Provincial Politics – Page 125

Premiers aid tar sands trip to the sea.

January 29, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Where is the least resistance? Wherever it might be, Canada’s pipelines people will find it. Their objective is to get that damn tar sands bitumen to a seaport, onto ocean tankers and off to where they can get world crude oil prices. Their latest allies in this quest are Canada’s provincial premiers. The premiers weighed in on the subject at their annual roast of the federal government on the weekend. It seems they want to have their own national energy strategy.

This is not to say there was universal agreement with the idea among the provinces. Premier Christy Clark from British Columbia told the other premiers to butt out of her game with the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline across her province to a shipping point at Kitimat. Premier Alison Redford of Alberta said they should all keep their hands off Alberta’s oil revenues.

Many oil people are betting on U.S. President Barack Obama giving the nod to Trans Canada’s XL pipeline down to the Texas coast. Most Americans think that is to make use of the Texas refineries but reality is that the Americans do not need the oil from bitumen and it would most likely be shipped from Texas to markets in Europe and the Far East.

The same holds true for the proposed eastern routes to Portland, Maine or Saint John, New Brunswick. Both Portland and Saint John have the refinery capacity to handle the refining of the bitumen slurry but, again, it is the shipping capabilities that interest our Canadian tar sands people.

Premier David Alward of New Brunswick thinks there is a pot of gold at the end of that eastern pipeline to Saint John. All he needs is one spill of bitumen slurry in his province and his citizens will change his mind for him. When that tar seeps into ground water, the neighbouring potato farmers will be on welfare for the rest of their lives.

What is the most surprising is that the Idle No More movement among Canada’s indigenous population has not realized their ability to use pipelines to their advantage. If they ever wanted to bargain effectively for proper schools and assistance for remote living, as well as control of their reserves’ resources, now is the time.

The National Energy Board (NEB) has already approved the initial stages of reversing older pipelines such as Line 9 between Sarnia and Westover, Ontario. The next phases in Ontario and Quebec will open up the route to Portland, Maine. Ontario’s Liberal Premier-elect has been too busy to pay attention and Quebec Premier Pauline Marois has a different agenda.

The NEB approved Line 9 because it is not a new pipeline. It is just a new use for an old pipeline. The problem is that bitumen slurry requires higher temperatures and higher pressures to move it through an older line. The approval can be a death notice for the land it passes through.

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Walking with the workers.

January 28, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Watching the Liberal convention in Toronto last weekend, there was lots of time for other thoughts. The mood kept switching from being glad not to be there to being annoyed that we were not. There were many old friends popping up in the crowds of Liberals—some that we had not seen in years. We saved a lot of money by staying in Babel but it would have been so good to say hello.

There was a camera shot from a helicopter during the day of Carlton Street in front of the old Maple Leaf Gardens site. It showed a massing of an estimated 15,000 workers who were protesting the use of the draconian Bill 115. If we had been there for the convention, we would have gone out to be with the workers. It would have been in honour of the late Senator David Croll who said in 1937—as he resigned from Mitch Hepburn’s Liberal Cabinet—“I would rather walk with the workers than ride with General Motors.”

Babel-on-the-Bay hit a milestone in readership on Saturday and we noticed when looking at the figures that this site is still one of the major sources for information on first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting. The Democracy Papers from 2007 are archived on the site. The Democracy Papers were prepared in answer to the McGuinty government’s very foolish attempt at changing Ontario to a Mixed Member Proportional voting system. Thankfully, Ontario voters rejected the suggestion by about two to one.

There seem to be as many opinions about this blog as there are readers. We have never been able to get over it that the best read postings are the ones about Stephen Harper’s hair. It is the wife’s fault. We got into a discussion of politicos with hairpieces one day when it was pointed out that former Ontario Conservative leader John Tory would probably look more distinguished without his rug. And then the wife said, “Well, what about Harper’s hairpiece?”

While Google Analytics tells us quite a story about the blog’s readership, it does not tell you that the lone reader in the United Arab Emirates yesterday is probably a Canadian consular officer. What helps are the e-mails we get from people telling us how much they enjoyed or maybe hated a particular posting. And there is a particularly attentive bureau of accuracy out there ready to let us know if we make an error. They are also welcome.

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Wynne wins; Liberals lose.

January 27, 2013 by Peter Lowry

It is no surprise that hard work pays off. Kathleen Wynne won and she deserved the win. When she came second in the electoral district races, she kept on working. She came to Babel in heavy snow squalls to shore up her support. She intensified her e-mail campaign. She did everything that an undemocratic selection system demanded of her, and more. The only unanswered question is whether her selection as leader is best for the Ontario Liberal Party.

Most politicos agree that this was probably the last delegated leadership convention by a major political party in Canada. (It was traditional right down to the paper ballots.) Saturday at the convention was hours of excruciating boredom interspersed with a few minutes of surprise and bad theatre. The early morning speeches with the obligatory demonstrations were as expected with the notable exception of that by Kathleen Wynne. It was claimed that she wrote the speech herself. If she did, she missed her calling.

Those who had heard Wynne speak before were the most surprised. A person who often is more impressed with herself, opened up and spoke with a surprising honesty and lightness. She lost the teleprompter occasionally but recaptured her words with humour. It was a speech she will never regret or forget.

And nobody knows the work behind the scenes. MPP’s Glenn Murray, Eric Hoskins and Charles Souza were expected to support her and they did. It was the support at the end by Gerard Kennedy that put Wynne over the top. These were two people who had worked together in the early days of the McGuinty government and outsiders had no understanding of the relationship.

But where does this leave the Ontario Liberal Party? It has just proved at this delegated convention that democracy is not on its agenda. It is a top-down political party that operates as a propaganda machine for the Premier. It has chosen a new leader who is beholden to party bosses across Ontario for her ascent to the Premier’s job. The one leadership candidate who recognized the weakness of this was Gerard Kennedy, who is not even in the Ontario Legislature. The party has no advocate.

Delegates have returned to their electoral districts and to their increasingly irrelevant role in the Ontario Liberal Party. The party only wants them as troops for elections. They have no say in the creation, setting or reviewing of party policy. They do not even set their own rules of procedure. They have no say in who will be their candidate or when the candidate will be chosen. They are just supposed to do what they are told.

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Is there a liberal in the house?

January 24, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Think of the old Maple Leaf Gardens this weekend. In Pierre Trudeau’s day we used to fill that old barn with more than 15,000 liberal supporters for rallies. Senior party members would have panic attacks all day worrying about whether anyone would come. It was always a highlight of the campaign. Somebody would innocently arrive late with a bunch of buses, be barred from entry to the Gardens and we would have the Prime Minister address them from a flatbed we had parked on Carlton Street.

But who are these people we are going to listen to this weekend at this Maple Leaf Gardens Lite? In this new cut-down version of the old Gardens, the party will gather fewer than 3000 rigidly controlled delegates. On Friday night there will be a joyous farewell to Dalton McGuinty as Premier. It will be a happy time. The candidates will entertain.

Starting early on Saturday morning, there will be speeches and voting and the selection of a new leader who will also be the new Premier. This is a serious time.

And yet, we have no idea if most of these possible leaders are really liberals. Can they even tell you what a liberal believes? Do they understand the demands it places on us to be the political party that stands for individual rights in a society caught up in self worship? And what happens to individual rights in an economy such as today where we are fighting the doldrums of destructive protectionism?

Individual rights mean that free access to education for all must be the liberal objective. It means healthcare is a right. It means poverty must be vanquished. Opportunity for all is not accessible in gated communities. Liberalism cannot continue to support the one per cent. Liberalism rejects the collectivism of the left and the bigotry and paternalism of the right. Nor can we allow our children to be divided by religion or the mores of other parts of the world.

Liberalism is easy for those who have never thought about it. We can no longer just take from this new society of North America and not take responsibility for its future. We can no longer neglect the environment. We must protect it as our legacy.

Liberalism is not complex. It is serious. Can we choose otherwise?

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Hitting just the right note.

January 23, 2013 by Peter Lowry

There were e-mails from the three leading candidates for the Ontario provincial Liberal leadership candidates yesterday. They speak volumes. They tell you more about the candidates than their campaigns. They set the tone for the weekend convention.

Windsor’s Sandra Pupatello is the front-running candidate and hers was the first read. While most of her team’s communiqués have been personally addressed, this was the first that you could feel was direct from her. It was brief. It was personal. It set exactly the right note.

It talks about the race. It recognizes her opponents and their strengths. It offers a connection to the Toronto Star’s editorial endorsement of her, in case you have not yet had an opportunity to read it. She also points out that the real battle is not this weekend. It is in the months to come. She is modest in the conclusion and points out how we need to come together as a party.

MPP Kathleen Wynne’s e-mail was more aggressive. It is signed by her two co-chairs, Health Minister Deb Mathews and former MPP John Wilkinson. It consists of excerpts from major Ontario newspapers. It is strong stuff. It goes for the jugular. It is trying to maximize every potential ex officio vote on the first ballot to try to close the gap between her and Sandra Pupatello.

Maybe some of the quotes go too far. The e-mail is heavy reading. At a time when you want to bring the thinking about the candidates to a logical conclusion, some of the statements about Kathleen are not very credible. And there is no need to hit out at others at a time when what you want to do is sell your candidate’s known strengths. It will be very interesting to see how her campaign team plans her final speech to the convention.

Meanwhile, Gerard Kennedy is still working. He might be third on the first ballot but he continues to prove that he has ideas and is the only progressive Liberal in the race. He released his policy paper on equality. It makes a good read.

The paper makes the point that before we can really offer equality to everybody in Ontario, we have to offer equality within the Liberal Party. That would be a positive start.

On the road of life, we have the darkness closing on the past behind us and the dawn reveals the future ahead. When we choose our leaders, we are choosing paths for ourselves, our children and their children. We should do our best to choose well.

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Pupatello: She’s not McGuinty lite.

January 22, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Babel-on-the-Bay has often referred to the McGuinty Liberals as Whigs. That was what liberals were called until the middle of the 19^th Century. It was only when compared to the regime of Michael Harris’ Conservatives in Ontario that you could consider McGuinty’s Liberal government to be progressive.

But where would a government run by Sandra Pupatello fit? The former MPP from Windsor brings some good news with her to next weekend’s convention. And as the front runner in the first ballot, we have no choice but to pay attention. She not only leads in committed delegate support for that ballot but she has been the logical choice of the largest block of ex officio voters from the beginning of the race.

The good news for Ontario is that she says she would put jobs and the economy of the province in the forefront. That would certainly have better public support than continuing a foolish attack on the deficit. How her campaign chairperson, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, feels about this recanting of his financial direction is not told.

The bad news for Ontario is that Sandra Pupatello is clearly the favourite daughter of the Liberal Party’s right wing. She seems to be more of a Clear Grit–they were from South Western Ontario back in the mid 19^th Century that joined George Brown’s Toronto Reformers and founded the Liberal Party. Her acceptance of anything smacking of reform might be a murky subject.

Yet she has to accept the fact that she cannot stay on the same track as the McGuinty government has been headed. She has to be fully aware that the only thing that kept the Liberals in power in the last election was the weakness of the opposition. Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak is a sad caricature of his mentor Mike Harris. Andrea Horwath of the NDP let opportunity pass her by. Sandra Pupatello has more spunk and drive than the two of them combined.

Her only problem is that she would be inheriting a seriously weakened led-from-the-top party that has ignored its roots for too long. Without major reforms in party structure, policy development and riding support, she has nothing worthwhile to lead. It is a party that will be unable to win those marginal seats that are essential to a majority.

Sandra Pupatello is certainly not McGuinty lite but she has to be her own person if she wants to be Premier—for long. We will find out on the coming weekend, where she thinks she is going.

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Wynne’s no winner at party reform.

January 19, 2013 by Peter Lowry

This person is a progressive? It is more likely, we have met rocks that are more progressive than Ontario Liberal leadership contender MPP Kathleen Wynne. The person who wrote her seven-point plan for party renewal and reform should be ashamed. Mind you, Wynne must have signed off on it, so you can put all the blame on her.

If you do not believe how silly this document is, just read item three. The first point is that Kathleen supports a strong and independent Executive Council which will be responsible for party staff. Does this mean that she thinks the party staff are reporting somewhere else? We wonder where?

It then says that regional vice-presidents will be empowered to bring riding issues forward. It makes you wonder just what the hell she thinks the regional vice-presidents have been doing?

The document concludes item three by saying the party must always have in place a full-time executive director. How interesting! Has somebody proposed an alternative?

And the document goes on like that. Did you know that Kathleen—as leader—will appoint a five-person commission to review the party’s nomination process. She is not just going to accept the fact that the top-down process now in place is destroying the Liberal Party in Ontario.

It is particularly interesting when you recognize the distinction Kathleen makes between held and unheld ridings. It speaks volumes. It appears to give the party’s sitting members of the legislature inordinate control of their riding through the party leader’s office. As long as the leader likes the sitting member, this person can do no wrong. Welcome to boss politics.

The biggest joke of the document is item number six. It is a one-liner saying that Kathleen will increase the involvement of party members in policy discussions. She will let them discuss it but she does not seem too interested in letting them have any authority over the process or implementation or review.

But give the lady credit. She adds at the end that she is committed to increased accessibility and accountability. Whatever that means! She adds that she will be available in new ways such as telephone town-hall meetings. The first time we tried that technique we realized that it gives the people running it total control of the process. Telephone town halls are not an open form of communication.

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Struggling for the news story.

January 18, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Reporters do not just have bad hair days. They also have days when it is tough to dredge up a story. On a day when your editor or news director is counting on you for 1500 words or a two-minute video clip, you sometimes get this hollow feeling in your stomach. There is absolutely nothing new for you to report. It is time for you to become creative.

Take this speculation about NDP leader Andrea Horwath and Liberal leadership contender Kathleen Wynne. Will they or will they not? Would it be a match made in heaven? It is all fairly silly speculation.

First of all, to suggest there is some compatibility between Horwath and Wynne is quite a reach. Anyone who has tried to follow a speech by Wynne, knows that she is a long way from having any socialist tendencies. This is a person who got into politics because she objected to Premier Michael Harris consolidating Metropolitan Toronto into a single city back in the 1990s. This was something that had always been fought by the right wing politicos because it would make Toronto too powerful. Harris did it because he could not figure out Toronto’s problems—nor did he care.

But Wynne was the ideal provincial candidate for Don Valley West. They vote right wing there. New Democrats who live in the district prefer to run somewhere else. Voters there could care less about Wynne being a lesbian. Life style choices are the last thing people in Don Valley West worry about. They will complain though if you do not mow your postage-stamp lawn carefully.

But Kathleen Wynne is probably becoming quite miffed at the media for suggesting that she is left wing. Sure, compared to leadership opponent Sandra Pupatello, England’s Margaret Thatcher might have seemed left wing. And if Sandra grabs the brass ring at the Liberal leadership convention next week, she is not going to cooperate with anybody. Sandra not only wants to be Premier of Ontario but she wants to rub opponents such as Andrea Horwath and Timmy Hudak’s noses in it. Sandra takes no prisoners.

That does not give delegates to the Liberal gathering much choice. With at least a third of the ex officio delegates to the convention in her pocket, Sandra Pupatello is safe in first place on the first ballot. If just Eric Hoskins is off on the second ballot, look for Wynne to fall off and Gerard Kennedy to have a good increase. It will be the only chance for anything interesting to happen.

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Is it plagiarism or research?

January 17, 2013 by Peter Lowry

The wife wants to stop delivery of the Toronto Star. The truth is that The Star costs us almost four times as much each year as it costs us to maintain this web site. And then we see an opinion piece this morning by our old friend Bob Hepburn that follows our Morning Line stories of early this month. Bob knows the difference between plagiarism and research but he should have also researched what a morning line is with his sports page buddies.

A morning line is prepared by a knowledgeable track person who can establish a reasonable basis for opening the betting for the race. Obviously Bob Hepburn is no handicapper. And, obviously, if you are going to propose odds on a race, you hardly wait until the horses are at post and, in this case, you need to know a lot more about the politics and people involved.

But even Babel-on-the-Bay is not perfect. We wrote our morning line in the hiatus between Christmas and New Years. And we lost our only bet. We bet ten bucks with a computer-savvy person that MPP Eric Hoskins would beat MPP Harinder Takhar. You would have thought that was a safe bet. We lost.

We overestimated the influence of social media with the younger Liberals. We really hate Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of them. They are shallow, intrusive and people who follow them usually need to get a life. We should have guessed that smart young Liberals might feel the same.

It was only just before the electoral district voting last week that Eric Hoskins came to Babel and we had a chance to see how young people reacted to him. We asked Eric a loaded question and then watched the young people especially as he answered. He was boring them. He never answered the question. He deserved to come last. From a positive and interesting start to his campaign, he became dull and desperate.

But we were right about the rest. Sandra Pupatello came first, as expected. And she has the potential to grow. MPP Kathleen Wynne might be a close second but she has little growth potential. And posing Wynne as progressive is a joke. All that people are doing with that line is trying to keep Gerard Kennedy from moving up to be a real contender. Gerard is the only political progressive in the race and that was where Babel’s young people went.

MPP Charles Sousa can relax, as his position in the party is secured. You might think the same for MPP Harinder Takhar but being a go-between with a specific ethnic group is not always the key to a political future.

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“A Liberal is a Liberal, is a Liberal.”

January 16, 2013 by Peter Lowry

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath made that trite statement to the news media at Queen’s Park yesterday. It points out why Andrea is not Premier of Ontario today. And if she is sincerely trying to shore up the failing Liberal regime in Ontario to prevent an election, her own party will soon have the knives out for her.

If Andrea was really Machiavellian—which she is not—you would think that she was promoting MPP Kathleen Wynne for leadership of the Liberals. With the Liberal leadership convention less than two weeks away, the opposition leaders at Queen’s Park take every shot at publicity the media will give them. And Andrea must know how much easier it would be for her to defeat Wynne in an election than it would be to take on Sandra Pupatello as Liberal leader.

Pupatello is everything that Horwath is not. Pupatello not only looks good but she is smart, fiscally credible and can run rings around Conservative leader Tiny Tim Hudak. With Wynne as Liberal leader, Horwath could sit back in an election, let Timmy do all the bigotry things, play nice and reap the reward of the Premier’s job. Mind you, Horwath would make a worse Premier than McGuinty—if you could imagine it.

Frankly, any politico who believes all adherents to a political party should think or act alike is guilty of wishful thinking. The real strength of any political party is its ability to encompass a wide range of political philosophies and ideals. A political party without some dissension and cross talk will eventually die of boredom. It is the party that can welcome dialogue and ideas, that has a future.

And what the future holds for a Liberal Party of Ontario led by Sandra Pupatello, is hard to say. You have to admit that the lady has bombast but then so did Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom. What both of them have, in spades, is self-confidence, arrogance, fiscal conservatism and a mind of their own. Where that will take a Premier Sandra Pupatello, nobody knows.

Frankly, the Liberal Party in Ontario would be far better off with Gerard Kennedy at the helm. He has promised to return democracy to the party and that is worth a great deal. He also knows and understands the mentality of the New Democrats and could work a good deal with Andrea Horwath. He is certainly the only candidate who has a chance of healing the rift with the school teachers.

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