Category: Provincial Politics

Did you hear about Premier Kathleen Wynne doing another stand-up for the media the other day? It was to promote Green Bonds for transit in Ontario. It could be an interesting talking point if most people already know what a green bond is all about.

Just in case there is any confusion, it should be mentioned that green bonds do not necessarily have to be about being environment friendly. Otherwise Premier Wynne would probably not have been standing in front of a diesel locomotive to promote the idea. A green bond works the same as any other debt instrument where the issuer—in this case, the province—borrows the money for a period of time at a fixed interest rate and the interest paid to the lender is tax free. Tax free can be attractive to many investors. The only concern of the experts in these matters is that there be a revenue stream supporting the bonds—not just taxes.

What is disappointing about this is that Premier Wynne really does think that her proposal is environmentally friendly. The news media reported that she said so. It would have been more credible to move her stand-up to a subway. These are electric. And we also need to fund subways and light rail transit.

To be fair, some environmentalists are defensive of diesel trains. They insist that diesel is much less polluting than gasoline. Obviously this is all relative but there is no question electric trains are much less polluting than either diesel or gasoline. And what we really like about electric trains is their ability to quickly come up to speed and then return power to the grid when braking.

The early history of Ontario as a province was replete with what we then called electric street rail cars serving interurban transportation and freight. If you are over 70 and remember travelling to Jacksons Point from Toronto on what seemed like a big street car, or commuted in the Kitchener, Cambridge (Galt, Hespler, Preston) area, you could have been on one of those wonderful old electric trams. The many interurban electric trams served the industrial growth of Ontario at a critical point in its history.

And electricity can do it again. The most important need is for a high-speed electric rail corridor from Windsor to Montreal and on to Quebec City. Ontario has the technology for the trains and Quebec has the low cost (green) hydro electric power that can serve both provinces.

All we can hope for at this stage is that the implementation of green bonds can be carried out by people who understand our priorities and what they are doing.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Two provinces with the resources are better than one. Two provinces with the ideas are better than one. And two provinces working together can rebuild Canada’s economy to make the country the most dynamic in the world. People have talked about this idea for many years but ignorance and caution have been the cause of continued inaction. It is time to force the change.

This came out of a discussion with a friend who is an expert on the business needs of Ontario. The question asked was: What is the one basic ingredient to restoring our economic viability?” He spoke without hesitation: “A high-speed rail corridor from Windsor to Quebec City. It is essential to the long-term economic health of Ontario, Quebec and Canada.”

And he is right, with one proviso: The trains must be high-speed electric!

Quebec is currently studying electrifying rail in that province. It has the low-cost hydro electric power to spare. If those Quebec City to Montreal trains continue west to Toronto and Windsor, it means year-round boosts to tourism and commerce for both provinces. It means easing the congestion of inter-city airline flights. It is the infusion of billions of dollars of upgrading in the rail corridor. It offers same day city-to-city rail freight. It creates tens of thousands of jobs for both provinces. We can build the 250 to 300 kilometres per hour trains. We can build the infrastructure.

Clean, efficient, fast electric trains will change the dynamics of commuter travel to the major cities in both provinces. Commuters will have their travel times cut by at least a third. More stations can be added because of the ease of electric trains in coming up to full speed.

And then we can look north because that is the future.

Both provinces need low cost transportation for goods and people to their resource rich north country. And they need the transportation for the output of the mines to processing.

The initial changeover and infrastructure cost will be in the range of many billions. It will take years of planning and construction. It will take new arrangements in energy distribution and costing. It will take people with daring, foresight, intelligence and guts to make it happen. Quebec has already launched the idea. We need to tell Quebec that Ontario wants on board. Because, together, we can get it done.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

The other day, Premier Kathleen Wynne defended a $100,000 fund-raising dinner for the Ontario Liberal government. She said that fundraising such as this is all part of democracy. What it is, in fact, is a corruption of democracy and should never be allowed. It is indefensible. The money should be returned to the dozen or so energy industry suppliers by the Liberal Party in Ontario with a polite, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

This type of politics has gone on for far too long in Ontario and it goes against every tenet of democracy. It perverts the basis of one-person, one-vote. It cries out of possible corruption. And it perverts the very core of our political system. Without proper controls on political donations, democracy is pushed aside.

We really do not want to live in a province ruled by money instead of the people. Yet we allow unelected hangers-on at Queen’s Park to dictate to the politicians and to set and control the political agenda. Since the days of Premier Oliver Mowat, Ontario seems to have been enslaved to a Family Compact that concentrates the power in a few. With the exception of one-term regimes such as the 1919 to 1923 stewardship of Premier E.C. Drury, Ontario Premiers appear to have had to be approved by that Compact.

The Family Compact started out as major landowners and gradually transitioned to major resources, financial and industrial interests through their surrogate lawyers. These interests had lost control of the federal parties prior to the present Conservatives because of federal election funding reforms in the latter half of the 20^th Century.

In Ontario, funding by corporations and unions continues to be excessive and leaves politicians open to questionable relationships. Also the very fact of allowing third party interference in elections is of questionable legality and this has been a sham and disgrace.

All three major parties understand the weaknesses of the Ontario election and funding rules and each, for their own benefit, fail to bring it forward. We need pressure from the ranks of the political parties for the problems to be fixed. A good time is in the dying days of a government that knows it cannot win re-election. Then, why not fix it? Why leave the advantages for others? The Wynne government should take note.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Did you see the announcement of Kathleen Wynne’s new super committee to solve all her problems as Premier? If you wait long enough, you too might find yourself on one of her growing lists of committees. The only membership requirement appears to be that you should not be mistaken for a Liberal.

But it is this latest committee that leaves us flabbergasted. It is supposed to tell the government how to find information about their own government, how to understand the information obtained about their government, and then tell her and her government how they can use the information to do a better job of governing. The only question left is what are Wynne and her government to do?

Admittedly, the less glamorous aspects of politics are the endless hours of reading and research that are needed to keep informed, to understand issues and to consider alternatives for action. It appears that Ms. Wynne considers this work onerous and she has created this committee to tell her how to relieve her workload.

Frankly, it would serve the citizens of Ontario better if Ms. Wynne just quit and turned the Premier’s position over to a Liberal who understands the job.

Remember President Harry Truman’s famous sign in his office: The buck stops here. In our Ontario Premier’s office, there should be a sign saying: Stop Stupid.

If you think you need a committee of apolitical nerds, political has beens, people who live off political ineptness and the usual suspects to tell you how to be a politician, you have a serious problem.

What has never made sense has been the claim of the news media that Premier Wynne is some kind of left-wing politician. Her entire career in politics has been based on reactionary politics, starting with her objecting to Premier Michael Harris’ amalgamating Toronto into a single city. It was a move that was long overdue and done badly but there was Kathleen Wynne standing as some female King Canute of conservatism, fighting the inevitable.

And as a school trustee in North Toronto, Wynne was reactionary and a loser. She switched to provincial politics.

And that seems to sum up Kathleen Wynne’s career. The woman is behind the trends, playing catch-up and has no understanding of where she is going. She is a disaster as Premier and no liberal. The sooner Ontario is rid of her, the better.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Did you miss the announcement last week that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has solved the problem with Ontario’s harness racing industry? You can just see her coming out of her Queen’s Park office at the end of the day, dusting off her hands and saying: “another problem solved.”

The truth be told: the solution bombed. The announcement was another example of Ms. Wynne’s lack of political acumen. She is a babe in the woods. She not only has absolutely no political instincts but she listens to bad advice. It hardly needs Opposition Leader Timmy Hudak to tell us that the money for the harness racing people is too little, too late and mismanaged in the telling.

Politically the time to strike on the harness tracks issue was the same day as she fired Ontario Lottery and Gaming Chair Paul Godfrey. It had to be a one-two punch. It would have given her a reason for firing Godfrey without saying it. It would have prevented the resentment about the tracks being transferred to her and allowed to fester.

With her government already suffering from too many festering sores, Wynne is starting to lose the ability to act. Last week’s job statistics brought nothing from her office. What the statistics showed was that Ontario was not only behind the curve in job creation with the rest of the country but we are losing unemployed not to jobs but to giving up. Young people are out of options.

It is in reading those figures last week that you could see how the Harper government has skewed and screwed the economic balance of this country. The battered manufacturing sector of Ontario and Quebec has fallen behind the resource based Western economy.

The Ontario government’s job is to rebuild the economic base of this province. Wynne and friends obviously have no idea how to do this and the combined ignorance of the opposition parties makes the situation desperate. The voters are caught in the middle.

Ontario has to put its faith in the development of high technology industry such as we have based in Kanata, Toronto and Waterloo. We have to woo it, support it and keep it working for us. At the same time, we can hardly ignore the riches of this province in agriculture and mineral resources. These we must also continue to build on. Frankly, we could hardly find a better province. We just need better politicians.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

There is little that is complex about Pierre-Karl Péladeau. He is as basic as the daily content of Le Journal de Montréal. He is his father’s son. He preaches conservatism and separatism without qualms. He is Sun Media. He is the pitbull of Canadian news media. He is making the mistake that many in his position have made before him. He is exposing himself to the voter.

This generation of Péladeau is a throwback to the heyday of John Bassett. The difference was that John Bassett of the Sherbrooke Daily Record and Toronto Telegram, Argonauts and Maple Leafs and CTV was first and foremost a Canadian. And John knew how to be a gentleman—even if he rarely showed that side of himself.

But John Bassett learned the hard way that his ego could defeat him. Pierre-Karl Péladeau has yet to learn that lesson. John twice attempted to win a seat in Canada’s Parliament. He was defeated in Sherbrooke riding in Quebec in 1945 and in Toronto’s Spadina riding in 1962. His honours had to be handed to him when Conservative Prime Minister Mulroney made him head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Review Committee in 1989.

Conversely, Pierre-Karl is going to find that Quebec Premier Pauline Marois might not be the friend she is making out to be. She needs him on side and angry. Making the media baron chair of Hydro-Québec was not because he had any special skills to bring to that body. She wanted him to taste the power that the separatists can offer him if he joins their government. She is already inviting him to cabinet committee meetings so that he can get a sense of the power that is there.

Interestingly, Marois is involving Péladeau in a project that Premier Kathleen Wynne in Ontario would be very smart to emulate. It is the electrification of transport in the province. In Ontario, one of the major problems with the GO Trains is that they are all diesel. Diesel takes too long to come up to speed and it severely limits the stops and schedules of trains. Electrical GO trains could serve more stops and cut up to a third off commute times throughout the province. It makes good economic sense.

Marois has been criticized for having Péladeau attend these meeting of the cabinet committee. It is a criticism she is inclined to handle as long as it gets the mercurial Péladeau solidly on side for her party. He might even surprise us by getting elected.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

No doubt Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne would very much like to close the books on the gas power plants in Mississauga and Oakville. It is just that there is a bad smell here that is something more than the rotten egg smell usually associated with domestic natural gas. And we hasten to add that we are not singling out her party for all the blame. We must never forget that Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath were both behind the drive to cancel those power plants. All three parties are to blame.

But, there is no escape clause in this fiasco, Ms. Wynne. Your party really screwed things up. It is now obvious, based on the auditor general’s report, that the real mess was in how you cancelled. Every single lawyer in the Liberal caucus, or at least the Cabinet, should be disbarred for not stopping the government of the day from cancelling the way they did. That was dereliction of responsibility to Ontario taxpayers.

We recognize that it might be somewhat difficult for the caucus to dip into personal savings to reimburse the taxpayers. Maybe former MPP Greg Sorbara might consider it small change but even he would have trouble coming up with a billion.

The basic question is what are you going to do about it? It is about time you stopped backfilling and repairing and became pro-active.

At best guess, you have until April to start looking like you know what you are doing. It also gives Andrea and Timmy time to think about how they might really serve Ontario voters. Your only advantage is that you are supposed to be a Liberal. Nobody can confirm that based on your performance as Premier to-date. You have done nothing, Liberal or otherwise.

Being Liberal is to be concerned about the freedom and opportunity of the individual in our society. There are too many people unemployed in Ontario. That means they are not being afforded equal opportunity. What you need to do is increase corporate taxes and then give business an incentive to hire. Companies that do not hire can pay for those that do. And, by the way, make sure the minimum wage is above the poverty line. It is not equal opportunity to pay people less than a living wage.

Being Liberal is leading. You have to show us you can lead. You have to stop listening to those reactionary advisors you have and stop playing at developing policies. Any policies that you do not feel in your gut are probably not worth the trouble. Start with what people need. They are the ones you have to bring on side.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

It is a waste of time to worry about public opinion polls months before an election. Watching Premier Kathleen Wynne working her political wiles last week also seemed like a waste of time. It was her reaction to an opposition question about a $1.89 cup of tea that worries us. It was a bad answer. It was bad politics. And she was inadvertently asking for more stupid questions just like it.

Any smart political person would know how to redirect the question. She needed to tell the questioner about the importance of the Pan Am Games that are coming to Toronto in 2015. Why the hell should the Premier of Ontario need to deal with such minutiae if the people looking after the games are doing their job?

Part of the problem was the guy Wynne appointed to handle the Pan Am Games in cabinet was pathetic when he tried to answer the question in committee, prior to the Premier trying to answer it in the House. He actually gave the right answer but that was not why the Conservative MPP asked him. Instead of giving a political answer and holding the floor for a while, Sport Minister Michael Chan answered in about seven or eight words. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language. Is this a politician?

There are just too many disappointments in the Liberal Cabinet. Here we had high hopes for Health Minister Deb Matthews. She keeps getting up in the House with whiny blame-game answers to basic questions. Here is a competent person who just cannot seem to be able to get ahead of the political game. It is as if she thinks she is running some billion dollar corporation and she cannot understand these people asking her simple questions. She needs a course in Politics 101.

And then there is Finance Minister Charles Sousa. We had high expectations of him. We thought he would be far better than Dwight Duncan, that wonder kid from Windsor. We honestly thought that Charles was better tuned to the political realities of the job. His first budget did not even please the New Democrats who wrote it. He might as well have stayed home in Mississauga. He is in the fast lane to the political dump.

Is it any wonder that the polls show that the public would prefer New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath as Premier? Most agree that she seems like a very nice person. They just do not know where Horwath and her party want to go. This explains why more Ontario voters would probably vote Liberal, but just not enough to give the Liberals a majority.

The polls are also quite conclusive that the only Ontario voters who like Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak are hard core Conservatives. You have no doubt heard of people who would vote for their party even if it was led by a big yellow dog. Next time you see Timmy, toss him a dog biscuit!

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

If you do not like the mess when racoons get into your garbage, you can tell Premier Kathleen Wynne about it. If you want to kill or at least discourage those pesky animals, the Premier will listen. She needs policies for the coming provincial election. She has even had the party create a website—commonground.ontarioliberal.ca—to let you send her your ideas.

But there is a caution to those sending ideas. Any suggestions not in accordance with the party’s objects (objectives?) may not be considered. The only problem with that is you will have a hard time determining what the Ontario party’s objects might be.

In fact, Kathleen Wynne would probably be a bit tongue-tied if you threw that question at her. She neither talks the talk nor walks the walk of modern liberalism. She is far more conservative than liberal in the traditional sense. She is a reactionary. She figures she has done the job when she dumps problems onto committees and gets them off her desk. Never in her speeches that we have heard since she became Liberal party leader has she told us what it means to her to be a liberal.

The only thing we have definitely heard is a resounding ‘No’ to Babel-on-the-Bay’s suggestions that she modernize alcohol sales in Ontario. That response has little to do with political philosophy and a lot to do with ignorance.

It was like when she fired publisher Paul Godfrey as chair of Ontario Lottery and Gaming. Paul had done what he had been asked to do to modernize gaming in Ontario and show how it could produce more revenue for the government. For a Conservative, he did a heck of a good job. Kathleen first tied his hands in Toronto and then she fired him. She never gave the guy a chance.

It is getting so bad that every time there is another appointment at a senior level of Ontario boards and commissions, you get the feeling that the province has taken another giant step backward.

What worries this liberal is the way Wynne is headed she is laying down a red carpet for that schmuck Timmy Hudak and his unrepentant Mike Harris Tories. Paul Martin did it federally in 2006 and now Kathleen Wynne is going to do it to Ontario. Why should the voters settle for a pseudo-Conservative government when they can have the real thing?

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

What did we say the other day about half measures by governments that have no idea where they are going? Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne seems to have fallen into that trap. Obviously somebody got to her and told her she needed to be seen doing something about how we sell alcoholic beverages. That was dumb. The stipulation needed to be made that first she learn something about the subject.

Can you imagine the ignorance of what she told Paul Bliss of CTV News? While admitting that Ontario has extremely restrictive laws on alcohol sales, she made some naive comments about Ontario’s wine industry. She seems to think that craft wines are something farmers do after they have milked the cows. She has no concept of the years of investment people put into their vineyards and the exacting science of wine making. She thinks the selling their wines can be done at farmers’ markets on Saturday morning.

And now she tells us that she has created a panel of officials from government ministries to advise the politicians on how to help the industry. This seems to be her way of doing the premier’s job; just keep turning problems over to committees and do nothing. What insights officials from the ministries of finance, economic trade and development and the ministry of agriculture can contribute to the marketing of wines is open to question.

What we do know is that this is not working for Ontario. What is really wrong is the closed-minded ignorance of Wynne’s Whigs. Ontario has suffered under almost a hundred years of Women’s Christian Temperance Union edicts about alcohol sales and nobody seems to have told the politicians that the WCTU is dead. It has not had any sway in Ontario since the Second World War. And to compound their ignorance, Wynne’s Whigs have appointed a lawyer with no apparent knowledge of the market or the workings of the organization to chair a moribund LCBO.

The Ontario government is losing huge revenues by not privatizing the LCBO. Obviously it should hang on to the buying power of the organization because it is the largest single buyer in the world of alcoholic beverages. The revenue it can generate as a wholesale distributor alone is close to a billion dollars per year. Where else in the entire government can you sell off an asset and continue to make more money from it each year than you did before you sold it?

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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