Provincial Politics – Page 127

GO would rather pollute.

November 8, 2011 by Peter Lowry

As a child, the electric trams of the Speed River Railway were a fascinating experience. At one time, that electrified railway ran from Port Dover on Lake Erie, up through what is now Cambridge and on to Kitchener/Waterloo. The system was fast, non-polluting and on-time, serving Ontario citizens and their packages on a regular basis. Today, GO Transit, owned by the Ontario government, runs slow and polluting diesel engines in a vain attempt to provide a similar people moving function.

GO does not get there. GO is slow. A diesel train engine, weighing about 100 tonnes, takes a long time to get up to speed and a long time to stop. And that is why it takes almost two hours for a one-hour trip from Babel to Toronto’s Union Station. That is why people are not lined up ten deep to take the GO Train from Babel to Toronto.

Admittedly, it would cost a great deal of money to build and maintain overhead electrical connections for GO trains. You have to compare that cost with the ongoing health costs to Ontario because of the pollution caused by diesel. You also have to consider the cost of maintaining tracks for 100-tonne locomotives versus self-propelled electric cars at about a fifth the weight.

People can argue both sides of the question. Electricity costs are rising, they will tell you. Have you checked the cost of diesel fuel recently? Electric train cars cost more. With an electric system, you do not need a diesel engine.

It all boils down to the pollution concern. Diesel engines put nitrogen oxides and soot into our air. That is not worrying the farmers around Bradford yet but if a diesel engine keeps going into Toronto, when there is one of those atmospheric inversions over the city, that diesel pollution helps kill people.

In the United States, diesel engines are believed to cause about 50 per cent of the total harmful airborne emissions. There are no comparable statistics for Canada. GO (which stands for Government of Ontario) Transit continues to pollute.

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The way of the Whigs.

November 1, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Now that the election is over, we can really say what we think of the Ontario government of Dalton McGuinty: very little. As the local provincial Whig riding president said about this blog, “You hate them all but you hate Dalton the least.” She was right.

There is no question that Tim Hudak is a disaster foretelling the end of times. Andrea Horwath started out as promising but never performed. Yet, it is poor Dalton and his Whigs who were destined to disappoint us the most.

Mind you, we did give Dalton the credit for all-day kindergarten. That was something that gained general acceptance. You just did not want to hang your hat on it.

What scared hell out of us was the ponzi scheme Dalton’s Whigs passed called a Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program for renewable energy production. By paying various premiums for the electricity produced by sun, wind, bio-mass and water, the program promised at least a doubling of electricity prices in Ontario. Now that the election is over, the Whigs are starting to look at putting limits on the program.

What the opposition lacked in the election—other than a sense of direction—was a clear understanding of what the emerging issues are that need answers.

And Dalton’s opponents sure missed an opportunity when an otherwise intelligent Health Minister Deb Mathews suggested general practitioners make house calls on seniors. That would be a really great idea if we could just figure out a way to get everyone in the province a family doctor first.

What never got off the ground during the election is the growing anger over the Condominium Act and other later Acts that are overriding the Condominium Act. With more than 500,000 Ontario residents living in condos and the number growing every week, somebody is going to have to start to care. The mess the government is causing might be great for making lawyers rich but all that will do is make condo living affordable for only the very wealthy.

The good news is that most people recognize that Dalton is well past his use-before date. For the next election, the Whigs will have to find another anachronism to lead them.

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Are the NDP flying high on Layton’s legacy?

October 29, 2011 by Peter Lowry

Commenting on the Jack Layton funeral event in our August 28 blog, the question was asked if Canada’s New Democratic Party can fly to greater heights on Jack Layton’s image. The article ended with the statement, “Ask that question again in October.” We now know the answer is “No.”

Provincial NDP Leader Andrea Horwath hardly needs to share any of the credit with a ghost for her party’s increase of seven seats in the recent provincial election. The provincial NDP, taking just one seat from the Liberals in Toronto, hardly swept the city Jack Layton claimed as his base. She did better in Northern Ontario because of McGuinty ignoring the area.

In the meantime, a field of eight has emerged to do battle for Layton’s leadership of the federal NDP. Three are front runners. They are MP Thomas Mulcair from Montreal, Brian Topp, the party president, and MP Peggy Nash from Toronto. They are, in turn, the maverick, the choice of the greybeards, and the woman candidate. None of the three holds a candle to Jack Layton.

And yet, the one to watch is Peggy Nash. She is old school. She is the real socialist of the three. She has also proven herself in making a comeback in the 2011 election to win over Liberal star Gerard Kennedy to regain her Toronto-High Park seat in the Commons. Her Canadian Auto Workers background will work for her in an election in which every member of the party has a vote.

If it were a delegated convention, an apparatchik such as Brian Topp would have an advantage with his support by the power brokers of the party. His union, ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), cannot add much to his numbers in an all-party vote and it is also hard to decipher what his lack a seat in parliament will mean to the rank and file.

Thomas Mulcair, the Montreal candidate, is an enigma. As a former Liberal Cabinet Minister in Quebec, he has a long way to go to be known and accepted by the NDP outside of his province. The sparseness of party membership in that province makes his task almost insurmountable.

As one Quebec-based journalist mused, the media has no way of guessing how the all-party voting will go. She is right. And neither can the party be expected to know.

There will be no Layton legacy but it will still be an interesting race for the NDP leadership.

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Klees clutches for the brass ring.

October 26, 2011 by Peter Lowry

You have to admire a guy who gives it a shot. You admire it even if the shot is by a neo-conservative such as MPP Frank Klees. Frank has decided to take a run at the Speaker’s job at Queen’s Park. It is an interesting career direction but obviously a swan song for his role as heir-apparent to provincial Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.

Heir-apparents to losers become losers themselves. Think back to Kim Campbell following Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister or Ernie Eves chasing Mike Harris as Premier of Ontario. Nobody gave a damn about their credentials or differences from their predecessors. They carried the can for them.

And nobody would want to deliberately carry the can for Tim Hudak. Besides, Frank Klees is seven years older than Tim. And Tim is unlikely to retire tomorrow. The math does not work in Frank’s favour.

Tim Hudak has reason to be annoyed with Klees as his defection to the speaker’s job will effectively make the Legislature a draw. If Klees is elected Speaker, it would mean 53 Liberals on the Speaker’s right and 53 Conservative and NDP members on the Speaker’s left. While the Speaker only votes in case of a tie, the Speaker has limited options.

The good news is that Frank Klees would make an excellent speaker. He can bring a degree of fairness and experience to the Speaker’s chair better than Liberal contenders for the job. There are four Liberals also reaching for the brass ring. Of the four, David Zimmer, MPP for Willowdale, is probably best qualified for the job.

Frank Klees has been in the Ontario Legislature the longest of all present candidates and probably has the best understanding of the role of the Speaker of the House. He will obviously enjoy the perquisites of the Speaker as well as the higher pay. Given a good report card by all parties in the next four years, he might even have the opportunity to return as Speaker if re-elected in the next election. Otherwise, he can return to the business world, with a nice pension from the Ontario Legislature later on.

It must be one of those times when Premier Dalton McGuinty regrets the increased democracy in the Legislature. Until 1990, the Speaker was chosen by the Premier in consultation with the leaders of the other parties. Now the Speaker is elected by all members by secret ballot. The secret ballot is the kicker because it will do no good for Tim Hudak to tell his Conservatives not to vote for Klees. It could be just a half dozen Tory supporters that could put him over the top.

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Ontario sinks to new lows in debate.

September 28, 2011 by Peter Lowry

If you were surfing, trying to find a rerun from the Charlie Sheen Two and a Half Men series around seven last night, you might have come across a new version of the show. This one features a lady named Andrea Horwath in the Charlie Sheen role. A prissy chap named Dalton was playing the amiable side-kick role of Allan Harper while an aging adolescent Tiny Tim struggled with the fat, dumb kid persona. As a political debate, it had little to recommend it.

Ontario deserves better. Mind you, NDP leader Andrea Horwath looked spiffy—a great hair do, good make-up job, nice dress, discreet jewellery—all spoiled by one of those trade-mark manish suit jackets.

For sartorial yuck, you could hardly beat Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s tie. It must have been his daughter’s choice. We now know the kid’s problem is not her parentage. She is color blind.

It was Premier Dalton McGuinty’s role to look like suitable premier material. And he did until those other two started to beat the crap out of him.

Horwath surprised everybody with her performance. That nice lady can also be mean and bitchy. Her remarks about pumping beer in North Bay sure did not do much for her trying to look like a premier.

It was everyone jumps on Dalton night. Horwath was snide about his no-show at some Northern debate and Hudak was calling him a liar.

Dalton got in a good one on Tiny Tim about calling new Canadians foreigners but Tim denied it despite anyone who watches television news having heard him.

The three of them proved to be really bad communicators. The people who prepped them for the show should all be shot. Shotgun delivery of statistics is meaningless. They did better with anecdotal stuff but what Andrea’s 18-year old son was doing on a skateboard is a good question.

Dalton actually smiled when he gave an aside to Andrea about her brother or someone getting a job at Honda. Other than that one human moment, he is still in need of a personality transplant.

Tiny Tim came across as a bobble-head doll with a tape recorder up its rear. He just bobbled along in his own weird right-wing world, spouting inanities.

By the time the show was over, we decided that it was a form of self-abuse that we did not need. Anyway, we voted last week.

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