Category: Provincial Politics

Training Mr. Ford.

by Peter Lowry

I sometimes wonder if Ontario premier Doug Ford has ever taken a train anywhere? It looks like he has even forgotten that the liberal government, his conservatives had followed into office, where in the process of converting Ontario’s GO Trains to electric. They were also eliminating the level crossings.

While this might seem expensive, it is the least expensive way to double the capacity of the system. Electricity-powered trains can come up to speed faster and stop faster. Combined with no level crossings, the province can effectively double their overall capacity. By using electricity, there is the added benefit of reducing pollution.

But Doug and his fellow conservatives seem bent on building roads through our good farming land and our wetlands, that act as reservoirs for our farmlands. They want their developer friends to build on our carefully preserved Greenbelt. They want the gas-guzzling family automobile to remain king in Ontario.

And did you know that Ontario was once a leader in intercity trains. As a youngster, I loved those trains. I used to take the intercity trains between Galt, Hespler and Preston (now known as the City of Cambridge) and then from there taking a coal-burning train back to Toronto.

But I liked the electric trains best. They were usually a baggage car for parcels and one or two cars for passengers. And they were fast.

And, don’t forget, we were also talking about building the first high-speed electric trains starting between London, Ontario and Toronto in that previous liberal government as well. My old friend David Collenette from East York who had served as Jean Chrétien’s transport minister was the point man on the project for the Ontario government.

Ideally, the first high speed trains in Canada should be a triangle route from Toronto to Ottawa, to Montreal and then back to Toronto. It would be faster than plane service to the three cities, cheaper and less polluting.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Conservatives Colliding.

by Peter Lowry

It seems there is a growing rift between Doug Ford, premier of Ontario and Pierre Poilievre, leader of the federal conservatives. It is a bumpkin versus an idealogue. It is a street fighter versus a sleaze. They are not even in the same weight class.

And it is not only the Volkswagen battery plant that stands between them. Ford has already professed his admiration for deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland. He considers her his pal. Yet there is this shrill voice from the Ottawa cowboy screaming that Volkswagen is a waste of money. Poilievre is a half-ton trucker himself.

And you cannot expect Justin Trudeau not to keep rubbing salt in that wound. You would think he is toying with Ford just to annoy Calgary-educated Poilievre. It might cost the Canadian taxpayers a few billion dollars but it should pay off handsomely down the road. After all, what is Poilievre doing about the environment? What would he ever do but deny global warming?

Poilievre only drinks the Kool-Aid of the tar sands. Doug Ford goes with the flow. Of course, Doug looks after his pals. He gives up Ontario wetlands and good farmland to serve his developer buddies from Toronto city hall. He constantly shafts Toronto to revenge the treatment of him and his late brother when they were both in city hall.

But it is the liberals in Ottawa who are dealing with industry to bring more jobs to Ontario. Of course, it would help if the province had the housing for workers and they could afford to live there.

What seems to be annoying Poilievre the most is Mr. Ford’s saying that he stood shoulder to shoulder with the Ottawa liberals to invoke the Emergencies Act and sending the ‘Freedom convoy’ home to pout. Those truckers were Mr. Poilievre’s friends and he needed their votes to win the federal conservative leadership.

On top of that, Ford ordered the longest lock-downs in Ontario during the pandemic as well as making all his conservative candidates in the last election have their COVID shots. Pierre Poilievre and Doug Ford are not kindred spirits.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Dumbing Down with Ford.

by Peter Lowry

Premier Doug Ford of Ontario is dumbing down the province. He keeps taking us down rabbit holes for the less literate, the less learned. Today’s lesson from the fount of all ignorance is that new police people do not need to complete high school. We are sliding down a snake in a continuing game of Snakes and Ladders. Only in this case, the snake is named Ford.

First, with the help of the pandemic, he destroys our healthcare system. Nurses and other professionals are fleeing a profession where they are exhausted with impossible workloads. And what is the “stupid” solution from Ford but to promote private clinics. We still seem to have a finite number of healthcare workers, so Ford promotes the less trained to do the nursing task.

It is nice to see that the stupid like to stick together. One of the first asks of Ford when he took over the premier’s office five years ago was that an unqualified friend takeover as commissioner of the provincial police.

And, judging by his provincial cabinet, loyalty beats competency, any day. It is like having a private schooled education minister. We wouldn’t want him to understand the system, would we?

To be fair, the mailman just dropped a pamphlet from my member of parliament through the mail slot. It showed his constituents how fat he is getting living the high life in Ottawa. Of course, the member of parliament for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte would be a conservative. I have no idea how smart he is but this pamphlet reads like a kindergarten piece. He wants his constituents to answer three simple questions that would identify them as conservative or other.

What else would you be if you voted ‘yes’ to supporting conservatives in a plan to vote against all new tax increases. And then there is being concerned about the rising cost of living under the liberals. Sure, blame Canada’s liberals for the world-wide inflation. There is one open question and I hope his conservative constituents tell him to join a gym and take off some of the excess weight. That is also a good thought for Doug Ford.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Got an Extra $100K?

by Peter Lowry

The good news is that for that $100,000 you can run for the leadership of the Ontario liberals. There is another $25,000 that is refundable but I am not sure why. And you can only spend $900,000 on your campaign. All of these rules have been announced by the Ontario liberal party executive for a leadership contest that will end with voting by ranked ballot on November 25 and 26 by all members and announced on December 2 this year.

There will likely be an admission charge for those liberals attending the leadership announcement party but that is still to be announced. The only really bad news in this announcement is the ranked ballot for the new leader. Hopefully, if the number of candidates stays within reason, at four or five candidates, the results of the voting will most likely be similar to using first-past-the-post.

But the best news of all is that if you have 50 or 60 thousand close friends or followers on Facebook in Ontario, who want to vote for you, there is no charge to becoming a member of the liberal party.

And this is the dumbest part of the entire exercise! Instead of the members of the party paying through their membership for the costs of the leadership campaign, it is the leadership candidates. I think the members of the party would be much happier to get one or two pitches per year for extra funding in support of the party. I, for one, find the constant requests for money annoying.

Yes, I will admit that the ability of the leader to be able to raise substantial funds for his or her campaign is important but it is hardly the most important. Leadership is also gathering a team that can work together to win. It has to be a creative team. It has to be a hard-working team. It has to be a team that can draw support to liberalism, to serving our communities.

Babel-on-the-Bay.com will welcome the candidates and help readers to get to know about them. We will probably do a Morning Line presentation to give our impression on where the candidates stand. We have to defeat Mr. Ford and his friends.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Ford versus Smith.

by Peter Lowry

It appears to be a race to the bottom. It is amateur Ontario premier Doug Ford against amateur Alberta premier Danielle Smith. Neither has the experience or competence to be premier. As an Ontario resident, I would gladly trade Ford for Smith any day. Alberta voters might not know what to make of a dingbat but they sure know what to do with someone who wants to spend their money foolishly.

Both provinces are in serious trouble over their healthcare. It was Ford who took our Ontario hospitals downhill during the pandemic. He thinks he is fixing the problem by privatizing some of the hospital’s business. What he has never adequately explained is where the medical staff are coming from for these privatized clinics. He is passing a law authorizing these clinics into existence which is not fully thought through. He has not planned for suitable regulators or inspectors.

But then Smith passes laws that constitutional experts are puzzling over. It seems that if the federal government passes a federal law, she wants to take her time to decide if she wants to obey it.

The main difference between the two premiers is that she is a professional communicator and he seems to prefer to use bombast. What she communicates might be ditzy but she is a good communicator. She has shown that she can switch scripts when forced. She also has a convenient memory. She has been known to talk to people about their cases that are before the courts and that has got a lot of judges, lawyers and opponents talking about her inappropriate behaviour.

At least there is some professionalism to her Sunday show on Corus Radio in Alberta. She has been refusing to talk to those nosy reporters about her oopsies but that has not stopped her from telling her radio audience. The late Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto, tried to teach brother Doug how to do a regular radio show but the lessons did not seem to take. He has been having a hard enough time trying to learn how to use a teleprompter without being so obviously reading.

I am sorry to hear that Ms. Smith is facing some really annoyed voters at the beginning of May. And Happy May Day to you too.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Trusting Doug Ford?

by Peter Lowry

It’s an old maxim: Never trust anyone who says “Trust me.” And when it comes to Ontario premier Doug Ford, you should tell him to sell that worn-out jalopy to someone else. He thinks he is a great salesman. He is having trouble selling Highway 413. Nobody believes him. He is carving up the Greenbelt for his developer friends. There is a growing distrust in that. He wants to change the way we appoint the senior judge in Ontario. He tried to sneak that by us. Now, we find that his privatization of medicine in Ontario is without any inspections or other scrutiny.

We have peer review in our hospitals and yet no inspection for private surgical clinics? That is outrageous. That is a license to steal. Oh, I’m sorry. It seems these places will be licenced by some appointee who is probably not qualified to pass judgement on their expertise. There are no qualified people to be appointed to approve them. No wonder a conscientious minister of health refused to run on the Ford team in last year’s election.

What do you think you are doing to our Ontario Mr. Ford? You have loosened up liquor regulations to the point where every city and town can have a Gin Alley. You have licenced more casinos that any Ontario resident expected to see in their lifetime. Those heavy-handed ads for Internet casinos are becoming obnoxious and too much.

I always thought Kathleen Wynne was a bit too cautious in opening up beer in grocery stores. Compared to Doug Ford she was a Puritan. I’m expecting him to allow the grocers to convert their end isles to mini bars to give shoppers the nerve to continue on to the frightening cash registers. Maybe the grocers would prefer to convert some of their end isles into payday loan kiosks to pay for those few groceries.

I feel sometimes that we are just aiding and abetting stupidity when we complain about Doug Ford. Some people, somewhere are laughing at us. Did we do something to deserve Ford?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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Passing a Party in Purgatory.

by Peter Lowry

We might have to ask the Roman Church for help on this. It seems the liberal party in Ontario is stalled in some phase of existence that might take strong prayers to bring it through.

But just where it will end up is a good question. What the party leaders suggest is simply a leaderless phase, it still needs to get through. It could easily turn out to be terminal. I, for one, would be sorry to see that happen.

It was over 60 years ago that I joined the combined federal and Ontario provincial liberal parties. There was a liberal government in Ottawa and a conservative government in Ontario.  The attitude was that all the party needed was a good leader in Ontario and all would come together.

I found out that it was not that simple. While Ontario voters do not always differentiate between the federal and provincial levels of politics, they are known to show different attitudes depending on many factors.

I was deeply involved in leadership contests in my early days with the party and later on I organized a few. They were always delegated conventions in those days. There were more than 75,000 paid-up Ontario members and there was no venue that could hold that number. We had to settle for delegated conventions.

The largest of those conventions was the federal party convention in Ottawa that ultimately chose Pierre Trudeau in 1968. Of course, in my usual contrariness, I was working for second place candidate Robert Winters. I spent two months working in the labyrinth under the old Skyline Hotel.

Today it is possible to have every party member vote. Hopefully not in a ranked ballot. We need to think between ballots. We need the best candidate to win, not just the least offensive. The Ontario liberals need strong leadership and there are some good possibilities in the offing.

And we have time to choose a new federal leader. Justin Trudeau’s day is done. It is time for him to wipe off the grease paint and retire to the back benches.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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Buying the Right Polls.

by Peter Lowry

It seems to be the way you ask the questions that determines your answers. You can sure be surprised by the different answers that public opinion polls can produce. I was seeing this conflict in polls related to questions about privatized health care. Canadians have very mixed attitudes about the subject.

But before getting into the polling questions, it is only Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan that have mistreated their health care system to the point that they are considering privatized services. What they have told us is that all expense incurred at private clinics will be billed to the province. And we know that is B.S.

I can only reference Ontario in this but the private clinics and surgeries presently active in Ontario are rife with options and upgrades in service. While provided through hospitals, Ontario ophthalmologists have been profiting from upgraded lenses and other ‘extras’ for many years now. Even the Shouldice Hernia Hospital in Thornhill, Ontario, that was grandfathered into Ontario’s Medicare, has extras that some private insurers will pay for but not the province.

This subject occurred to me in reading another news release from the right-wing Montreal Economic Institute. MEI was, of course, shouting praise for seven out of ten Quebec residents supporting privatized health care. First you destroy the confidence people had for their healthcare delivery—and then you throw them a lifeline such as privatization. Why are you not surprised that some 70 per cent of respondents in Quebec will take whatever is offered. Mind you, the same survey said that only six in ten across Canada agreed with the Quebec results.

My personal antenna says that more Canadians are in favour of Medicare than are really in favour of privatized medicine as practiced in the United States. The reality is that most Canadians think the government should pay all the medical and dental bills rather than any of it come direct from their wallet. I know from some personal experience that there are limitations to the government service and payments in Alberta and British Columbia and Ontario is a disaster under the Ford conservatives.

They discouraged our nurses from staying in the profession during the pandemic by passing a law saying they could only have a one per cent raise in any one year. They further mistreated our hospital employees, and locked down their budgets when so much more was needed. We have been paying the price for their penny pinching. Even the minister of health refused to run again last year for the conservatives.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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The Carbon Capture Caper.

by Peter Lowry

It was a sad time a few years back when we lost an old friend in Calgary. He had spent a lifetime in the oil business and was a knowledgeable source on what was going on in the oil sands. I miss him for his friendship.

But life goes on and a retired professor gave me an insight recently into carbon capture that I would not have figured out for myself. It was that carbon captured from processing bitumen from the tar sands and pumped into played out oil wells can produce more crude oil from the oil wells.

It is based on the irregularity of the rock surfaces around the deposits of crude oil allowing for only 40 to 60 per cent of the oil to be brought to the surface. Given the price of crude oil today, compared to when those unclosed wells were producing wells, it sounds like a win-win to me. They don’t even need to re-open those wells that the governments have been trying to get them to close.

So why are the provincial and federal governments subsidizing this development?

This sounds like another oil boom for Alberta. Is that premier of questionable judgement to help spend the proceeds of this windfall for the Alberta government?

And it is all thanks to carbon capture and storage. What you find when you pump CO into old wells you release these additional pockets of crude oil and they can be pumped up from the wells. The results are supposed to be much better than the horizontal drilling that is producing more from today’s wells.   

I would give you more on this but I am not comfortable with the figures I am seeing from the Alberta Energy Regulator. All I am seeing is continued growth in the Alberta oil business through to the 2030s. All I want to know is when we are going to have better non-polluting energy sources for our homes, autos and industries?

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

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“You Can Fool Some of the People…

by Peter Lowry

The full axiom reads as: “You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people, all of the time. Many of us have been watching with concern the attempt in Israel to politicize the judiciary. One of the tenets of a true democracy is the independence of the judiciary.

I thought it was marvelous the way the Israelis turned out in the thousands to protest the move by their right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to politicize their judiciary. He was simply giving himself and his government the power to reverse the courts. Too many Israelis had parents and grandparents who learned what it is like to live and die under such regimes.

And yet in Ontario nobody seems to care when Doug Ford’s attorney general is charging ahead with conservative plans to politicize Ontario justice. The attorney general wants more choice among the choices presented to him, so he can choose someone like him to be chief justice.

And I can tell you that someone such as Doug Downey as chief justice of Ontario is a sad thought. Doug Downey was the conservative’s go-to guy in Severn, Ontario. He was a lacklustre councillor on Orillia city council. He was forced on my electoral district of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte by Doug Ford as a parachute candidate. I have only met him once, although by accident. He never attended an all-candidate meeting in the last election. I have never heard of him speaking in Barrie. He is a small-town ward healer.

Downey was not even Doug Ford’s first choice as attorney general. That first appointment was reserved for Brian Mulroney’s daughter. Having the senior Mulroney on board as a fund raiser was probably the price for giving her the job. The only problem was when the premier was told that Caroline Mulroney was educated in law in the United States and all her legal experience was in New York State. The fact that she could not practice law in Ontario was considered something of a problem in her being Attorney General of Ontario. She was quietly shuffled over to minister of transportation where she could shepherd the highway 413 and Bradford Bypass projects along for the conservative party. Mulroney is also minister of francophone affairs. She is one of the few French speakers in the conservative caucus having grown up in Ottawa and Montreal.

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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry

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

[email protected]