Category: Provincial Politics

The Ontario Conservatives’ hapless leader Timmy Hudak is a continuing problem for his caucus and party. Ontario pundits have continued to have their say about him and nobody knows anything they did not previously know and worried about. And if Timmy and his political handlers have no idea what to do, how is the party meeting in three weeks going to solve anything?

The basic problem is that nobody in the Conservative party can honestly say they are overwhelmed with Timmy Hudak’s performance as leader. If he is honest about it, Timmy is probably just as concerned about his performance as anyone else. The party buys him the best advice that it can find and Timmy keeps falling on his face. It is not whether he is actually a nice guy or not. That is not what anyone is worried about. The problem is that the voters of Ontario seem convinced that Timmy is a dumb schmuck. And there is no cure for dumb.

But that is only problem number one. The next question is what the hell the party intends to do about it? The Conservative gathering later this month has decided that delegates can vote for a leadership review. What help will that be?

Are the party faithful going to vote for a new leader when they have absolutely no idea who the new leader might be? Sorry, it does not work that way. When Brian Mulroney stabbed Joe Clark in the back and ousted him as federal party leader back in the 1980s, Clark still got more than 60 per cent party support at the convention. Mulroney had to count on Clark’s pride to get the leadership contest he ultimately won.

And, in this case, the party is setting a barrier of 60 per cent in favour of having a leadership convention to replacing the present leader. Even if Timmy Hudak only gets 41 per cent of the vote, it is enough to keep him in the driver’s seat. And you know he will do better than that. They do not call it the Conservative party for no reason.

You can do all the automated telephone polls you wish but the only way the Conservatives are going to dump Timmy Hudak is if you give them a viable alternative. And there is no viable alternative in sight.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Bigotry in Quebec has deep roots. In the past week, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has been testing those roots. Her planned ‘Charter of Quebec Values’ is nothing but a bigot’s demand to ‘speak white.’

It hardly matters if her phony charter wins the approval of the Quebec National Assembly or not. Marois’ point has been made. She has drawn her line in the sand. The Parti Québécois has always had bigotry in its back pocket to use when needed. It was probably the facet of the Quebec psyche that destroyed René Lévesque in his final years. He could lead the strong but he could not quell the weakness.

Quebec’s is not a racial bigotry. It is tribal. It had its beginnings in the days of the Voyageurs. It was the battle over the early years of this country with the Hudson’s Bay Company. It was the Square Mile of Montreal. It was the blockheads. It was conscription.

From a province of piety, Quebec is today a secular society. It can, also now exclude those who do not speak the language and dress the dress. It can disdain the clerics and look down on those who show a difference. They can revile the trappings of the Semitic. They can reject the excesses of the extremist Christians. Their future, their confidence, their crutch, they are told, is their language, their culture and the politicians who pander to their insularity.

It is this base of bigotry that Marois needs to hold on to power. She equates this new charter of ‘values’ to Law 101 that said it was designed to protect the French language while stripping the province of much of its Anglophone professionals and leadership. This proposed charter denies the right of a person in a public position to wear a headscarf or turban lest it be construed as a religious symbol. It denies the Hasidim their identity. This, she says, is to protect Quebec in its freedoms and diversity.

Marois sees this charter as just another step in dividing Canada. It can only serve to enslave Quebec as an insular island in a progressive North America. She obviously sees Quebec as a quaint pocket of French civilization transplanted from Europe. It does nothing for the Quebecker who wants to share in the growth and freedom of opportunity available to all Canadians.

Our Quebec can do much better.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

The confirmation process of Ontario’s provincial government was shown up for how artificial and shallow it is the other day. A lawyer named Ed Waitzer appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Agencies because he has been chosen to head the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). Yet Waitzer appeared to have less knowledge or interest in the operations of the LCBO than the customer who buys her weekly bottle of cheap sherry from one of its more than 600 stores.

A senior lawyer with a major law firm in Toronto and a former securities commission head, Waitzer handled friendly and unfriendly questions alike with few opinions and apparently little knowledge of the job. Knowing Mr. Waitzer from the past, we must report that he would not be high on the list of our choices as chair of the LCBO.

But anyone being offered the job of running a corporation with sales of almost $5 billion per year for some 18,000 products and providing the government of Ontario with $1.7 billion in profit, you would think he would care enough to brief himself.

Even if the intent is to eventually privatize liquor sales in Ontario, you would think that you would want a chair with at least some understanding of the marketplace, employee relations, supplier negotiations, alcohol-related problems, alcohol products or effective merchandising. The last thing the LCBO would seem to need is someone who can be somewhat officious and legalistic and claims to have no opinions on the important questions facing the agency.

In our opinion, it would be seriously stupid for the government to have someone without extensive industry background in control of the LCBO when it transfers alcoholic beverage sales in Ontario to the private sector. When you find that the Conservatives on the committee voted unanimously to confirm Mr. Waitzer, you can comprehend the concern. Privatizing liquor sales in Ontario can be a very profitable step for any Ontario government and the Ontario Conservatives have recently climbed on board that bandwagon. Just because the current Finance Minister Charles Sousa and present Premier Kathleen Wynne seem to be blind to this opportunity, does not mean it will not happen within the next few years.

And besides, the committee did not seem interested in why Mr. Waitzer is the choice of a Liberal government?

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

It’s a daunting task and we can only hope that Finance Minister Charles Sousa is up to it. He is travelling Ontario searching for solutions to Ontario’s economic malaise. Needless to say, our unemployment is higher and our economy is shrinking and only the ignorant among us think the answer is to balance the books. Charles has come to the understanding that he has to get away from Queen’s Park. You have to get out of the box to think outside the box.

And if Charles stops by Babel on his pilgrimage of promise, we can at least promise him an earful.

With his last budget on behalf of the New Democrat’s Andrea Horwath, Charles proved that he had no ideas of his own. His biggest problem du jour is a company in Waterloo called Research in Motion (RIM). RIM and its product, the Blackberry, are credited with getting business executives’ thumbs out of their bums so that they could use their thumbnails on tiny keyboards. The company revolutionized micro-managing.

But, like most once-successful Canadian companies, RIM is now circling the drain. It is the victim of its own success. It turned out to be another one-pony show in a business of three-ring wonders. It kept assuming that if it was right the first time, it will continue to be right. It did not understand the ebb and flow of the affairs of a fickle business world. It also failed to understand that it was not in the hardware business in a world built by constantly changing software.

Charles needs to challenge his brain trust in that Treasury building across from the Pink Palace on what RIM really cost the taxpayers of Ontario and how we can get our dividends before giving the company to the Americans. And, like Nortel, RIM’s software patents are worth far than anything mechanical the company ever designed.

Any economic modeling of the Ontario economy should tell Charles’ Ministry experts that, like the bumble bee, the Ontario economy cannot fly. It has to tax business fully and properly, it has to put blocks in the way of exporting jobs, and it has to put good citizenship by business ahead of worrying about ownership.

And just because Ontario’s lame duck Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak jumped on the same bandwagon is no reason not to sell off the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. With our liquor taxes, it would be the gift that keeps on giving. And, while we are at it, please get rid of those disgusting Beer Stores!

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

When Dalton Camp died in 2002, Canada lost an intellectual giant and a giant killer. Dalton was always our favourite Conservative. He was fun as a person with whom to fight. He was the man who took on and defeated Conservative Leader John George Diefenbaker in 1966. He was also the most pissed off Conservative candidate we have ever seen on election day, 1968.

Today, we need a Dalton Camp with a fly swatter. The Ontario Tories need help dumping Tiny Tim Hudak. It is a delight to see some of Ontario’s Conservatives getting up on their hind legs and saying, “Timmy has to go.” What alternative do these poor people have than dump the dummy?

Tiny Tim has embarrassed the Ontario Conservatives for too long. He was poised to defeat Dalton McGuinty in the last provincial election but the voters got a taste of his Michael Harris-Lite politics and backed off. They might have been angry with the mess Dalton was making of things but they were not crazy over either of the alternatives.

Dalton’s minority government was as untenable for him as it was for the voters. And here we are in a bigger mess with Kathleen Wynne as McGuinty-Lite. You have to agree that the by-elections of August 1 solved nothing. If anything, New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath would be in a better position if she just knew how to take advantage of the current situation.

But Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne and Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak are up the creek. The Premier has very little time left to figure out what the voters in Ontario really need and she is never going to find out on the road she is on.  As long as she keeps listening to that brain-trust that is leading her astray, she is going nowhere.

But the key to opening the dam appears to be the renewal of Ontario Conservatives. Do not forget that these people used to have intelligent leaders such as Bill Davis. Bill only thinks he is right-wing. He is one of the most decent people (for a Conservative) that we have ever known.

It just needs a modern-day Dalton Camp to solve the problem. Dalton would do the job with wit, charm and irrefutable intellectual argument. He would kick ass!

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

If you look at the positions of the three principal parties in the Ontario Legislature as an interminable game of Go, you would recognize that only New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath improved in Thursday’s by-elections. While her position is not tenable in the long term, she has manoeuvred into a better bargaining position with the Liberals. Premier Kathleen Wynne is probably going around asking people what she should do but nobody has the experience with the way she has things fouled. Yet, it is Ontario Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak who is toast.

Tiny Tim was clearly rejected by the voters in the four key urban centres where the by-elections were held. He cannot even claim the win in Toronto’s Etobicoke-Lakeshore as that was Rob Ford’s win, not Timmy’s. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday ran as Ford’s guy, not Hudak’s. All the emphasis was on city politics in the campaign for that electoral district, not provincial. Timmy needed to break the McGuinty hold on Ottawa South and failed. He needed to win over the voters in London West. He failed. You can expect to see a new Ontario Conservative leader next year.

As much as Wynne must be wondering about her position, Horwath is the one most desperate for strategic direction. And since she need not take the blame for the choice of Adam Giambrone to represent the New Democrats in Scarborough-Guildwood, she came out the winner across the board. If she and her caucus could find a way to force an election before the Tories replace Tiny Tim as leader, she is in a position to win all the marbles. At the very least, she is in a position to dictate terms to the Liberals.

Wynne won nothing on Thursday. It was the ghost of Dalton McGuinty who won in Ottawa South. And it was Liberal tradition and the ideal candidate that carried Scarborough-Guildwood. Kathleen Wynne was side-lined from the day she so ill-advisedly called the five by-elections. Her impact was minimal.

Wynne has a couple of months at best to come up with a platform for Ontario. She has to prorogue the Legislature and come in with a new Throne Speech. And it has to be a barn-burner. It has to forget the fiscally-responsible B.S. and lay out a plan that makes sense to the voters of Ontario. It has to be full of education and jobs for our youth and better care for our seniors. She should talk to people with ideas.

Horwath is in a different mode. She has to learn to play hardball with Wynne. She has to better understand her job.

And Timmy Hudak needs to brush up his résumé.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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

Wishing for it might not do the trick for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. She desperately needs to win at least three of the five by-elections in Ontario this Thursday. That would leave one each for Hudak’s Conservatives and Horwath’s New Democrats. That assures that their jobs are safe and Wynne can then go into a general election early next year with some confidence.

Maybe she can. Kathleen Wynne has never been tested as a cross-Ontario brand. We have no idea as to her performance in a general election. And anything less that three seats staying Liberal in these by-elections spells trouble for Wynne as Premier. There are lots of questions.

If job creation is the measure that Ontario voters are going to use, she has already lost. She also has the anchor round her neck of the cancelled gas-plants in Mississauga and Oakville. There are still too many of the same players in that sandbox.

What makes little sense was an e-mail to Liberals last month signed by Jane Rounthwaithe, Kathleen Wynne’s partner. It was a stick in the eye to anyone the least bit homophobic. The pictures of Wynne and Justin Trudeau at the Gay Pride parade said it much more effectively if the story was inclusion.

For Liberals across Ontario, the problem with Wynne is that they are in the dark as to where she wants to lead the party. Leading it out of trouble would only be the first part as the party does need some positive direction. Her problem is though that she needs to be able to attribute her policy directions to the membership of the party. Her remarks last week to the other premiers suggesting that the Senate of Canada could just be reformed instead of abolished did not seem to be a general discussion topic at any Ontario Liberal policy conference in the past 30 or 40 years.

And, as has been mentioned before, the news media describe Kathleen Wynne as a left-leaning politician. The problem is that too many left-leaning Liberals in Ontario have never got that e-mail. We would be delighted to welcome her to our midst—should she every bend in that direction.

The only things shoring up Premier Kathleen Wynne are Tiny Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath. This is not a wealth of choice.

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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry

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