-by-riding basis. It will be a novelty but each voter needs to assess the candidates in his or her electoral district and pick the one that represents them best. In other words, this is not the time to vote for some dummy just because of his or her party label.

To vote by party label is lazy, stupid and irresponsible. And in Ontario, in the present day, why would you choose any party over another? What have the political parties in this province done for you lately? They use your money as though it belongs to them. They treat you as though you are an idiot. They lie to you. They blame others for all their mistakes. Most of us have been treated better by our teenagers.

This is ‘tough love’ time folks! To hold a by-election is nothing more than a feint to distract us. We need reality. We need a full-blown election now! We need to choose the best people. And that means we have to ignore party labels. You can hardly park your vote this time with Mother Goose and the New Democrats. We did that more than a decade ago and ended up with Rae Days and a dazed electorate. And we hardly dumb enough to want a reprise of Mike Harris and years of vendettas and union-management wars. And if Wynne and her Whigs do not know what they are doing, what is the point of supporting them?

The point is that the guys and gals running for a general election have to have a label on them to get the support of a party. It is up to us to ignore the labels and ask questions and vote by our own standards. Does this person represent you or not? Even if we have to wait until May or June for an election in the sunshine, we still have to vote smarter. It would just be better if it was sooner.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

Ontario Opposition Leader Timmy Hudak has a new career in mind. He wants to be a carnival illusionist. In an op-ed opinion page article yesterday in the Toronto Star, he was proposing a Million Jobs Act. This act, as he describes it, would be a masterful illusion in the category of Houdini’s greatest stunts.

In keeping with the huckster’s patter—and very bad mathematics, Timmy tells us he can pay down our provincial debt, freeze government salaries, train workers and free companies from government regulations—while reducing their corporate taxes. Somehow, this combination of actions is supposed to create a million jobs for Ontario’s half million unemployed. Timmy seems to have a problem connecting his solutions to the results he wants.

Maybe he has never seen the musical The Music Man. The huckster in that musical knew how to sell an illusion. And it is probably only a small jump from 76 Trombones to a million jobs. The lesson for Timmy in this is that the music man was building an image for the suckers. While the reality was that he was just selling the paraphernalia, he talked only about the band that was the promise. It is what we used to call selling the sizzle, not the steak.

Timmy needs to find the sizzle. His mentor, former Conservative Premier Mike Harris, sold his Common Sense Revolution until the voters realized he never had any. Timmy needs to learn how to build a mental picture of this supposed nirvana that he is promising Ontario families. Frankly there is no gravy train for Timmy to try to end at Queen’s park. That train has already left the station.

What Ontario needs from its leaders is leadership. It seems we have all had it up to the eyebrows with hearing what political leaders such as Wynne, Hudak and Horwath do not like—besides each other. Between the federal Conservatives’ anti-Ontario bias, the manufacturing jobs lost and the incompetence of these three, Ontario voters are in a seemingly hopeless situation.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa is our last chance. He can still bring in a budget that makes sense. He can button up the BS about the deficit and bring out a job creating budget. He can sell the Liquor Control Board and use that capital to start the ball rolling on great projects such as the Ring of Fire and the high-speed rail corridor from Windsor to Quebec City. That takes vision. That takes leadership.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

A surprising number of Conservatives read this blog. And sometimes it upsets them. Talking to one of these upset people this morning, he admitted that he had run out of alternatives for the coming Ontario election. The recent blog on Premier Wynne’s worries had convinced him that he had nowhere to go. He could not face voting for Mother Goose—Andrea Horwath and her New Democrats.

The only advice that we could give him was to vote for the most intelligent of his local candidates and hope for the best. This might seem like a novel approach for someone who had always voted in a lazy manner for one political party but he promised to try it.

If we take our own advice, we could be in deep trouble. Either in the old electoral district or the newly gerrymandered ridings that have split Babel in two, we are likely to find ourselves in the only riding where an incumbent Conservative Member of the Legislature has actually looked good in recent months. Admittedly, this is more by accident than design but until we find out who the Liberals and New Democrat candidates will be, this guy’s got a free ride.

He was a loser municipally four years ago and decided to try for the provincial seat. He won against a weak New Democrat and a Liberal newcomer who seemed to come across to the voters as arrogant. It looked like he was going to just sit like a lump in the Legislature but he was given the upcoming Pan/Parapan-Am Games in 2015 to critique. That made his day.

His luck was the Minister responsible for the Games in the Wynne Government. Michael Chan, is a two-term MPP from Markham who does not get high marks in political communication. The Conservative found he could question the Minister in the Legislature and look good because of the inadequacy of the answers. Minister Chan did not seem to be well briefed on his ministry. The questions became more brazen and the government found that people were starting to laugh at them. The entire fiasco has tended to embolden Babel’s neophyte MPP.

The only problem for the Liberals in the new riding that encompasses the north half of Babel, where the Conservative incumbent lives, is going to be added to a rural area north of Babel where the voters have no idea of the reasons why municipal voters in Babel dropped him from municipal council.

We will just have to wait for the Liberals or New Democrats in the electoral district to come up with a better candidate. And we can only hope they also have some good candidates in your Ontario ridings.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

It has not been a well kept secret. The Queen’s Park Whigs are worried. They cannot seem to understand why Ontario voters like New Democrat Andrea Horwath more than the Whig’s Wynne. And if they do not figure it out soon, the Whigs days are numbered.

Ontario has now had a year of Kathleen Wynne and people are losing patience. Starting with the corrupted and undemocratic delegated convention that chose this Premier, she has stumbled from day one in the job. What it boils down to is that she is unable to connect with voters. Her first answer to any problem is to appoint another group to study it. And when she takes direct action, she usually gets it wrong.

Take a recent example: the grocery cards fiasco in Toronto. It was a classic example of bureaucratic bungling. The Premier does not seem to understand the people in the city where she lives. She wanted to make sure that people who lost electrical power because of the ice storm were at least partially compensated for some of the food going bad in their fridges and freezers. That was an honest concern after Loblaw’s Weston showed the way.

But she put bureaucracy in the way. She had no idea of the numbers of people who would think they deserved something, She created the frenzy because she did not know to leave distribution of food to people who do it for a living: at the grocery stores. All the provincial government needed was to create an affidavit of loss for claimants to sign—that the bureaucrats could spend next summer checking.

Frankly, Kathleen Wynne seems to think like a bureaucrat. If she even likes people, she fails to show it. She treats the Premier’s job as an administrative function instead of a caring function. She lacks the talent to lead. She lacks political savvy.

Nobody thinks that Andrea Horwath of the New Democrats is any smarter. It is just that Wynne comes up looking like a dried up prune beside Horwath. The real difference is that people are starting to realize Horwath cares.

When you line up the three party leaders in Ontario, Horwath is coming across as the tortoise plodding her way to the finish line. The two hares, Timmy Hudak and Kathleen Wynne keep stirring the dust but going nowhere. At least the voters have figured out that Timmy Hudak is a loser but they are not getting any warm fuzzies from Wynne either.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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

This is not ideological. It has nothing to do with right or left wing politics. Selling the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to private citizens has nothing whatsoever to do with the private versus public sector. It is a simple question of good economics and what is the best system of distribution for the citizens of Ontario.

And forget all that crap about the evils of demon rum. Liquor, wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages are commercial products. They create a chain of cash flow and profit from ingredients to the consumer. For the government to be in total control of this commercial chain is bad economics, a constraint of trade and fails to benefit the taxpayers of our province. It is not only something out of an anal retentive past in Ontario but has continued out of ignorance.

Most people think a $1.7 billion a year profit from the LCBO is a big deal. It is not. The LCBO is a complete entity that means jobs, transportation, supplies, construction, utilities and the myriad expenses of business. It just lacks the entrepreneurial freedom to compete, to grow, to experiment, to risk, to specialize and to merchandise effectively. The government throttles the potential of the LCBO with bureaucracy, political constraints and myopic rules. A monopoly will, by definition, stagnate. In a monopoly, the business of booze cannot be all that it can be.

Some think we would be selling the goose and that would be the end of the golden eggs. The growth in liquor taxes, payroll taxes and business taxes from entrepreneurial liquor and wine stores will more than compensate for the supposed loss of the profits. The billions the province makes from privatizing will be cash in the bank for taxpayers.

First and foremost, the Ontario voter has earned the right to walk to his or her corner convenience store and buy a six-pack of beer or a bottle of Ontario wine. The politician who disagrees with this is wallowing in ignorance and is uncaring. He or she should never be elected to the legislature.

But it is the more progressive politician we should support. It is the politician who sees not only the opportunity to upgrade convenience stores but to expand the scope of our grocery outlets and to improve the knowledge, service, market sensitivity and merchandising in our local—privatized–liquor stores. We need to welcome these progressive politicians to the 21^st Century.

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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry

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